Part 5 – The Judge’s Ruling and Blood on the Steps
The courthouse had the smell of raincoats and nerves. Our binder felt heavier than it did last night, like the papers had absorbed our sleep. Dad wore his leather jacket over a clean button-down; the cannula looped behind his ears like a fishing line back to shore. Mara stood by the window, arms folded across a blazer I’d never seen her wear. She didn’t look at me. Nurse Kenna set her tote on a bench and pulled out a blood pressure cuff like a talisman. Bear and Sparrow took up space the way good oak furniture does—solid, unembarrassed. Officer Hale arrived in uniform, hat under his arm, the calm you wish came standard with every badge.
“Price v. Price,” the bailiff called. “Petition for temporary guardianship and request to extend TRO.”
We filed in. The judge—Alvarez—had a face like someone who has heard every kind of story and still expects the truth. She glanced at the stack of filings, at us, at my father.
“Good morning,” she said. “This isn’t about whether motorcycles are romantic. It’s about capacity, risk, and dignity. Ms. Reeves, you’re up.”
Mara’s attorney stood. Crisp posture, efficient vowels. “Your Honor, Mr. Raymond Price is seventy-four, legally visually impaired, COPD on continuous oxygen. Last week, respondents transported him by motorcycle sidecar at 3 a.m. We have video. We also have a provider letter threatening to withdraw equipment due to hazardous use. Petitioner seeks temporary guardianship and a continued injunction prohibiting transport by open vehicle.”
Judge Alvarez steepled her fingers. “Thank you. Mr. Price?” She meant me.
I stood. “Good morning, Your Honor. We submitted a Safety Plan.” I lifted the binder like a catechism. “Sidecar modifications. Route restrictions. Stop intervals. Saturation thresholds. A letter from his pulmonologist outlining parameters.”
Alvarez nodded. “I read it. I also read a dozen affidavits from the internet. I am not admitting hashtags into evidence.” A ripple of laughter broke and died. “Capacity is about understanding consequences and making choices. Does Mr. Price understand the risks?”
Kenna rose before I could answer. “Your Honor, I’m his home health nurse.” She spoke like she writes: precise, human. “We reviewed risks. He can recite them. He helped decide stop criteria. He can verbalize when he is scared. He signed informed consent witnessed by me.”
“Is his competence impaired?” the judge asked.
“No, Your Honor,” Kenna said. “His eyesight is limited. His insight is not.”
Ms. Reeves cleared her throat. “If the Court pleases, competence today does not guarantee competence mid-ride, mid-panic. Additionally, we have new clinical information. An arterial blood gas yesterday shows rising CO₂ retention. The window for safety is narrowing.”
Alvarez looked at me. “Do you have a response?”
I swallowed. “His doctor called me. She didn’t say ‘don’t.’ She said ‘do it well’ and ‘don’t wait six months for perfect.’”
“Speaking of doctors,” the judge said, “is Dr. Mendez available?”
A clerk tapped a tablet and a courtroom monitor flickered to a video call. Dr. Mendez’s face appeared, hair still damp from a morning that had already started. “Your Honor.”
“You wrote the parameters,” Alvarez said. “Do you stand by them?”
“I do,” Dr. Mendez said. “They are not a blank check. They are a fence. Forty-five miles per hour. Back roads. Stop every thirty minutes. Abort criteria. No rides on bad air quality days. I also recommend law enforcement notification and a driver escort the first several rides. If the plan is followed, the risk is real but managed. If it isn’t, I would advise against riding at all.”
Ms. Reeves pounced. “Doctor, do you endorse transport by motorcycle for oxygen-dependent patients?”
“I endorse honoring competent wishes within reason and reality,” Dr. Mendez said. “A bed is safer than a sidewalk; a sidewalk is safer than a shower. If safety alone ruled, we would never leave our rooms.”
Alvarez tilted her head. “Officer Hale?”
