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She started to writhe again, to pull the softness of the restraints into pain. And then there was a face hidden by a mask disappearing into her eyelids.
—
The next time she swam up to consciousness, she stayed still. She could feel that she was badly injured. Vaguely remembered the word “surgery.” The word “fracture.” She hit the nurse call button, and when someone arrived, she rasped out, “It hurts.”
“All right, hon, you just press here. See this little device I’m putting in your hand?”
She pressed a round, red button, and there was a swell through one of the lines. It wasn’t relief, exactly, but a rolling carelessness that made the pain bother her a little less.
“When can I leave?”
“You’ve got a bit of a road ahead of you, hon. But you’re doing great. Already talking, already getting it together, I can tell. The main thing is to rest.”
The hospital never got dark. Day and night were all mixed together. Days, or hours, later, she asked a different nurse, “How long have I been here?”
“A little under forty-eight hours.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
The nurse cocked her head. Her expression was hidden behind a mask and face shield. But her voice was full of curiosity.
“It says here you got hurt in a home invasion?”
That’s it, that’s what I need to tell them. I need to tell them about the Corner.
“Can you—can you get the police? I need to tell them who it was.”
“Who was it?” the nurse asked. “Who did this to you?”
She shook her head, couldn’t quite pull her wiggling thoughts out of the sucking drain of her cracked head.
Remember, remember. Don’t forget.
—
The sergeant was back in the chair next to the bed. Again he stared at the muted TV mounted in the corner. Again she tried to cover herself with the blanket, but this time couldn’t move her arms to do it, wrists quietly rattling in their cuffs. The thinness of the hospital gown, the grip of her restraints, made her feel simultaneously exposed and suffocated.
The sergeant’s fist clutched wilting yellow flowers.
“For me?” she said.
“Oh! Huh? These? Yeah.” He set the flowers on the table next to her bed.
The sergeant didn’t seem to know where to look, and neither did she. She resisted pressing the red button, afraid she’d fall asleep again with the floating feeling the medication brought. Her eye itched horribly, bandaged with gauze that wrapped around her head, matting her hair.
In her new voice, scratched and aged, she asked, “My kids…are they safe?”
“Yes.”
“The Cor—sorry, the man—he might look for my daughter. He might—”
“Ma’am, please, calm down,” the sergeant said. “Your children are safe. There’s no one after them.”
“But he, the man who broke in, he was looking for my daughter. How can you know she’s safe?”
The sergeant sighed heavily, and she saw herself the way he must. One eye wild with fear, the other bruised and broken. Shackled to the bed. Her words scraping and slurred.
