***

  It’s an overcast day when they leave for Atlanta, sunlight diffused evenly through the uniform grey sheet hanging low above.

  They take Molly’s LeSabre and Sasha lays down in the back until they hit I-95, then Molly climbs in the back to join her. Alex has stayed behind and if anyone asks—which no one will—last he heard from Roy was him and the missus havin’ a few days vacation seein’ the sights in ATL, the aquarium, maybe a tour’a the Coke museum they got there, stuff like that.

  “So I hear you’s a decent shot,” Roy says as he turns down the radio.

  “I… I don’t know…” Sasha looks to the woman redressing her hand.

  “She won’t be winnin’ any sharpshootin’ gold at the Olympics, if that’s what you’re asking,” Molly says with a chuckle. “But she least knows now how a gun feels in her hand, how to load it, chamber it, where the safety is and how it works” —Molly looks up at Sasha as her tone changes to one more serious— “and not to point it at nothin’ she don’t intend to completely destroy if and when the time for that presents itself.”

  Sasha averts her eyes. When Molly had had her hold the gun, all she’d been able to think about was Ethan’s face. What she’d have given to have him in her sights, to watch him beg and plead as she squeezed the trigger.

  Molly had seen the hate on her face too, but rather than begin some sermon on the virtues of forgiveness, or the responsibility that came with wielding such great power; she’d simply guided her to the back yard, set a bottle on the fence post, stood next to her and told her to shoot.

  The deafening bark of the weapon had made it all real. She had flinched immensely at the kickback, almost dropping the gun. Molly had taken it from her and then they’d just sat a while, the woman, ultimately, hadn’t needed hardly any words at all to thoroughly disabuse Sasha of the notion that using a gun for its intended purpose was some easy thing.

  “They’re really loud,” she says. “A lot louder than I thought they’d be.”

  Roy bleets out a laugh. “Yeah, she told me about that! Said she had you shoot a bottle off the post without even wearin’ no earplugs!”

  “I didn’t actually hit the bottle.”

  “Well a’course you didn’t! No one does they first time! You ain’t in a movie, girl. It’s hard to hit a target, ‘specially when you green. Shit, I couldn’t hardly hit a damn thing in basic, DI’s had me runnin’ til I puked. Learnt quick to tighten up my groupings after a couple weeks of that, tell you that much” —he pats his belly— “heh, guess that’s part the reason I was in shape back then, huh? A real looker… right Moll?”

  Sasha sees the flash of a smile tug at the corner of Molly’s mouth before she turns to her. “Ignore him,” she says. “He tends to forget who was, and still is, out of whose league.”

  “Oh believe me I know it.” Roy’s response comes immediately. “First moment I saw you I knew wooing you would take somethin’ drastic. Like, for example, bleedin’ to death in the middle the damn desert. Sometimes I wonder if it was a little overkill…”

  “Idiot,” Molly says as she smiles and shakes her head.

  “Aye, true, but I ain’t the one tried to make this poor girl deaf.”

  “It was just the once, Roy, and now Sasha here knows what to expect, she won’t always just happen to have earplugs in if things go down, she’s gotta be prepared to not be prepared.”

  “Yeah, you tell her that she ough—“

  “Ought never find herself in that situation in the first place? Yes, dear, I did. If she can run, she’ll run. If she can hide, she’ll hide. But good forbid she has to fight, I want her to be able to.”

  “She ain’t gon’ be carrying no gun though, Moll. You oughta showed her—“

  “How to use a taser? Mace? Pepper spray? Didn’t you wonder what the smell out back was when you came home? Said yourself it smelt like someone was burnin’ tires. I swear, Roy, you dumb as a box of rocks sometimes.”

  “Guilty as charged, ma’am.”

  Molly looks to Sasha. “He’s right, hun, soon as you can you oughta get yourself some mace or pepper spray. I’d give you mine but I don’t think they’d let you keep it at the hospital, if you want to try though I’ll—“

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “No, no, it’s okay,” Sasha replies. “I’ll get some when I’m out and back home…”

  “A taser too, girl, matter-of-fact” —Molly pulls a pen and paper out of her bag, scribbles out a number— “this is my number, Roy’s too. Once you get where you’re goin’, if you need help with anything, you call us, okay?”

  “That’s kind, but I don—“

  “Girl,” Molly says, pushing the paper into her left hand and squeezing it closed in her own. “I mean it” —she digs again through her purse, retrieving a wad of crumpled tens and twenties— “Now, I can’t help but notice you ain’t got no I.D., no phone, no money, so I don’t rightly know how you’re plannin’ to get home once you outta the hospital, so you’re gonna take this here cash and use it to get home, and once you is home, you gonna call us and let us know, you understand?”

  “I—I—“

  “So help me, girl” —Molly sighs, and for the briefest of instants Sasha sees the face of a woman beat down by life, frail, fighting the losing fight against a world ever darker— “look… take the money… please. It’s hardly anything. If you really have to you can mail me a damn check someday, okay? Just… just take it, take our numbers, go home, be safe… and let me know when you’re safe, okay?”