Hale stood. “Ma’am, I encountered the group last week. They were cooperative. They had a route and a consent binder. We requested a medic who found Mr. Price stable. I later shadowed a supervised demonstration ride. No violations. Speeds under posted. Frequent stops. When the oximeter alarmed, they aborted without debate. If the Court allows limited rides, I recommend dispatch notification and, if available, a patrol unit to shadow at launch or return. Not mandatory, but helpful.”
From the second row, a man in a polo with our oxygen provider’s logo raised his hand halfway; Ms. Reeves gestured him forward. “Your Honor, Mr. Caldwell for Allied Respiratory. Our equipment is not rated for open-air vehicular vibration. We are bound by manufacturer warranties and liability limitations. We cannot be compelled to support hazardous use.”
“Can you be compelled to maintain medically necessary equipment at home and provide tanks that go in a car?” Alvarez asked.
“Yes,” Caldwell said, reluctant but honest. “We will maintain stationary units and cylinders.”
“Good,” Alvarez said. “You are not conscripted into their ride. You are obligated to his lungs.”
Mara stood, not waiting for permission but earning it. “Your Honor, I’m not trying to be the villain in a movie. I’m trying to keep my father alive long enough for him to change his mind. He used to take me to school on a bike; I know the wind he loves. But last week I watched a video where he could have died. I will not bury him because we all got sentimental.”
I turned to my sister. “We’re not building a movie,” I said, and hated the tremor, “we’re building a plan.”
Alvarez looked at my father. “Mr. Price, will you stand?”
Bear and Sparrow eased him up. My father faced the sound of the judge’s voice, not her bench. His hands found the rail on the counsel table and stayed there—steadying, not clinging.
“Mr. Price,” Alvarez said, “tell me in your own words what you’re asking for.”
“I’m asking you to let me be a person while I still am one,” he said. “I know the risks. I know I’m not who I was. But when my friends rolled up at 3 a.m., I remembered a man I liked better than the patient in the chair. I’d like to ride with him a little longer. I promise to stop when it’s time. I promise to say when I’m scared.”
The courtroom did the thing rooms do when people tell the truth: it leaned closer.
Alvarez leaned back, thinking. “No one leaves this room with everything they want,” she said finally. “Here is my ruling.”
She spoke slowly, as if building the order into existence with caution and care.
“Temporary guardianship is denied at this time. The temporary restraining order is modified, not extended as written. The Court authorizes limited, scheduled rides under the submitted Safety Plan as amended today: speed limit forty-five miles per hour; back roads only; no rides on designated poor air quality days; stops every thirty minutes with documented pulse and oxygen saturation; abort below ninety percent saturation or upon new chest pain, confusion, or cough that does not resolve; law enforcement notification prior to departure; a chase vehicle with spare oxygen; helmets and high-visibility gear for all riders.”
She held up a finger. “Additionally: Mr. Price’s pulmonologist retains veto power on any day due to clinical status. Allied Respiratory shall maintain stationary and portable equipment for home use and provide cylinders for transport by car to staging areas; they are not required to support open-air rides. A thirty-day review is set. If compliance is documented and there are no incidents, we revisit. If this plan is not followed, I will revisit guardianship.”
Her gaze softened, not her voice. “I am not authorizing romance. I am authorizing responsibility. Do not make me regret it.”
The gavel’s tap was more punctuation than thunder. People exhaled. Mara closed her eyes. Hale’s shoulders loosened. Bear’s jaw unclenched. Sparrow scribbled the conditions like a man writing down coordinates he’d use again.
In the hallway, the air tasted like relief and copier dust. A reporter hovered. Hale moved to angle his body just so and the reporter drifted away like a leaf off a hood.
A woman in scrubs caught my sleeve. “My dad died in a facility,” she said, soft. “Thank you for letting yours smell autumn.”
“Thank the judge,” I said, because credit is a ladder and we’d all just climbed.
Kenna wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Dad’s arm right there by the elevator. “One measurement,” she murmured, and he obeyed like a man who understands the price of permission. Numbers looked friendly. She smiled.
We eased toward the front steps. The sky was the color of steel just before it brightens. Paper crackled in my pocket: stamped copies of an order that felt like a truce with the universe.
