Page 84 of Fighting For You

Barb found us a duplex on the east side. Three days after I told her what happened, she called back with a name and a number. A friend of hers had a rental open. Two bedrooms, a full kitchen, and enough room for three people to live without climbing over each other.

Ian was compliant. Curfew every night, no contact with anyone from Rudy's, enrolled at the new school because the court required it. I walked him through the building myself on registration day. He was quiet, polite, cooperative. He was the Ian I remembered from before the fire. The easy boy who never gave me a reason to worry.

I was washing dishes after dinner when Ian came into the kitchen. He stood next to the counter with one hand in his pocket.

"I got you something. For your birthday."

I turned off the faucet and dried my hands. "My birthday's in a few days."

"I know. But I have it now, and I wanted you to have it."

He reached into the pocket of his jeans and held out his palm.

A moonstone. Small, milky white, cool in the light from the kitchen window. I knew what it was before he said anything.

"I know you lost all your crystals in the fire." He looked at the stone in his hand. "I bought it before..." He stopped. Swallowed. "Before everything."

Before the arrest. Before the precinct, before the charges, before the room with the cinder block walls and the things he'd said to me that I was still carrying even though he'd taken them back.

"Ian."

"I'm sorry, Nora." His voice was quiet. "What I said to you at the precinct. I didn't mean it. I know you were there. I know everything you gave up for me. I was angry and I took it out on you, and I'm sorry."

I put my arms around him and pulled him into me. He hugged me back, tight, the way he used to when he was small and something had scared him.

"I love you," I said.

"I love you too."

I pulled back and looked at the moonstone in his hand. I picked it up and held it to the light. The surface shimmered, that soft blue glow that only shows when you turn it at the right angle.

"It's beautiful," I said.

He smiled. It was the first real smile I'd seen from him since before the fire.

I was charting at the station across from bay twelve when Sullivan's voice cut through the floor noise.

"Who has this patient?"

Lori looked up from the IV she was labeling. "I do. Endorsed from Liz about an hour ago."

Sullivan was at the bedside monitor. He didn't look at Lori. He was looking at the rhythm strip. "Pull up this patient's labs."

Lori set the IV bag down and opened the chart. Sullivan didn't wait. He was already at the computer on the wall, pulling the results himself.

"Potassium came back at six-eight forty minutes ago." His voice was flat. "Critical value. No acknowledgment in the chart. No physician notification. No medication hold." He turned to face her. "This patient is in a widening QRS and you are standing here labeling an IV bag."

Lori looked at the screen. I watched the color leave her face.

"I didn't get a critical flag, Dr. Sullivan. There's nothing in the working chart."

"The result is in the system. It has been in the system for forty minutes. This patient needed calcium gluconate and insulin thirty-nine minutes ago, and instead his heart is deciding whether it wants to keep beating." He pulled the crash cart to the bedside himself. "Get me calcium gluconate, ten milliliters of ten percent, IV push now. And page cardiology."

Lori was already moving. I was on my feet too, pulling the med from the cart while Lori opened the line. Sullivan pushed the calcium himself, his eyes on the monitor, waiting for the QRS to narrow.

It took ninety seconds. The rhythm started pulling back. Sullivan watched it for a full minute before he spoke again.

"That man was heading toward a cardiac arrest because a critical lab sat in the system for forty minutes and nobody acted on it." He looked at Lori. "I don't care who had this patient before you. The moment he became yours, his labs became yours. This goes in an incident report, and your name is on it."