It had been maybe eleven or twelve minutes since the first dose. Archie had stopped trembling. And the squeak was back at the end of his breaths in, louder this time, and he started to cough again, the deep barking cough, and then he wasn't coughing, he was pulling, his chest sucking in under his ribs and at the notch of his throat with every breath, which is a thing you never want to see a child do, and the welts that had started to fade on his neck were coming back up, joined by new ones on his stomach and his arms. He said, "Grandma," and it came out as a whisper with no voice in it at all.
Clem said, "Officer, it's wearing off. He needs a second dose. It's in my pouch. She has it."
Sutter turned to Verlene. "Ma'am, I need that bag."
Verlene took a step back. On the footage you can see her heel come down at the edge of the pool deck, by the gate in the fence where the paramedics would come in, and you can see her hold the pouch to her chest with both arms, the way you'd hold a baby or a purse in a bad neighborhood.
"No," she said. "No. She's not putting another needle in him. Look what the first one did. Look at him. He was fine until she touched him."
"Ma'am."
"This is private property. I am the president of this Association. I am his legal guardian for this weekend, I have a signed letter from his parents, and I do not consent. Do you understand me? I do not consent to anybody sticking anything else in my grandson until a real doctor gets here."
"Mrs. Quisenberry," Clem said. "Please. He can't breathe."
That is the moment I came through the pool gate. I'd run from the lot ahead of the paramedics, who were pulling their stretcher and their bags out of the back of the ambulance, and I came through the gate in the black fence and nearly knocked into Verlene from behind, because she was standing in it, standing in the opening, holding my daughter's last dose of epinephrine against her chest while a six-year-old boy fought for air ten feet away.