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been a normal part of his life. Routine that her numerous allergies prevented her from taking him to the park like other mothers or attending his Little League games.
    But in spite of her condition, his mother had been a Shiny Penny. That’s what his dad had called her anyway. His Shiny Penny. Bright and true, something you could count on. She smiled every day of her life. She was an artist who used anything and everything as her medium. She drew on white butcher paper with charcoal, capturing Travis’s silhouette as he grew from infant to toddler to gap-toothed kid to gangly preteen. She painted murals on his bedroom walls, trucks and airplanes and race cars. She knitted with merino wool and mohair and angora and alpaca, making scarves and mittens, afghans and sweaters, socks and caps in every color of the rainbow. Local women who lacked the talent or time to create their own crafts came to their door every week to buy the wares his mother had created.
    Penelope spent most of her days in bed or on thecouch, drawing and painting and knitting in between the times the asthma stole her breath. When he crept up onto her bed as a boy, looking for affection, he had to be careful not to jab a knitting needle in his knee or snap her charcoal in half or crimp her oxygen line. Although his mother had been confined by her disease, she had not been defined by it. She had a glow about her, her whole face round and smooth as a white harvest moon. It was only later, after Jazzy got sick, that Travis realized it was the years of mega-doses of steroids that made her look that way.
    When Travis reached the hospital, he thought of the night he and his dad had followed the ambulance there. He recalled how the frowning paramedics had whisked his mother inside on a stretcher, blocking Travis’s view of her. All he could see of his mother were her hands. Hands that had once drawn and knitted and rubbed his back when he was tired or feeling bad, hands now turned doughy with blue-tinged fingernails, hands that would never hold him again.
    He shook his head, shook off the memories, parked the truck, eased Jazzy from the backseat, and carried her through the pneumatic doors and into the emergency room bright with fluorescent lights. The front desk clerk spotted him right away and got up from his chair. Travis knew the freckled-faced man from high school. His name was Kip Armstrong.
    “We’re putting Jazzy in exam room three,” Kip said. “Dr. Adams is on his way.”
    Travis moved through the double doors, past the other patients parked in the waiting room. Jazzygot special treatment. Part of it was the frequent flier aspect. They were in here so often the staff felt like family. Part of it was Jazzy’s bubbly personality. Everyone who met her fell in love with her. And part of it, he knew, was pity. They felt sorry for a single father whose only child had a nasty habit of knocking at death’s door. Hell, if pity got her faster service, he’d take it.
    The medical staff converged around him as he laid Jazzy on the gurney in moves so habitual they felt choreographed. As if a silent director was sending out telepathic cues. Nurse One took her blood pressure. Nurse Two put a pulse oxygenation monitor on her index finger. The lab tech drew arterial blood gases, while the respiratory therapist set up the Albuterol nebulizer.
    Jazzy sat upright propped on pillows, leaning forward, knees drawn to her chest, struggling to catch her breath between the coughing fits that racked her little body. Travis fisted his hands. He felt so damn helpless.
    In his head, he heard his ex-wife’s voice.
Face reality, Travis. She
‘
s going to die.
    Not on his watch, dammit. No way, no how.
Get out of my head, Crystal,
he growled silently to himself.
You
‘
re the quitter. You
‘
re the one who gives up on people. Not me. Never me. You forfeited your parental rights when you walked out on us because you were too damn weak to take care of our sick daughter.
    Why the