Martha woke in semidarkness. The dark shape was gone. There were no amoebae, no ringing in her ears, just a feeling of weakness and fuzzy disorientation. A flatness. A calm.
She’d been asleep—how long? Hours. Maybe even days. She could see wood planks, timbers overhead. Cobwebs in the rafters. A wedge of blue sky peeked through a gap between the planks. She turned her head and looked to the side. More planking, rough-hewn.
In the center of the wall was a small window, its view to the outside blocked by a plastic roll shade. On the sill were small, irregular objects. Martha blinked. Stones? Maybe seashells.
Next to the window, a rusted metal sign advertising NEHI ORANGE SODA, nailed to the wall sideways. She raised her head slightly. At the far end of the room, a thread of sunlight outlined a rectangular shape. A door.
As she lowered her head against the pillow a slight movement near the rafters caught her eye. A model airplane, single propeller, turned on a string. She shifted her head the other way. Assorted objects lined the room’s exposed framework. Pictures, a turtle shell, an animal skull, a raccoon skin. Some pictures were tacked to the wall. One face she recognized—Malcolm X, with his trademark glasses. She’d done a book report on the civil rights movement in high school. Others looked vaguely familiar—public figures. Another photo showed a man and a boy together. African Americans. They were holding rifles, smiling.
She tried to sit up and survey the rest of the room, but her head began to swim and she lowered herself back down. The cot she was lying on gave a rusty creak. The lumpy mattress smelled of motor oil.
Her mind skipped back, recalled images of events that now seemed as if they’d happened long ago, like a half-remembered childhood nightmare. She probed her last memories—spending the night at Lydia’s house, and the next morning—had it really happened? Please God, no. Let that be a dream.
Her right leg was throbbing, and she could sense a tightness around it. She lifted her head and pulled the sheet aside. Her right leg was wrapped in a beige bandage that was secured with a clip. There was a reddish-brown stain near the center.
She was no longer wearing her shorts, just her underwear. She glanced around the room, feeling vulnerable, wondering where her shorts might be.
Martha lowered her head, tired from the simple act of lifting it up, and listened. No voices, only the birds chattering in the bright daylight that peeked through the wood slats.
Her mouth felt pasty. A plastic cup sat on a table by the bed, next to a kerosene lantern, and she reached for it. She felt a slight sting as she moved her arm. She was startled to see a thin plastic tube taped to her forearm. The tube snaked upward, led to another unlikely object—a bag of clear fluid hanging from a chrome stand. The fluid dripped from the bag. Martha closed her eyes, opened them again. Look away, then look back. The fluid bag was still there. She let her head rest on the pillow and tried to think. How long, how long?
Her mind was numb. She knew there were terrible memories—searing images from her last hours of consciousness—lurking below the surface, but she wasn’t ready to face them yet. And Lenny was back, his pasty visage, his reptilian voice, lurking somewhere at the periphery of her awareness. But the only voice she heard now was that of her own consciousness, stirring like dead leaves. She was in a one-room cabin, somewhere. Someone was taking care of her. For the moment, that was all that mattered.
She took the plastic cup and found that it contained water, as she’d hoped. She brought it to her lips and took a long, refreshing drink, then lay her head back down, tired again. She focused on the wedge of blue sky in the ceiling, closed her eyes, listened to the sounds outside the small windows. The buzz of cicadas, an occasional peal of seagulls. And another sound—a soft lapping. Water, Martha thought, slipping back into sleep. I’m near water.
The next time Martha woke, she was aware of a new sound, a soft puttering. She raised her head and considered getting up, but found her body unwilling to cooperate. The putter got louder, then stopped near the cabin. Then, a bump, a splash, a sound of dragging, a clank of metal.
Martha propped herself up on her elbows and looked toward the front of the room.
Footsteps outside approached and stopped outside the door. There was a tentative knock.
“Who’s there?” she croaked.
She heard the sound of a hasp being unhooked, and the door swung open. A flood of blinding sunlight. Silhouetted there, a dark shape, as tall as the door itself.
Martha started to work her feet toward the edge of the bed, clutching the sheet to her waist.
“Stay there,” a male voice said. “Stay in the bed.”
The shape stepped forward, the door jerked shut on its spring. Martha blinked, her view obscured by a bluish afterimage of the silhouette in the sunlight. The figure moved toward a wooden table, a brown paper bag propped in a muscular forearm. He put the bag on the table and went to the other wall and worked a string to raise a roll-up blind, letting more light into the room. For the first time, Martha got a good look at him. A black man, maybe about her age. No shirt—just a vest made of green camouflage material. An olive-green knit cap was stretched over his head.
“Is that too bright?” he asked, turning toward her. She tried to read his face. Large eyes. A small scar on his cheekbone. Handsome, intense.
“No, it’s fine,” Martha said, blinking. “Who are you?”
“Jarrell,” the young man said. He took a step toward the bed and Martha drew her knees up.
