"Fifteen! Good set. How's the pain level?"
"Manageable." It was always manageable. Pain was just information, and I'd learned to file it away with all the other information I constantly processed—Finn's breathing rates, his medication schedule, the weather forecasts that had become my obsession since Sarah's accident.
Speaking of weather...
Every screen in the facility showed the same thing: a massive winter storm system bearing down on Colorado. The meteorologists were using their serious voices, the ones reserved for potentially historic events. "Unprecedented snowfall." "Potentially catastrophic blizzard conditions." "Life-threatening accumulations."
"Looks nasty," Jake commented, following my gaze. "They're saying three to four feet of snow in the valley, more in the mountains. White-out conditions, wind gusts up to sixty miles per hour."
Three to four feet of snow. Power outages. Roads buried and impassable. No way to get to the hospital if—
"I need to go," I said, already pulling on my shirt.
"Brad, you've got twenty more minutes—"
"Family emergency."
It wasn't a lie. Every storm was a potential emergency when you had a child with severe asthma. Cold air, pressure changes, stress—all triggers. I'd learned to prepare for disasters because the one time I hadn't, Sarah hadn't come home.
I picked Finn up from school early, ignoring the secretary's knowing look. Everyone in Wrightwood knew Brad Wilder was "overprotective" since his wife's death. They whispered about it at school functions, made sympathetic noises while judging my helicopter parenting.
"Dad, it's only 1:30," Finn protested as I buckled him into his booster seat. "We were about to finger paint! Mason was going to eat the paint again and Mrs. Rachel was going to freak out and everything!"
"Storm's coming, buddy. Need to get supplies."
"The big one they're talking about on the news?" His eyes lit up with excitement that made my chest tight. He didn't remember the storm that took Sarah, thank God. To him, blizzards meant snow days and hot chocolate.
"Yeah, the big one."
The grocery store was controlled chaos. Half of Wrightwood had the same idea, filling carts with bread, milk, and batteries like the apocalypse was coming. My cart looked like a doomsday prepper's dream—three types of batteries, enough medication to run a small pharmacy, water, non-perishable food, emergency heating sources, battery-powered air purifier, manual can opener, first aid supplies that could stock an ER.
"Dad, why do we need twelve flashlights?" Finn asked, adding a box of cookies to the cart when he thought I wasn't looking.
"Redundancy, bud. One is none, two is one."
"That makes no sense."
"It means always have backups for your backups."
He considered this. "Is that why you put seventeen inhalers in the cart?"
"Twenty-three, actually. And yes."
Finn picked up one of the inhalers, examining it. "You know, Miss Serena taught me a breathing technique at school for when I can't find my inhaler right away. She showed me and Matthew—he has asthma too—how to stay calm and breathe properly."
"Yeah? That's smart."
"Yeah, she's really cool. She helped Dameon with his reading stuff, and she got special fidget tools for Emily so she can focus better." Finn's face lit up as he talked. "And yesterday, when I had that asthma attack during PE, she knew exactly what to do. She stayed with me the whole time, even taught the other kids about asthma so they wouldn't be scared."
"She's good at her job."
"She is! She makes everyone feel like they belong, you know? She started this thing where—" Finn stopped mid-sentence.
"Miss Serena!" Finn's voice went up three octaves as he spotted her near the soup aisle, holding a basket with modest supplies—a flashlight, some canned soup, bread. She looked slightly overwhelmed by the crowd's intensity.
She turned at Finn's voice, her face brightening with a smile that did things to my chest I didn't want to examine. She wore jeans and a sweater that brought out the brown in her eyes, her hair pulled back in a messy bun that made her look younger, softer.
"Hi, guys," she said, eyeing my cart with amusement. "Planning to bunker down for the winter?"
