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Alex crossed his arms over his chest and glared. "Answer the question, Jamie. Where have you been?"

Jamie scowled. "With Micah, okay? We lost track of time, and then I had to wait for the next bus since his mom works nights and had the car."

"And there's no phone at his house?"

"What does it even matter?"

"It matters because you should have been home almost two hours ago. Or at the very least let me know that you were going to be late." Alex wasn't accustomed to being responsible for another person at all, never mind being responsible for a kid—and no matter what Jamie had to say about it, he was very much in that position as long as Jamie was staying with him—and he hadn't expected the worry he'd felt when Jamie hadn't been anywhere in sight when ten and then eleven o'clock had come and gone. When someone was late to the station he saw it from the position of a supervisor, not a…whatever he was right now.

"I can take care of myself," Jamie snapped.

"No one is saying you can't, but I expect you to keep your word which means being in on time. You've got a watch on your wrist and you're more than smart enough to know how to read it."

Jamie's eyes flashed and he opened his mouth to continue the argument.

"I don't want to hear it. You're grounded for a week."

"That's not fair!"

"Do you want to make it two? Did you or did you not know when you were supposed to be back?"

Jamie dropped his eyes and muttered something that Alex chose to interpret as assent.

"And did I or did I not warn you about being on time the last time you were late?" Granted that the last time had only involved a few minutes and Jamie had had the sense to apologize immediately when Alex had called him on it, but it had been fair warning and this evening had been an unpleasant surprise that Alex had no intention of letting go unanswered.

Jamie shrugged.

"Words."

"I guess. But—"

"No buts. You're grounded. Now, go to bed, it's late and you have school tomorrow. And since I know you aren't working tomorrow evening, you will be home as soon as school is over. Clear?"

Jamie shot him another scowl but jerked his head in a nod and then turned and stomped towards his room.

"Why do I feel the need to call my parents and apologize?" Alex said as Jamie shut the door a little harder than he needed to. Given the way that he'd been raised he'd made up most of his rules himself and he still felt bad.

He wasn't sure how he was going to enforce Jamie's grounding, either. He was reasonably certain that Jamie would cooperate up to a point, but he was a teenager and basically guaranteed to push the limits eventually. Since Alex was almost always at either at the station or the hospital until well after the high school got out for the day, he'd have no way of knowing if Jamie came straight home or not. Not to mention that if Jamie did decide to disobey, what was he supposed to do about it? Ground him for longer? Find extra chores for him to do? Alex didn't even have a list of regular chores to give him to start with.

A yawn caught him, and he shook his head. He'd done enough worrying tonight; he'd deal with logistics tomorrow. Or maybe Saturday. Hopefully Jamie would have enough sense not to try him on the first day.

"Do you want the last of mine?" Alex asked, indicating the few pieces of bacon remaining on his plate.

Jamie hesitated. "You're not going to eat them?"

"All yours. I figured we could finish off the package this morning, but there was more left than I realized." Jamie didn't wait for another invitation, and Alex pushed himself to his feet as he finished picking up his empty plate and holding out a hand for Jamie's. "Go get your coat. We'll get the grocery shopping out of the way first."

"Do I have to go?"

"Yes." Alex couldn't say for sure that Jamie had come straight home from school yesterday since he'd had a meeting with a couple members of the city council and hadn't made it home himself until after seven, but he'd at least been in his room by the time that Alex had tapped on his door. It was a start.

Of course, Alex still hadn't been able to come up with a whole lot in the way of chores or anything like that to keep him occupied. He wasn't in the habit of allowing his house to become particularly messy, and it wasn't so large that even a deep clean would take more than an afternoon anyway. Shoveling the driveway might have been something, but the service Alex contracted with for yard work had cleared it after the last major snowfall and the amount that had fallen since wasn't worth worrying about.

He'd finally settled on taking Jamie grocery shopping with him today and then getting him to help him bring some boxes down from the crawlspace above the garage and sort through whatever was in them. He'd put them up there right after he'd moved in and realistically there probably wasn't anything in them that he wanted to keep, but he might as well get the lot of it cleared out while he had an extra set of hands. Tomorrow they could do that deep clean.

The grocery store he liked was reasonably close, and he tore his list in half as they entered and gave half of it to Jamie. "You get this stuff, and then pick three or four meals you like in the frozen aisle and a couple cans of soup." Alex tried to cook at home when he had the time, it was better for both his waist and his wallet, and Jamie was perfectly capable of reheating whatever leftovers were available—that or he just ate sandwiches or cereal—but a few quick hot meals were always good to have on hand.

"Frozen peas?" He made a face.

"You liked them just fine in the stir fry yesterday." And Alex refused to shell that many peas himself. "Most everything you're looking for will be over on that side of the store," he said with a quick wave of his arm. "Meet me in produce when you're done." He'd deal with the other half of the list himself, and that would put them right next to the checkout stands. In and out fast was always his goal with shopping, and having Jamie here would actually help with that.

"Got it."

