Almost Heaven 4

Chapter 5

I walk fast almost in a run. I hear Helena yelling at everyone to go on home and clear the area. They did, reluctantly. It’s not everyday that a woman is dropped off broken and bleeding at the entrance to our humble hideaway. I slow my pace. The infirmary isn’t a hospital; it’s not even an abandoned dentist’s office, its Helena’s garage. And Sámi is the doctor; she’s been training James to follow up in her absence. We where sending her to the islands, its good thing Carmen didn’t get dropped off at the end of the month, I am not sure James knows how to handle this right anyway. The most he has ever worried about is food poisoning from expired canned food.

My footsteps are hard on the soft earth of Helena’s yard. Everything’s kind of cold and moist, almost as if the weather couldn’t decide between winter and spring. Looking up at the windows and I see Sámi and James hard at work trying to fix whatever is broken with Carmen. I can see her fine black hair, the outline of her lips. The closer I get I notice that her lips are in fact cracked and bleeding. I walk in.

Sámi looks up at me and has that “so this is the woman we all know about but shouldn’t,” look on her face. I am cool. I will not be bothered by this. I will not think about my brother running around doing this to people. I will not cry, I will not breakdown. I will remain the fucking warrior everyone around me believes me to be. I will not lose it. I am the calm bodhisattva of my fucking universe.

This all breaks when I see her.

Wearing next to nothing. A blood and mud encrusted white nightgown. Her face is covered with blood and mud and leaves and earth. Both her eyes are black and blue and nearly swollen shut, the barest white from her eyes show. Blood dried and crusted in her nose, her lips cracked and bleeding, she is bleeding profusely from some kind of wound in her chest, her arms are covered with bruises and finger imprints so hard that it made my throat hurt, same finger indents on her thighs, her knees scraped, it seemed like all of her blood was on the outside, was there any left on the inside?