On the second step, Dad stopped. A cough took him—dry first, then heavy. He pressed the bandana to his mouth, the old red one he kept because my mother had cut quilt squares from the same pattern.
When he lowered it, there was color where there shouldn’t be.
Kenna’s face changed in a way that made the ground tilt. “That’s new,” she said, calm like a surgeon and scared like a daughter. “Sit. Now.”
Bear and Sparrow had him under the elbows before I could think. Hale’s radio was in his hand without being obvious. The hallway reporter turned and aimed a camera like a bird spotting motion.
“No,” I said, more to the day than the lens.
Dad took a thin breath. He found my sleeve and pinched it, the way he used to when he wanted me to listen more than speak.
“Don’t pull the plug on me,” he said, voice a rasp with a laugh stitched through it. “Not yet.”
Kenna leaned close, counting under her breath, watching the numbers on the portable oximeter climb, stall, climb. The bandana, crumpled in my fist, looked like a flag you lower when the game stops being a game.
Out on the street, a siren began somewhere far enough away to still be theoretical.
Our brand-new order pressed against my ribs from the inside pocket. The ink was still damp. The future had just gotten narrower and somehow more urgent. I didn’t know whether to pray or to negotiate.
“Okay,” Kenna said finally, her voice composed back into steel and steadiness. “We go slow. We go home. We call Mendez. We breathe.”
Dad nodded, eyes closed, lashes white as winter. “And then?” he asked.
“And then,” I said, because a promise is a map, “we plan the first ride on paper like it might be the last in real life.”
The siren grew louder. The reporter lifted her camera. Mara’s phone buzzed in her hand. Hale stepped down to the curb to wave in a world we could not control.
I closed my fingers around the bandana and tasted copper in the back of my throat that wasn’t mine, and Part Five of our story ended on the courthouse steps with permission in my pocket and blood on my palm.
Part 6 – A Growing Convoy, Red Flag Warnings
The paramedics checked him on the courthouse steps and found the numbers that say “not yet.” Kenna rode with us home, one palm on the portable tank like she could keep the oxygen from spilling out with sheer will. Dr. Mendez called as soon as we got him in the recliner.
“Bright red or rust?” she asked.
“Rust,” Kenna answered into speakerphone. “Streaks, not clots. Lungs sound coarse but consistent with baseline.”
Mendez exhaled. “Probably fragile airway from coughing and dry air. No ride today. Humidify the line, inhaler per plan, rest. If it recurs with clots or he spikes a fever, ER. Otherwise, we reassess tomorrow afternoon.”
My father lifted the bandana with the faint stain and shrugged. “I’ve bled on worse days,” he said. “Once bled on a carburetor and the bike ran better.”
Mendez ignored that. “Mr. Price, the court gave you a gift today. Treat it like a glass you don’t set near the edge of the table. Jordan, I’ll call in a short steroid burst. Low dose. Start tonight.”
We did what obedient people do when they’re trying to be brave: we followed directions. We ran the humidifier, counted puffs, watched the oximeter’s tiny green heart like it could tell the future. The baby monitor showed him sleeping—actual sleeping, not that tense half-doze where the body stands guard.
By morning, he ate toast with honey and asked for eggs. The bandana stayed red only where it started. At noon, Dr. Mendez called back.
“Numbers?”
“Ninety-three on two liters at rest,” Kenna said, reading the meter like prayer. “No fever. Cough nonproductive.”
“Your window is still open,” Mendez said. “Smaller. But open.”
We texted Hale and Bear. Demo ride was yesterday. Today is a scheduled, supervised ride under order. Hale replied with a thumbs-up and then actual words: I’ll notify dispatch. I can be there for launch and return. No lights unless needed.
We staged at the church lot again because it felt like neutral ground where ordinary miracles were allowed. By the time we rolled the sidecar into position, people had begun to appear the way birds do when you set down seed. A school bus eased past and the driver—a woman with tired kindness in her cheeks—tapped the horn twice and lifted a hand. The mail carrier set two packages on the hood of her truck and walked over with a thermos. “I brought tea,” she said. “For after. It tastes like lemons and courage.”