It was early enough that the store wasn't as crowded as it could have been, although the Christmas decorations were out in full. Alex had to navigate around a ridiculously-sized blow-up reindeer just to enter the dairy aisle, and while that was probably better than having it sitting in front of the meat, he had no idea why it was there at all. Surely people had better places to buy their decorations than at the grocery store.

He had everything on his list within half an hour, and when he made his way back to produce he found Jamie already there. His head was down and he was sniffling, though, and Alex frowned as he approached. "Jamie? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." He sounded stuffy, and when he looked Alex saw that his eyes were red-rimmed.

"Jaim?"

"It's nothing. Really." He swiped at his eyes. "The girl in the elf costume over by the holiday aisle decided that I looked like I needed 'Christmas spirit' and sprayed me full on with peppermint-gingerbread-evergreen-whatever crap before I could get away." He sneezed. "Stupid allergies."

"They shouldn't be spraying anyone with anything without permission," Alex said with a frown in that direction. Jamie wasn't the only person whose allergies wouldn't be able to deal with nonsense like that. Sprayed fragrances were even worse than those damn scented candles, at least right up until the damn scented candles set a tree on fire. "Why don't you go blow your nose and splash some water on your face while I pay? The restrooms are up front by customer service."

Jamie sneezed again and then nodded. "Yeah. Thanks. I hate Christmas."

It only took Alex a minute to transfer the stuff in Jamie's cart to his and pass the now-empty cart off to another shopper, but by the time he picked out the vegetables that he wanted and made it to the registers Jamie was there and looking better. Still sniffling a little, but he didn't hesitate to start grabbing bags, and Alex nodded in thanks. Not only had shopping gone faster with two of them, with two sets of hands there was no need to maneuver the shopping cart through the rapidly crowding lot either. He made a mental note to bring Jamie with him next week too even if Jamie stayed out of trouble.

It didn't take long to get the groceries put away when they got home, and then Alex waved for Jamie to join him in the garage, explaining what he wanted him to do. Jamie nodded agreeably enough and scrambled up the trapdoor ladder as soon as it was down. "Looks like there's half a dozen or so."

More than Alex remembered putting up there, but it had been several years ago. "Just start bringing them down and we'll open them inside." It was warmer there. "And be careful," he warned. "If anything seems too heavy, leave it where it is." He didn't think there was anything that would be, but Jamie didn't carry the same kind of muscle that Tyler or Hank did.

"Okay."

Once Jamie had them down at the garage level Alex's back was cooperating well enough to let him carry them into the house, and he began taking them into the living room and stacking them on the coffee table as Jamie went up for the next. He came back into the garage after the fifth box and found Jamie already back on the concrete with another in his hands.

"This one's not bad. And I think there's just one more up there."

"All right. I'll take this inside; you get the last and close things up?"

"Sure. Want me to put the car back in the garage too?"

"Please." Alex had left it out there after grocery shopping in preparation for this particular chore, and he tucked the latest box under one arm and dug the keys out of his pocket, tossing them over.

When he got inside, he took a seat on the couch and broke the latest box open. This one seemed to support his beliefs that he wasn't going to find anything useful, it all looked like stuff from when he was in school. Not med school, either, half-empty binders from high school and even earlier. He'd never understood why his mother had kept this sort of thing never mind sent them to him; it would have saved everyone time if they'd gone immediately into the dustbin. He'd flipped through the first binder out of idle curiosity and was putting it back in the box when he realized that he hadn't heard Jamie come back in. He pushed himself to his feet with a frown. "Jamie?"

A glance down the hall told him that Jamie wasn't in his room or the bathroom, and Alex walked through the library and towards the garage. He hadn't heard any crashes or anything like that, but he also couldn't recall hearing the car pull back in, either. He couldn't imagine that Jamie would have driven away, but where he might be…maybe he'd found more boxes? Alex couldn't say that he'd done much investigation in the crawl space when he'd moved in so it was possible that there were some from a previous owner up there.

"Jamie did you—" He broke off immediately as he stepped into the garage and found Jamie with one hand braced against the wall, his eyes squeezed shut and his breath coming in short gasps. "What's wrong?"

"A-a-asthma," he gasped. "Caught—caught a—fa-face full—of dust and—and it—"

"Got it," Alex interrupted. "Don't try to talk. Is your inhaler in your room?"

Jamie shook his head quickly. "Used up the last d-dose ea-earl—back in—fall. Just gotta ca-calm down. It'll pa-pass."

It probably would but that was nowhere near a hundred percent certain, and Alex shook his head. "Stop trying to talk. Yes or no, are you allergic to any medications?"

Jamie shook his head.

"Okay. Focus on your breathing. I'll be right back." He didn't collect sample medications at the same rate as most of the other doctors he knew did, probably because he wasn't full time at a practice or the hospital, but he still had several tubs full in his closet and he was almost certain that there were a few rescue inhalers in the lot. It only took a moment to find one of them, and when he returned with it to the garage—it and his phone because if the attack got much worse he'd be calling for an ambulance—he found Jamie still gasping. "Do you know—"

He didn't even need to finish the question as Jamie snatched the inhaler from his hand as soon as he held it out, shaking it to arm it and then biting down on the mouthpiece and depressing the trigger.