  The rest of the drive is uneventful. They stop for gas once in South Carolina, and once more at a rest stop in Rutledge, Georgia to eat a late lunch and redress Sasha’s wound.

  Molly is concerned that Sasha—not being in nearly as bad of shape as they’d found her a week before—might have quite the wait ahead of her. And, despite all of Sasha’s assurances and feigned aplomb, Molly insists that they will wait in the vicinity of the hospital after dropping her off. In fact, they’ll be staying at a motel not five minutes away for the next few days, should she need anything.

  They arrive a few minutes past four, and with the amount of foot traffic outside the ER, Sasha is confident that Molly and Roy in their LeSabre won’t register in anyone’s later recollections, especially because she insists—despite Molly’s protests—on walking in alone. It’s less than a hundred feet to the sliding door under the pavilion, and it’s her hand that’s hurt, not her feet, she’ll have no trouble walking. Molly eventually relents after Sasha promises to call her as soon as she’s able and then promises again, and once more for good measure.

  Walking across the parking lot amidst the crowd she fights the urge to wave back, to smile, to acknowledge the pair in the Buick. She prays that she is well beyond the machinations of whatever and whoever saw her fated to become little more than fodder—but if not she refuses for anyone else to be pulled in with her.

  She is ten feet from the door when the doctor walks up beside her—maybe a nurse, she doesn’t know how one would tell the difference. It’s a man in off-white scrubs, glasses, with a clipboard and pen—doctor enough for her.

  By the time they walk through the door he’s already gotten her name and vitals and directs her to a seat at the corner of the lobby. He is polite and professional, with a warm smile. He goes through some basic preliminaries: checking her pulse, having her follow his finger. She notices the many people in the waiting room, most look like they’ve had to wait here a long time.

  Thank god for pretty privilege, she thinks, watching the throngs bustling in and out: screaming children, an unkempt woman berating an orderly, two police officers escorting a haggard old man into the lobby, a stern looking man in a leather jacket holding an ice pack to his jaw, a janitor mopping a puddle of vomit.

  The doctor, or nurse—she’s still not sure—mentions that she seems rather severely dehydrated and gives her a bottle of water rather than her—gasp—having to stand and walk to the fountain across the room. She takes it and rolls her eyes when he isn’t looking.

  Fuck it, I’ll take the princess treatment. Wonder if MD here’s gonna ask for my number now, or after I wake up from surgery.

  A few minutes later she’s telling him for the third time that she’s here because she hurt her hand. Having not quite worked out what her story will be, she gives vague details, preparing to deflect any prying questions. To her pleasant surprise there aren’t any, the man just nods along and smiles at her. Then she remembers where she is: a hospital, not a fucking police station. She’s not being interrogated by some power-tripping detective in a small room with a one-way mirror on the wall, she’s at a medical facility, in public, safe, surrounded by people who are there to help her. They’re not going to pry into every incongruity of her story, they’re not trying to pinpoint every lie and half-truth.

  She breathes a sigh of relief, and the man tells her that she’s going to be just fine, he’ll lead her down to the room now. She thanks him and starts to rise when suddenly she is overcome by intense vertigo. She sits back down heavily and the man tells her to take a deep breath.

  She feels numb, tingly, extremely relaxed and calm. The man puts a large dark jacket over her and she doesn’t even question from where he pulled it. He grabbed it from off to her right, just out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind. She turns her head lazily to the right, the stern man in the leather jacket is sitting there, staring straight ahead, though for just a second his eyes dart to the side, appraising her. The Stern Man hands the Maybe Nurse Maybe Doctor Man a blond wig and sunglasses.

  Sasha turns away from the Stern Man, and any apprehensions she has regarding him instantly evaporate. Out of sight out of mind.

  She looks back to the Doctor Man, he isn’t smiling anymore, in fact, he’s glancing about—rather conspiratorially, she thinks. He crouches close beside her and faces the clipboard toward her. She can’t make out what he is saying, she’d swear he is just mumbling gibberish, and she thinks nothing of it when he slides the baseball cap over her head.

  The man sitting to her right hands her a pair of large framed sunglasses, she dons them absentmindedly, thinking: sure, why not? It is awful bright in here, how thoughtful of these two.

  Her eyelids feel rather heavy and she giggles just a little as the jacketed man helps her to her feet and through the myriad hallways. As she walks, the man she is vaguely beginning to suspect of not being a doctor or a nurse walks beside them, rambling on about how many pills to take, how often, what to take them with, when to come back in, nothing she can follow with exactitude. The jacketed man all but carries her as he speaks into a cellphone.

  They exit. No more than ten steps into the valet lot, a white van pulls up next to them. Sasha can just make out a woman driving before she is ushered in through the side door. Her world fades to black as the man slides the door shut.

  ***