My father wore his jacket and the thin smile of someone trying not to show his breath costs him. Sparrow went methodically down the checklist. Tank pressure. Cannula secure. Inhaler accessible. Belt double-checked. The binder sat open on the hood of my car like scripture.
“Where are we headed?” Dad asked.
“Loop to the lake and back,” Bear said. “Same as the demo. Thirty on the straights, lower on the curves.”
“Sounds like church,” Dad said.
Hale stood with his thumbs on his utility belt, not trying to own the space, just reassuring it. He handed me a small laminated card. Pre-ride call: Time / Route / Unit. Post-ride call: Clear. “You call this in,” he said. “Dispatch knows now. Less chance of a ‘kidnapping’ call becoming a whole thing.”
Mara’s SUV pulled in and idled. She got out with a canvas bag and a pair of sunglasses she didn’t bother to take off. She didn’t look like a villain. She looked like someone who hadn’t slept since the judge said “denied” and the bandana said “not yet.”
“I brought snacks,” she said, dropping the bag on my passenger seat. “Gels for quick carbs. Extra cannulas. Wipes. Tissues. A… little bottle of hand sanitizer shaped like a cactus because that’s what they had at the checkout.”
“Thank you,” I said, two words we’d both learned to say like a bridge.
She stood beside the sidecar and touched the rail with three fingers. “I hate this,” she said quietly. “And I hate me for hating this.”
My father reached for her hand. She let him have it. “Sometimes love is a punch in the nose,” he said. “Sometimes it’s a helmet. Today it’s both.”
We launched at nine-oh-six. Hale rolled ahead to the intersection, waited, then let us pass him, then eased in behind like a shadow with a heartbeat. The convoy was tiny—three bikes, one cruiser, my car. But a block into Maple, it wasn’t tiny anymore.
A landscaping truck tucked in behind me for a dozen houses, hazard lights blinking. At the stop sign by the old library, a woman in scrubs lifted her phone, then lowered it and lifted her hand instead. On Birch, a teenager in a beanie kicked his scooter onto the sidewalk and fell in step, filming for six seconds, then just… watching.
We made the first stop in the gravel turnout where the county keeps a pile of sand for winter. Sparrow called the number. Ninety-two. Pulse seventy-eight. Lips pink. “How’s the world?” he asked.
“Smells like somebody’s baking something with cinnamon,” Dad said. “And the sky tastes like a nail in a good way.”
A minivan pulled in and a man my age got out, kid on his hip. He held up a packet of seeds like an offering. Black-eyed Susan. “My mom planted these at my dad’s grave,” he said. “He was a mechanic. He loved anything that bloomed without fuss. Plant some when you get where you’re going.”
Bear slid the packet into the map pocket on Dad’s jacket. “We will,” he said. “Thank you.”
The second leg was fields and a red barn with paint the color of a stop sign. A white horse watched us like we were television. The road curved and the speed readout on my dash never broke thirty. The whole time, Kenna’s voice kept steadiness in my head: stop every thirty, abort at ninety, breathe, breathe.
At the county park, the lake lay flat as a prayer rug. A boy in a wheelchair with a Spiderman blanket rolled close and stared with concentration. His mom asked with her eyes; I nodded. Bear cut his engine. The boy placed his palm on the sidecar like he was blessing it. My father reached out, found small fingers, squeezed.
“You like to go fast?” Dad asked.
“I like to go,” the boy said.
“Me too,” Dad said.
We turned back. Somewhere between the pumpkin patch and the feed store, a camera crew materialized like fog. Hale slid out of the line, spoke to them. They nodded, stayed on the shoulder, filmed from a distance like respectful animals.
At Lena’s Diner, Tasha came out with two hand pies in a paper bag. “Apple and apology,” she said to me. “For thinking you were crazy before I thought you were brave. Or the other way around. I’m not sure.” She tucked something else into the bag. A second napkin. I found an old photo of your mom teaching me stick. It’s yours if you want it. —T.
Dad ate two bites of pie and sighed like a man who remembers what butter does to grief.
