I said please and thank you.
"Here's what I'd like to do," he said. "I'd like to give you a ride home, Ruthie. Right now. It's no trouble. My truck's right outside. We'll go up, I'll meet your mom, I'll meet your brother, I'll see that everything's okay, and then I'll come right back here and get the insulin myself and bring it up to you. Doctor, would you hold it for ten minutes?"
"Of course," said Neha Kulkarni.
The girl did not move.
"I can't get in a car with you," she said.
"I'm the chief of police, honey."
"My mom said anybody. If anybody asks me to get in a car. She said I don't have to be polite. She said I come straight home."
He looked at her. Something in his chest, the cold thing, shifted a little and became something else. Because that was right. That was exactly what a mother should say. He had spent his entire career wishing more mothers said it.
"Then we'll walk," he said. "I'll walk you across. You can go up first."
"But then you'll go up with me without the insulin," the girl said, "and you'll look around, and you'll come back down for it, and it's eight thirty-nine." She glanced at the clock over the pharmacy counter, a round school clock with a red second hand. "The pharmacy closes at nine. If you're up there asking her questions and something happens with Teddy, or she's throwing up, and it's nine, then it's locked in here till nine tomorrow morning. And she won't have it all night."
"The doctor will wait for us."
"You don't know that."