"All right, one more," Alex prompted when Jamie lowered it.

"Don't want to—to waste—doses," Jamie said. "It'll—pass."

"It's not a waste, it's the appropriate amount of medication. Take one more," Alex ordered. "If you need another inhaler, you come talk to me and I will get you one. If you ever need another inhaler, you come talk to me."

Jamie did as he said, and a few long minutes later his breathing finally evened out. "I hate it when that happens."

"I can understand that. You said that you breathed in some dust?"

"Yeah, when I shut the trapdoor a whole cloud of it sort of…fell." He waved a hand at the garage floor, but it wasn't so clean that a little more dust stood out in any way. "I was in the way and took a breath at the wrong time." He shrugged. "Usually it's just allergies that kick it off, but I guess this time the dust was enough."

Especially if he'd been primed by whatever he'd been sprayed with at the grocery store earlier, Alex imagined, and he made a mental note to talk to the manager of the store the next time he was there because incidents like this were exactly why you didn't spray that crap at people without their consent. "Okay. If you're feeling a little better, why don't you give me the keys and you can go lie down on the couch for a little bit?"

"I'm fine," Jamie said.

"Breathing isn't something that you play around with. Go on and I'll be there in a few minutes. And keep that inhaler with you." It wasn't uncommon for one asthma attack to flare into another even if it looked like it had passed entirely.

Jamie nodded and handed the keys to Alex, picking up the last box before Alex could object and heading into the house.

Alex pulled the car in and then bypassed the living room and grabbed his bag before joining Jamie on the couch.

"What's that for?" Jamie asked suspiciously.

"I want to get you checked out a little better." He didn't remember asthma being listed on any of the forms that Jamie had filled out when he'd joined the squad, but it was entirely possible that he'd read right past it. "You said that that only happens once in a while?"

"Yeah. It happened more when I was younger, but now it's just a couple times a year at most. And usually it stops on its own after a few minutes."

Jamie shouldn't be waiting for it to stop on its before reaching for an inhaler, but Alex let that go for the time being. "Have you ever taken any medication for it besides using rescue inhalers?"

"No."

"Okay." Alex dug a penlight out of his bag. "Slide over here and let me take a look at your throat." Jamie made a face but did as he said, and Alex was relieved to find that while it looked a little inflamed, it was nothing out of the ordinary for someone who'd just had an asthma attack. He put the penlight away and grabbed his stethoscope. "When was the last time you actually saw a doctor?"

"I don't know. Maybe when I was twelve or thirteen?"

"You've had one inhaler for three years?" That at least agreed with Jamie's assessment that it was very mild asthma, but the medication in whatever inhaler he'd had would have expired well before then.

A quick shrug. "Not exactly. The last doctor I went to gave my foster parents five or six different ones, I think they might have been free samples or something, and I took them all with me when I left and used them up one by one."

They'd still have expired, but especially if they hadn't been opened until necessary, rescue inhalers tended to retain at least some potency. "Why didn't you get new ones? Or at least a new one when the last one was used up?" he asked.

"I tried, but the doctors at the free clinic wouldn't even talk to me without a parent or guardian there."

"Why wasn't one of your foster parents with you?"

Jamie scoffed. "No one was going to take time off work to take me to a clinic, especially since I wasn't gasping for air when I asked." Alex felt his jaw tighten at that, and Jamie must have seen it because he slid a little further back on the couch shaking his head. "It's not a big deal, really. It usually passes pretty quick even without an inhaler."

"Your foster parents should have taken you to a doctor before there was any chance you'd need a new one," he said firmly. "Take your shirt off for a minute, please."

"What? Why? I'm fine."

He indicated the stethoscope. "Because I want to listen to your lungs."

Jamie shook his head and pulled back a little more.

"It'll just take a minute."

"Do I have to take my shirt off?"

"Well, it makes things easier," Alex said, not sure why that would matter. As far as he knew Jamie used the locker rooms at the station the same as the other kids did. "Is there a reason that would be a problem?"

"I just don't want to," he said, looking away.

Alex remembered again those chapters on abuse and wondered if this had anything to do with it. The odds of him getting an answer were basically nonexistant, though, so he simply nodded. "All right, we'll try with it on, then. Scoot back over here and turn."

Jamie looked a little surprised but finally did as he asked.

Fortunately his shirt wasn't particularly thick, and Alex pressed his stethoscope against Jamie's chest. "Deep breath. And again." Not quite as deep as he would have liked, but no more unreasonable than the redness in his throat had been, and he repeated the check with his stethoscope against Jamie's back and got the same results before putting the stethoscope away. "All right. I think you'll be fine, but you keep that inhaler I gave you with you. And if you have another attack, you tell me. Okay?"

"Okay," Jamie agreed quietly.