Glynis took a step toward me. Then another. She held the phone out at arm's length, as though it were hot, and I took it, and the second it left her hand she put both her palms over her mouth.
"I have it back," I said. "Keturah, she deleted a video. The delivery. Just now."
"Understood. I'll note that for the responding officers. Mireya, how's his breathing?"
"Worse. Rate thirty-four. Lips are dusky. He's tiring."
"They're turning in now. Do you hear them?"
I did. The sirens had been there for a while under everything, I think, the way they always are in a city, but now they were close, coming down Ocotillo, two different pitches braided together.
Everett had a hand out. He was reaching, not for me, for Glynis, and she saw it and fell back down on her knees beside him and took it in both of hers.
"Glyn," he said, between coughs, so quietly I almost didn't catch it. "I did it right. I did it like you said."
"I know you did, honey," she said. "I know. I know you did."
The fire engine came first, Engine 214, pulling straight down the access road with its air horn going, and then an ambulance behind it, and then a second engine that parked out on Ocotillo and started laying out hose, which I learned later was for decontamination, not for any fire. A firefighter in turnout pants and a T-shirt came running with an oxygen bag, and I gave my report in about fifteen seconds, the way I'd give it to a doctor walking into a trauma bay: seventy-one-year-old male, chlorine gas exposure, probable acid-hypochlorite reaction, approximately twelve minutes since exposure, rate thirty-four, wheezing in all fields by ear, no known history, wife is here and can give you meds. He nodded once, looked at my scrubs and my hospital badge clipped to the pocket, and said, "You from Regional?"
"Respiratory."