The Doctor's Undoing (Doctors in Training 3)

“Let’s go on this one,” one of the three boys in the group of seven insisted, pointing toward the ride Ron and James were just climbing into.

The four girls squealed and giggled and dithered, but all were persuaded to get in line. One boy hung back, coughing into his hand. “Y’all go ahead. I just ate that giant funnel cake with chocolate topping. I don’t want to lose it when the ride starts flipping over.”

His friends teased him, using mildly profane language, but he merely waved them on, trying to suppress another cough. Because of the limited space, he stood rather close to Haley as he watched his friends. Even over the noises surrounding them, she could hear the wheezy edge to his increasingly labored breathing.

She bit her lip to keep her concern to herself. Medical students were too prone to offer unsolicited advice, she reminded herself. She should just mind her own business.

Looking out of the corner of her eye, she decided he might have been fifteen. Skinny, his face a little pale beneath the scattered zits, his hair fashionably shaggy and limp. He gave another wheezy cough. Because she’d spent two weeks on the pediatric pulmonology ward, she knew the sound of asthma when she heard it. The dust and animal dander and cigarette smoke and other pollutants at the fairgrounds had to be hard on asthma and other breathing disorders.

Because his wheezing seemed to be getting worse and she simply couldn’t stand it any longer, she finally turned to him. “Do you have an inhaler?”

He blinked and looked around as though checking to make sure she was talking to him. “Uh—yeah,” he mumbled, smothering another cough.

“Don’t you think you should use it? All the stuff in the air here can’t be good for your breathing.”

He glanced quickly at his friends. “I don’t want to use an inhaler right here in front of everyone. They’d think I was a nerd.”

Kids, she thought with a suppressed sigh. Specifically, male kids. Did he really think it would be cooler to succumb to a full-out asthma attack than to ward it off with his inhaler?

“See that little alleyway between the two games?” she asked, nodding toward her right.

Following her glance, he nodded.

“Duck in there and use your inhaler. My friend and I will stand in front of the opening so no one can see you. Won’t we, Elissa?”

Elissa seemed a little startled, but nodded with a shrug. “Sure. Why not?”

After only a momentary hesitation, the boy agreed.

Standing with their backs turned to the narrow opening, Haley and Elissa waited until they’d heard the boy take a couple of deep hits on his inhaler before moving away. He coughed a couple of times when he rejoined them, but already Haley could hear the wheezing subsiding a little.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, shuffling a sneakered foot against the littered asphalt.

“You’re welcome. I assume you know the warning signs if your asthma is really starting to get out of control?”

He nodded. “I’ll be careful.”

She doubted that, but she’d done all she could—probably more than she should have. “Have a good time.”

He grinned. “I’m going to tell the guys I’ve been hitting on you two hotties.”

She laughed. “If I were ten years younger, I’d take you up on that.”

Grinning, he swaggered toward his pals, who were watching him in open curiosity now. Haley noted that the other boys looked rather impressed—exactly what her asthmatic friend had hoped to accomplish, she thought with a chuckle.

A little disheveled from the wild ride, Ron and James rejoined them then. Ron glanced from Haley to the departing teen. “What have you been up to?”

“Flirting,” she answered with a

smiling look toward Elissa. “We’re certified hotties, you know.”

Elissa actually returned a full smile, which made her look so pretty that Haley could see why James had asked her out.

Ron slung an arm around Haley’s shoulders. “You don’t have to tell me you’re hot. I’ve been aware of it for quite some time.”

Flushing a little in pleasure, she let her speculation about James and Elissa fade to the back of her mind.

Ron would have been perfectly happy to leave the fairgrounds without playing any of the carnival games lining the fairway. He’d nodded cordially to the barkers and game operators as he’d passed, but he had no desire to try to conquer their house-slanted challenges.