Chapter 2 The Woman in the Road

Angela By the time I reach the end of the street, my cheek has stopped burning, but everything else has somehow got worse. I keep walking because stopping would require a plan, and I currently have none. My phone is in my hand, battery at thirty-eight percent, and I realize with fresh irritation that my charger is still plugged into the wall beside my bed. It is not even noon yet, and I am already homeless, unemployed, and one dead phone away from becoming completely unreachable. The thought almost makes me laugh, but my throat is too tight for that. I wipe my face with the back of my hand and keep moving. Verena’s voice keeps replaying in my head, along with the slap and the way Mr. Jones looked at me as though I was already something he had paid for. I should have grabbed my documents. I should have taken Dad’s photograph from my bedside table and Mum’s silver locket from the drawer. I decide to turn at the next corner because going straight would take me toward the bus station, and I have no idea what I would do once I got there. A sudden, deafening horn blast beside me. I turn my head and, for one horrible second, see nothing except the front of a dark sedan coming straight at me. The driver jerks the wheel. Tyres scream against the road as I stumble backward, my heel catching the edge of the pavement, and throw myself out of the way. The car misses me by what feels like inches. Then I hear the impact. A young woman hits the road several metres away. My stomach drops so hard that I nearly miss a step when I run toward her. She is lying near the opposite curb, one arm twisted beneath her, while her handbag has landed several feet away, half its contents scattered across the road. “Oh my God,” I whisper. Someone shouts behind me as traffic slows around us. I drop beside the woman and reach for her shoulder, then stop when a man rushing over says, “Don’t move her.” He is right. Of course he is right. My hands hover uselessly for half a second before I grab my phone. I give the emergency operator the street name from the nearest shop sign because I cannot remember where I am. My voice sounds too loud in my own ears. I answer questions while staring at the thin line of blood near the woman’s temple and the rise and fall of her chest, checking it over and over because I need it to continue. The driver swerved because of me, and that thought wipes Verena, Mr. Jones, and the house clean out of my head. When the call ends, I kneel closer without touching her. “Hey, can you hear me? An ambulance is coming.” The woman doesn't respond. People have started gathering. I notice a phone near the gutter, a wallet farther down, lipstick crushed under someone’s shoe, and papers shifting in the breeze. Her handbag must have opened when she fell. I get up and collect everything I can before traffic, or somebody’s helpful fingers make it disappear. By the time sirens approach, I am holding her bag against my chest and standing close enough to watch the paramedics work without getting in their way. One of them looks at me. “Are you family?” “No. I saw what happened, and I have her belongings.” The paramedic glances at the bag in my hands, then toward the ambulance. “You can ride up front. Stay out of the way while we work.” At the hospital, everything becomes bright lights, forms, questions, and people moving much faster than I can think. A nurse asks for the woman’s name. “I don’t know.” “You came in with her?” “Yes, but I don’t know her.” The nurse’s expression changes slightly, and I hear how strange that sounds. “I picked up her things after the accident.” I open the handbag and pull out the wallet. There is an identification card inside. I hand it over without really looking beyond the photograph and the first line of information. “Elise Marlowe,” the nurse reads. They take her through double doors before I can ask anything else. I lower myself into a chair, get back up after less than a minute, then sit again when the room tilts slightly. I have not eaten since morning, I have cried enough to qualify as a weather system, and somewhere between leaving home and watching a stranger get hit by a car, this day has stopped feeling normal. A doctor approaches after what might be twenty minutes or an hour. "Who came in with the patient?" A doctor approaches after what might be twenty minutes or an hour. “Who came in with the patient?” I stand immediately. “Me. How is she?” “She’s stable for the moment, but she lost a lot of blood. We’re arranging additional units now.” “What type does she need?” “O negative.” I answer before I can think about it. “I’m O negative.” The doctor looks at me more carefully. “We would still need to screen you first.” “Please do what you have to do to save her” Maybe I do not owe Elise Marlowe my blood in any legal sense. Maybe none of this would technically be considered my fault. I do not care. If I had looked before walking into that road, she would not be behind those doors, so if there is something I can do to save her, that will be the least I can do. The donation leaves me light-headed and cold. Someone gives me juice and tells me to sit still for a while, which would be easier if my brain understood the concept. Eventually a doctor tells me Elise is stable, and my shoulders finally drop against the back of the chair. “She’s stable, but she’s still unconscious. We can’t say yet when she’ll wake.” “Can I see her?” He hesitates. “Briefly.” I follow him into a quiet room. Elise looks smaller in the hospital bed than she did on the road. There is a bandage near her temple, and the monitor beside her keeps a steady rhythm. I lower myself into the chair beside the bed and look at her for a few seconds before I manage to speak. “I’m sorry.” My eyes drop to her hand resting on the blanket. “I should have looked before I stepped onto that road. You shouldn’t be lying here because I wasn’t paying attention.” She gives me nothing back except the steady sound of the monitor. “I don’t even know if you can hear me,” I add quietly, but I stay where I am. I sit back, too tired to leave and too guilty to convince myself I should. Besides, where would I even go?  For a while, I watch the monitor and the hand resting on top of the blanket. Eventually my attention drifts back to her face. Without the blood, panic, and people moving around us, I can actually see her properly. I lean forward, studying the curve of her brows, the shape of her nose and the line of her mouth. The longer I look, the less comfortable I feel, until I finally lean closer and study her properly. Wait. What the hell? My eyes move from her brows to her nose and then her mouth. No freaking way. Maybe I am exhausted, maybe donating blood has messed with my head, or maybe today has simply decided it is not done with me yet, but the resemblance refuses to disappear. This woman does not just look familiar.  She looks like me.