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A blood pressure cuff hissed around her arm.
“Why don’t we sit you up? You’re looking better. Swelling’s already down.”
The nurse flipped the blanket off of her legs, slowly unwound a bandage.
There were strips of skin torn from her foot, her ankle and calf. Toenails were missing. In their place was raw skin the color of coals.
She flailed her destroyed legs.
“What did you do? What did you do to me?”
This is no hospital.
Another nurse hurried in, held her good hand gently in its cuff.
“Hon, you stop that now. We’re changing your dressing, okay? It’s to help, to get you better. I know you want to get better, see those kids you keep talking about, right?”
She stopped moving. Looked up at the nurses. Both were hiddenbehind their masks and plastic shields. Pinned to their scrubs were photos of what they looked like underneath it all. Smiling faces that resembled these figures not at all.
“What did you do? To my feet?”
“It’s from the frostbite. The doctors removed the dead skin, and debrided the injured areas. It should grow back just fine. Might look a little odd, but it should grow back. Your toenails should regrow, too. That takes time.”
She looked away as they changed the left bandage, then the right.
“I’m sorry if I kicked you.”
“No, dear, I’m all right. You had a shock, that’s all.”
“Where’s the policeman?”
“Oh, he’ll be back.” The nurse’s voice hitched into feigned casualness as she asked, “This all happened during a break-in?”
“Mmm. I went through the snow to get away. Got help.”
“Well, aren’t you brave? Looks like it was a lot to put yourself through.”
“My kids were in the house. He was after them.”
The nurses lifted their hands away from her, as if such a curse might be contagious.
“Was this man who broke in—did you know him?”
They want it to be your fault.
“A stranger,” she said. “Someone I’d only seen once before.”
“Who would do such a thing?”
A monster.
“Just a man.”
“Why’d he do it? Did he take things?”
She felt her children’s hummingbird hearts, closed her eyes, and said, “He tried.”
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