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“Mom!” Ryder called, crying.
    In the hallway, Doyle hugged him tight. “Shhh. Come on, buddy. She’s gonna be okay. You gotta . . . think positive.”
    Ryder shook his head and sobbed, “I can’t think anything!”
    â€œHey, hey. Shhh. Come on, now.”
    Ryder broke free and ran away from it all, down the hallway, through the doors, and into the stairwell. His feet slapped in a quick rhythm. Down he went, aware of the door being flung open above him and that the heavy thunk of steps wasDoyle in pursuit. Ryder reached the bottom and banged open the door. He dashed through the hospital lobby, winded from crying and running. He shoved his way through the exit.
    Concrete benches crouched outside a small shadowed courtyard between the entrance and the sidewalk. Above, brown-painted metal awnings offered cover from only the most feeble weather. Ryder threw himself down on a bench and slouched with his hands jammed into his coat pockets against the cold. Vapor huffed from his mouth in great white puffs.
    Scared and confused, he kept hearing his mother’s voice in his head, calling out the name Jimmy Trent. Was that his father’s name? He felt a sharp stab of pain, as if all the times he’d been upset about not having a father hit him at once. Fathers’ night for his baseball team. Drawing a family tree in fourth grade. A teacher scolding him by asking if Ryder thought his father would approve of his behavior. There were hundreds of those moments. Spread out and alone, they were like paper cuts—annoying, but nothing to cry about. All together, it was a knife in his heart and it filled his eyes with more tears.
    He sniffed and dabbed at his eyes, and after a few minutes, Doyle walked up and sat down next to him. They sat that way for a while, quiet and together as people passed them by, both coming and going.
    Finally, Doyle spoke. “I’ve been looking for you.”
    Ryder shrugged.
    â€œIf you promise to wait right here,” Doyle said, “I’ll go check and see how she’s doing. Okay?”
    â€œFine,” Ryder said.
    â€œFine, you promise?”
    He nodded. “I promise.”
    â€œGood.” Doyle patted his leg and got up to go. “Right here.”
    Ryder suffered the entire time Doyle was gone and he could have kicked himself for not going along, but he promised he’d wait, so he did. Finally, the hefty fireman returned with a big grin. “Well, she’s out of the woods. They won’t be letting us in again tonight, though.”
    Ryder didn’t respond, even though the flood of relief made him so dizzy that he tried to breathe deeply through his nose and let it out slow. They sat quietly for a while before Doyle’s phone played a tune.
    Doyle checked the new text that had come in. “Hey, Chief wants to see me. Wow, on a Sunday. Want to see the firehouse?”
    â€œNo.” Ryder didn’t look up.
    â€œC’mon, kids love the firehouse. Big trucks. Chrome so bright it makes you blink.”
    â€œI’m not a kid,” Ryder said.
    â€œOkay, young people like the firehouse. You can slide down the pole. C’mon.”
    â€œThere’s not a pole,” Ryder said.
    â€œHonest to God, and you can go down it. Plus, I know for a fact that my partner—the guy you saw, Derek Raymer—has a big pot of chili like you never tasted. He won the blue ribbon at last year’s Firefighters’ Cookoff.” Doyle stood and held out a hand, offering it to help Ryder up. “Come on. You’ll meet the chief, not that he’s anything but a slab-sided blowhard, but hey, he wears the white hat so . . .”
    Ryder finally nodded and stood up. They took the subway to 125th Street, then walked to a brick building that was onlyabout ten blocks from where Ryder lived. Two huge red doorways revealed the big trucks, resting like attack dogs with their chrome shiny enough for