To Build a Home

Chapter 26

On the day of Isaac's fourth birthday party, the sky was a faint blue spotted with low, wispy clouds, the air warm as California hovered on the brink between spring and summer. Stiles was finishing up progress reports in his office just before lunch, an item on his lengthy TO DO list that he wished didn't exist. To distract himself, he retraced the night he and Derek had started discussing Isaac's party, his pen hovering over the comments section of one report as he let himself get lost in the memory.

"What about one of those bouncy house places?" Stiles had asked as he clicked around the local Yellow Pages website for a space to host Isaac's birthday party.

"So that Isaac can pick up the flu or some kind of infection?" Derek asked, raising an eyebrow over his laptop screen across the table. "Yeah, no," he stated with a definitive tone, shaking his head as he continued to pour over the massive number of emails that had flooded his computer's mail client earlier in the day.

"It'll be May by then; I highly doubt we'll have to worry about him getting sick."

"Those places don't even let you bring your own cake or snacks," Derek argued, still invested in typing a response to a colleague. "We're not taking any chances on that front."

"He's only going to turn four once, Derek," Stiles countered, frustrated that the search had yielded mostly expensive party planning services that there was no way they could afford. "And it's his first birthday with us, so I want it to be special."

"Why can't we just do a party here?"

"Because none of his classmates had their parties at home," Stiles explained before adding, "And if there's a planned activity we don't have to keep a bunch of four year olds occupied for three straight hours."

"Can't they just play in the backyard, have cake, and leave?"

"That is the lamest fourth birthday party I have ever heard of!" Stiles protested.

"Do you remember your fourth birthday?"

"No, but that doesn't mean Isaac won't remember this one. Plus, my dad is going to take a million pictures, so whatever we plan has to be something he won't be embarrassed about when he's fifteen and we're showing his prom date baby pictures."

Stiles was laughing softly to himself as he remembered that last line when Erica barged in without knocking, her blonde curls swaying as she righted herself beside his desk, panting between panicked sentences. "Isaac says he has elephants in his chest! He's making that weird sound when he breathes."

He was out of his chair instantly, rushing up the stairs with Erica at his heels; they'd coined the term "elephants" to help Isaac describe how tight his chest was feeling after his recent stay in the hospital when he'd found and loved the book Elmer the Patchwork Elephant.

"We was just...playing...police," Isaac wheezed from his place on his bedroom carpet, the plastic sheriff badge that Gampa had gotten him clutched beneath one hand, walkie talkie in the other. "And then...the elephants...gotted in my chest." The child was on the verge of tears, each inhale a sort of hiccup that Stiles feared would turn into sobs and make his breathing worse.

"Hey, it's okay, Ize," Stiles said softly as he pulled his son into his arms and then reached for the spacer and rescue inhaler from his top dresser drawer. "We'll just take a few puffs and see how it goes, alright?"

Isaac nodded with a series of tight coughs as Stiles shook the canister and connected the two devices, seating them in the rocking chair and resting the mask over his son's mouth and nose a moment later. "Two breaths," he coached after releasing a puff into the chamber, Isaac doing as he was told once more.