“It’s all right. Relax,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.” He passed by the bed and went to the IV stand and looked at it. He flicked his finger at the clear plastic and then turned the little plastic gear below the bag, causing the drip to slow. He picked up a clipboard on the table next to the bed and wrote something on it. Martha noticed a tattoo on his arm, rendered in black ink—a stylized S that ended in a snake’s head. It was a symbol she had seen somewhere before. In her groggy state, she couldn’t quite place where.
Martha watched him work. Something about the young man himself seemed familiar. How can that be?
“Let me have your arm,” he said. “I need to take your pulse.”
Martha stared at him. She wanted to be home. But where is home?
“It’s all right,” Jarrell said. “I just need to take your pulse.”
Martha nodded slightly, held her arm out to him. He took her thin wrist and held it, placing his big forefinger on her pulse, and looked at his watch. Martha’s arm looked pale as a candle in his dark fingers. A chain with a silver cross at the end dangled from his neck. His bare shoulders looked smooth and powerful.
“You’re a doctor?” Martha asked.
Jarrell said nothing, just dropped her wrist and made another notation on the chart. Then he went to the end of the bed and lifted the sheet off her bandaged leg. He looked at the dressing, lifting her leg and rotating it one way, then the other. Then he went to a long table where he’d placed a paper bag. He pulled out a small plastic container of orange juice and went to the side of her bed. He poked a straw into the box and held it toward her.
“Can you sit up? You need to drink this.”
Martha sat up, and he tucked her pillow behind her. She took the juice and sipped.
“Thank you.”
“How long have you been awake?” He looked again at the clipboard.
“About a half hour, I think. How long was I asleep?”
“About twenty-four hours,” he said.
“All day and all night? Then today is—”
“Wednesday,” he said, making another note on the chart. “You weren’t asleep the whole time. Your blood loss caused you to drift into hypoxia, one of the early stages of shock. Without fluid, it might have progressed.”
She lay back and glanced toward the small window. Palmetto fronds clacked in a light breeze. “Where am I?”
“A secret place.”
Jarrell unpacked the grocery bag, placing items in a battered aluminum cooler.
“Did it really happen?”
“Did what really happen?”
“Lydia—is she really—”
“Yeah. She’s dead.”
Martha felt a tremor somewhere deep within. But she wasn’t ready to deal with this yet. Her mind’s protective system kept a lid on her feelings.
“They think—the police think I did it.”
“Yes.”
“That’s why—” Martha looked down at her bandaged leg.
“The bullet nicked your peroneal artery. So you lost a lot of blood.”
“But I didn’t—it wasn’t—”
He came over to the bed and removed the cushion from behind her head. “The bullet’s gone. I removed it. You’ve got to rest.”
“What time is it?”
“Ten A.M.”
Martha mentally traced back through the last night she could remember taking her meds. Lydia’s house. Nighttime. She had already missed at least a full day’s dosage.
“I’m on medication.”
He turned toward her. “What?”
“I have a prescription. I take drugs. I have to take them every day. Medicinal drugs. I have to take them.”
“Prescription?”
“Yes.”
“What for?”
Martha hesitated. “It’s private. But it’s very important. I have to get my pill-minder….”
She swung her legs toward the edge of the bed.
“Oh no you don’t.” Jarrell stepped over to the cot and pushed her legs back onto the bed. He pulled the sheet back over her. “You’re not ready to get up yet. You’ll break the clot.”
“You don’t understand. I have to…you’ll have to get it for me.”
“What kind of medicine is it? What is your condition?”
“It’s private.”
“You have to tell me. Is your condition life-threatening?”
“No.”
“Where’s the medicine?”
“I left it back there. At Lydia’s house.”
Jarrell turned toward her and leaned over the bed. He laid one powerful hand on her shoulder. He pushed her down, causing the bedsprings to creak. His eyes were wide and shone like obsidian. Martha gasped.
“Okay, we need to understand something here,” he said. “You and I both are in a world of shit. Personally, I intend to get myself out of this shit. In order for that to happen, you’re going to have to cooperate with me. Keeping secrets is just not going to work. The last place we are going to go is anywhere near that house. Not anytime soon. You get where I’m coming from?”
“But you don’t understand….” Martha could hear her voice trembling. “I’ve got to have my meds.”
“Now, how critical is it? Will you die? Will you have seizures?”
“I won’t die.”
“That’s good. Because if you can live without it, you will. Nobody is going anywhere. Do I need to tie you down to this bed?”
He glared at her, eyes burning. Martha shook her head.
“Good. I don’t want to do that, but if I have to, I will.”
Jarrell stepped away, going back to his business. Martha propped herself up on her elbows. Two doses. It’s the first time she had skipped her medication at all, since the hospitalization. And she promised Vince she would never stop. Promised.
“How long am I going to be here?” Martha asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Without my medications, there might be problems.”
“Problems? There might be problems.” He laughed bitterly.
Martha laid her head down again. The simple act of trying to get up had exhausted her. After a long moment, she spoke again, softly.
“By the way, my name is Martha.”
She heard the cabin door snap shut, and realized there was no longer anyone there to answer.