AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She tried to take a step. Her legs went bendy.
The neighbor reached out to support her. The phone clattered to the floor.
“Little help here?” he said to his wife, grimacing.
The woman hurried from her post at the window and helped sit her down.
“I don’t see anything out there, okay?” the woman told her. “No smoke, fire, nobody following you, all right?”
She sagged against the wall. The woman handed her the mug, and she drank until it was empty.
So warm it burned.
You are alive. This is real.
“Hey.” The woman snapped fingers in front of her face. “Hey! I don’t think you should fall asleep.”
“Hay is for horses,” she scolded in her grandmother’s voice.
The neighbor picked the phone up again.
“Yeah, still here, sorry. Dropped the phone. She’s losing it. Trying to get out into the snow to get her kids. Hysterical, you know?”
“WebMD says we’re supposed to get you warm,” the woman said. “At least let me cover your feet.”
She nodded.Slosh, slosh, went the water in her head.
The woman briefly hesitated before touching her torn, dappled skin, then wrapped a beach towel around her feet, pink and orange Hawaiian flowers.
She looked around at the white tiles, white walls, white faces. The red blood turning brown.
“Is this a hospital?” she asked the woman wrapping something around her feet.
“No,” said the woman. “We’re your neighbors. You came to us for help.”
“No,” she sighed. “I don’t know you. I don’t know you atall.”
19
The man and woman were turning red-blue-red-blue, colored lights flashing through the windows. She heard excited voices, saw hands flapping like birds. She sipped her refilled mug, and the warmth of the drink felt impossibly beautiful.
“Andthenshe said he’d followed her, but we didn’t see anything.”
“Andthenshe said there was smoke, but we can’t see any smoke.”
“She said her children were hiding, that she’d hidden them.”
“She wouldn’t let us take off that coat even though it’s wet. Wouldn’t let us help her. She’s probably hypothermic.”
“They said on the phone you’d been to her house before.”
“Do you see? Doesn’t it look like someone hit her in the face? Her eye all swollen?”
“Maybe it was her husband. Isn’t it always the husband?”
“It wasn’t her husband,” a new voice said. She turned her head slightly to see a policeman. He squatted down next to her.
“You okay, ma’am? How are you feeling?”
