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He looked away quickly, going shy. A coughing fit caught him again, his little shoulders shaking while his chest spasmed.
I could hear his wheezing from where I stood, even above the low din of the crowd.
“He has asthma?” I asked the woman.
She’d been watching him cough with a frown too. “Yes.”
“Does he have an inhaler? It sounds like he needs it.”
Guilt filled her eyes, swiftly followed by tears. “I can’t afford one. I know that makes me a terrible mother. He had one. But it ran out. I lost my job at the supermarket last month. They said I wasn’t reliable enough because I said no to an extra shift in the evenings. But I have no one to watch the boys at night. I can’t take them with me. Their father isn’t around. If I don’t pay the rent, the landlord will throw us out, but when I do pay the rent there’s no money for anything else. Not food. Not medicine.”
She handed the baby half a banana, but the defeat in her posture was heartbreaking.
Daniel started coughing again.
“He barely eats,” the woman said quietly. “He’s so small for his age. I don’t know what to do.”
A tear slipped down her cheek. She made no move to brush it away, until Daniel looked over at her. Another bout of coughs caught him in their grips.
I shoved my hand in my pocket, brushing over the rope that was still there from my little altercation in Saint View earlier that morning, and pulled out my own inhaler, offering it to her. “Here. Take this.”
She pushed my hand away and shook her head. “I can’t pay you.”
“I have others,” I assured her. “I’ll be fine. He needs to be able to breathe. When you need another, come back in and see me. I’m here often.”
Her eyes glistened, but she took the inhaler from my hand. “Thank you…”
“Zepherin,” I filled in, supplying my name.
“I’m Tammie. Daniel is my eldest. Toby in the highchair. Mathew in the stroller.”
“It was lovely to meet you all. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
She laughed, but it didn’t meet her eyes. “Can you make the supermarket give me my job back? We were doing real well until then. Now I can barely even get an interview. As soon as I say I can’t do nights or weekends because I don’t have anyone to watch the kids, they shut me right down. The last woman I interviewed with told me if I couldn’t be a team player, then I wasn’t what they were searching for. They want the teenagers with no responsibilities who they can pay less for working at all hours of the night and day.”
A muscle ticked in my jaw. Her story triggered a deep-rooted anger that I’d spent a lifetime trying to repress. “Which supermarket?”
“Checkers? They’re on The Strip.”
I knew the place. They were franchised all around the state, and there was one in Providence too.
I pointed to the wrapped-up cookies. “I brought some treats. Enjoy them.”
With that, I left the downtrodden family to their meal. But the anger didn’t lift. It carried on right through the two-hour-long shift while I kept one eye on the people I was serving and one eye on Tammie and her boys. By the time I walked out into the parking lot, I was fuming.
Liam caught up to me, looking much more lawyer-ish now that he’d put on his suit jacket. “You okay? That woman and her kids got to you, huh?”
“They all get to me. All the people who need help.”
“Some more than others, though.”
I nodded in agreement. “The charity is overrun with the homeless. Every night, the beds are full and we have to turn people away. How long until that woman and her children are the ones we have to send back to the streets because we’re full? She already has no money for food or her son’s medicine. It’s a miracle she’s kept a roof over their heads this long without a job.”
“Breaks my heart.”
“Mine too.” A thick feeling of helplessness blanketed me.
Liam seemed just as dejected when he changed the subject. “You going to tell me now what the hell happened to your face? ’Cause you’re black and blue, brother.”