On the way back into town, we passed the school while recess was exploding. Kids lined the fence, waving like wheat in a storm. A teacher with a whistle around her neck put two fingers to her lips and whistled the kind of joy only whistle-makers know. Dad lifted his hand, palm out, and the kids mimicked the motion like a blessing.
The oximeter beeped once at ninety. Sparrow gave the shoulder squeeze. We pulled into a 7-Eleven lot so smooth it felt choreographed. Kenna bumped the flow to three-point-five for a minute. Ninety-one. Ninety-three. We waited. We didn’t cheat. A man with a lottery ticket paused, looked at the cannula, the helmet, the binder, and said, “Seems like you folks are gambling, too.” He said it without malice.
“We are,” I said. “We’re trying to count the cards.”
At noon-fifteen, we rolled back into the church lot. Hale took off his cap and scratched his head, which I was starting to understand is officer-speak for “I feel feelings.” He called dispatch: “Unit clear. Ride complete.” He gave me a nod that felt like a certificate I could hang on a wall.
We were taking the post-ride photo for the binder—Dad in the sidecar, pulse log held up like a scoreboard—when every phone in every pocket and cupholder screamed at once. That ugly government sound. Emergency Alert. We all looked down in the same instant.
RED FLAG WARNING. Wildfire conditions. Kestrel Ridge area under advisory. Possible road closures. Air Quality may be UNHEALTHY FOR SENSITIVE GROUPS. Avoid outdoor exertion.
The words swam for a second before they sharpened. Kestrel. Ridge. Road closures. Air Quality. The judge’s order ran across my brain like a ticker: No rides on designated poor air quality days. The thing we had all been pointing toward—Kestrel Point, the place where my parents were young and the world said yes—had just been put behind glass.
Bear whistled low, a mechanic hearing a new noise. Sparrow looked west, where the horizon had turned the wrong color. Hale’s radio muttered, units spinning to some other problem with a common root. Kenna’s face went still in the way trained people go still in order to think.
My father tilted his head like he could hear the mountain calling from here. “What’s that sound?” he asked.
“Wind,” I said, because it was, and also because it wasn’t.
Mara’s phone lit with a news alert. She read aloud without ornament. “County will close Kestrel Road if winds shift. AQI currently 132 in the basin, rising. Advises older adults and those with lung disease to remain indoors.”
Dad smiled, small and lopsided, like a man who has been told there will be weather. “We can’t stop the wind,” he said. “We can point our faces into it.”
I looked at the alert again. Another ping. Kestrel Pass: Temporary closure possible within 24–48 hours.
Our map, so carefully drawn, had just sprouted a tear down the middle. The window Dr. Mendez warned about wasn’t just narrowing from inside his chest; the world itself was pulling it smaller from the edges.
Hale lifted his radio. “I’ll see what I can find out about closures,” he said to no one and to all of us. “And about detours.”
Kenna straightened the blanket over Dad’s legs with the same precision she used on our plan. “No rides on bad-air days,” she repeated, because the rule was also a promise, and promises keep your friends alive.
Bear looked at me. “We can get him to the base in a car,” he said. “If the road opens, we go. If it doesn’t, we turn the world he wants into words right there at the barricade.”
The seeds in Dad’s pocket made a soft sound when he patted them. Black-eyed Susan, waiting for soil that might not be where we’d planned.
I felt my phone buzz again—Dr. Mendez this time. AQI climbing. Hold tomorrow. Call me at 7 a.m. Then, as if she knew the shape of my fear: Don’t sprint. Pace. We’ll get him there or we’ll bring there to him.
I looked west. The sky wore a bruise. The church bell chimed noon like a metronome for hope.
“Okay,” I said to all of it—the alert, the plan, the mountain, my father’s lungs, my sister’s fear. “We adapt.”
Dad reached for my sleeve and found it. “That’s my boy,” he said. “Always could fix a thing that wasn’t built to be fixed.”
But when we broke for home, the wind changed and I smelled smoke, and Part Six ended with our band of careful people facing a mountain that might be closing its doors.
