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She began to cry, silent tears slipping down her cheeks. I knew better than to pat her hand in a gesture of comfort. Birds have hair-triggers. You couldn’t invade their space or they half flew, half scrabbled away. You had to talk easy. Focus on getting them to safety. Whatever she’d survived, it had happened very recently. From the way she’d commented about her birthday, I suspected yesterday.
I said, “I’m standing now. I’m going to start walking. Follow me and I’ll get you off the streets. You’ll have thirty days—taken care of, fed, and housed—to decide what you want to be when you grow up,” I flung the thorn.
It pricked, she bristled minutely. “I am grown up.”
“If this is your finished product, you’re in trouble.” I pushed up and stalked off, not slow either. They had to want to come.
“Wait,” she said behind me. “I’m hurt, I can’t walk as fast as you.”
Because she couldn’t see my face, I allowed myself a smile.
* * *
p
I showed her around the flat, emphasizing the many dead bolts on the inside of the door, the food in the pantry, the way you had to jockey the stove knobs to get them to work. I didn’t open the fridge; I’d grab Shazam’s blood on the way out.
She walked woodenly to the bedroom, stood staring blankly at the bed, storms rushing behind her eyes. When bad things happen, you relive them for a while, keep seeing them over and over. Psychiatrists call it “intrusive thoughts” but that makes it sound like they’re infrequent and intrude into “normal” thoughts. There are no normal thoughts in the near aftermath. You’re trapped in a movie theatre that’s playing a horror flick over and over and you can’t escape because somebody locked all the doors and the film’s rolling on every wall.
Unless you get angry enough to break down a door.
Some things aren’t worth analyzing. You leave them behind. Actus me invito factus non est meus actus. Then there are those actions you chose to make that shouldn’t be analyzed either.
If I can’t make them angry—the right way, and there are loads of wrong ones—I invariably lose them.
She had no purse. No money. Her clothes were torn and dirty, her oversized man’s shirt an obvious pilfer, an employee shirt from an out-of-business petrol station with the name “Paddy” emblazoned on the pocket. “You got a phone?” I said.
She nodded and fished it awkwardly from the shirt pocket.
“Put my number in it.” I rattled off the digits and watched her type them in. “If you want to leave the flat, text me. Me or one of my friends will come get you. My goal is to keep you safe and alive until your head clears. Got it?”
“Got it,” she whispered.
“You want anything, text. Do you need a doctor?”
She shook her head. “I’ll heal.”
Her body would. We’d see about the rest. “Your name?”
“Roisin,” she said numbly.
Connection made. “Cool.” I turned to walk away when I felt her hand on my shoulder and turned back to her.
Then she was hugging me, and I thought, Shit, if she touches my head, I might blow her up, so I was even more awkward than I usually am when someone hugs me out of the blue, but I figured it out and sort of patted her comfortingly on the back while trying to keep her away from my neck and head.
She gasped with pain and stumbled away. When she turned her back to me, I saw blood on her shirt, blossoming over her right shoulder blade. A considerable amount.
“You can go now,” she said. Tightly. Not because she was angry but because she was barely holding it together. I wanted to demand she show me her back, determine for myself whether she needed a doctor.
I know what it’s like to have somebody try to zoom in too close to the things I don’t want to talk about.
Still, I wouldn’t be waiting a week to check on her. I’d be there again tomorrow. Morning. With coffee and bandages and the hope a safe night of sleep had calmed her enough that she’d let me take a look.
For now, a parting distraction. “Don’t freak out if a huge…uh, catlike thing with violet eyes and a fat white belly pops in. I mean literally, just appears out of thin air. Don’t throw things at him, and whatever you do, don’t call him fat or even let him know you think he is. He’s super sensitive and emotional, gets weepy. He can turn into a huge sobbing mess on you. Just tell him Dani isn’t staying here right now and he’ll leave.”
Roisin whirled like a jerky puppet who wasn’t pulling her own strings. “Wait, what?”
But I’d already grabbed five pints of blood from the fridge, tossed them in a bag, and was out the door. “Lock up behind me,” I ordered as I closed the door.
