She jolts when I speak, head whipping around at once.
“I—I’m fine,” she replies, forcing that smile back onto her face again. She keeps grinning at me like that whenever I ask her something, as though she’s apologizing for making me worry.
I eye her for a moment, but then nod. I’m not going to force anything on her that she doesn’t want, even if it’s clear she could use a hot meal and something to drink.
I can practically hear Martha’s voice at the back of my mind, telling me I’m crazy for bringing a woman I don’t know into my house.That’s your problem, Martin, you can’t see when something has nothing to do with you. You always want to get involved…
Hell, maybe she’s got a point.
But there was no chance I was going to leave this girl on the side of the road in the rain when she so clearly needed someone to bail her out. I don’t even want to think what the wrong kind of guy might make of her presence there, don’t even want to imagine what would have happened if she had stepped into the wrong car. She might not know me, but I don’t mean any harm to her. That’s part of the deal as a doctor, taking care of the world at large, even when you’re not in scrubs.
“Can I check your arm?” I offer, and she frowns at me.
“What do you mean?”
“Your arm,” I repeat gently. “When you were in the car, you said you slept on it funny. It looked pretty bad. I could take a look for you.”
She doesn’t move for a long moment. I realize, at the last second, how it must sound.
“I’m a doctor,” I explain. “I can fix you up if there’s something wrong.”
“No, I’m fine, really,” she tells me, wrapping her arms around herself protectively. Her jacket, which she has not taken off, slides down her shoulders a little, and a bruise reveals itself on her upper arm.
My brow furrows, and I move closer to her, between her and the crackling fire I’ve set up in the hearth to warm her up. “What’s that?”
She glances down at the bruise and swiftly grabs her jacket to cover it. “Nothing.”
She sounds defensive. Whatever is going on here, it doesn’t have to do with just her. There’s someone she’s covering for. But why the hell would she want to protect someone who caused her harm like that…?
The question answers itself as soon as it appears in my mind. Abuse. Must be. I’ve dealt with enough couples over the years in my work as a prenatal specialist to sense when someone is trying to protect a significant other, doing what they can to cover for someone who isn’t treating them the way they’re supposed to be treated.
We have protocols in place for handling it at work, but I’m not sure if any of them apply the same way here, in the confines of my home.
I take a seat opposite her in the large red armchair, not taking my eyes off her for an instant. Her dark blonde hair is loose around her shoulders, still damp from where she was standing out in the rain, her olive skin flecked with muddy raindrops. Her eyes, a deep brown, reflect the firelight ahead of her, and I wish more than anything that I could reach into her head and figure out what happened to her. She said she left the city without knowing much about where she was going; was she fleeing from someone? Are they following her, even now?
“I’m going to make myself something to eat,” I tell her, rising to my feet. “You want to clean up, or change? There’s a bathroom at the end of that hall…”
For a moment, I think she’s going to turn me down again, but she must realize how lost she looks. She rises to her feet, grabbing the bag she rescued from her car and clutching it to her chest.
“Sure,” she replies. “This door, at the end…?”
I direct her to the bathroom, and I notice that she walks lightly, as though trying to move without attracting attention. She seems more like a frightened deer than a person right now, staring down the barrel of a hunter’s shotgun and doing everything she can to make sure it doesn’t go off.
She can’t be much older than her early twenties, too young to have lived a life that has put so much weight on her shoulders—though there’s no age that could prepare anyone for this, for whatever hell she’s been through. I head to the kitchen, pulling some leftovers from the freezer and heating it up on the stove as the rain taps against the large glass windows that overlook the forest beyond.
This place was meant to be a sanctuary for me. When I moved out here nearly ten years ago, after the divorce, I wanted somewhere that was entirely removed from the rest of the world, somewhere I could retreat to when everything got to be too much. Of course, I still spend most of my time at the hospital, or in an apartment in the city that I keep for sleeping over those nights when I’m called in later than expected. But this place was meant to be entirely for me.
I don’t bring people here. Not much, if at all.
When I saw her on the side of the road, my first instinct was to pull over, make sure she was okay, and then continue on alone; it wasn’t until I saw the look on her face that I knew there was no way I could leave her out there, as vulnerable and as helpless as she was. I don’t think I’ve had anyone stay the night here in the whole time I’ve lived in this place, so the sound of the shower running from the next room should be alien.
But instead, it’s oddly…peaceful. Comforting, even. It reminds me of when I had a family of my own, a home that was full of life, even if that family is long behind me now.
Even if that family is, in some ways, the worst thing that has ever happened to me.
Even though she said she wasn’t hungry, I make her up a bowl of soup and place it on a tray along with a glass of water which I bring through to the living room just as she emerges from the bathroom. Her hair is pulled back into a messy bun at the back of her head, and her face is glistening with steam; I can make out a small smattering of dark freckles over her cheeks and forehead.
“I… You didn’t need to make me anything,” she blurts out, standing still for a moment, in a pair of sweatpants and an oversized tee. She’s dressed like she’s doing everything she can to distract from her body beneath, but I still find my mind briefly straying to how she must look underneath her clothes. Soft, curvy.
