I don't sleep.
Cath brings oatmeal at seven and a sandwich at noon and pasta at six. She's efficient and warm and she doesn't say anything she shouldn't. The guards watch her but they've relaxed. She's a middle-aged woman in rubber-soled shoes who cooks well and doesn't ask questions. She's exactly what they were told she'd be.
At the noon delivery she asks if I'd like to walk. "Just around the room. I'll stay with you. Exercise is important for the pregnancy."
There is no doctor. But the guards don't know that.
"I'd like that," I say.
We walk. Ten feet there, ten feet back. She walks beside me, matching my pace, and under the sound of our footsteps and the hum of the pipes she speaks in a voice so low I have to lean in to hear it.
"Tonight. Late. After midnight. I'll come to the door."
I keep walking. My face doesn't change. My pace doesn't change.
"What do I do?" I murmur.
"You walk out. That's all. I'll have the door open. You walk to the tree line, a hundred yards north. There's a track. Follow it to the road. There'll be a car."
"The guards."
"Taken care of."
"How?"
"You don't need to know how. You need to know when. After midnight. When I open the door, you go."
We pace to the wall and turn. My heart is hammering. I keep my breathing steady because steady breathing is the only skill that matters right now.
"Cath."
"Mm."
"Thank you."
She doesn't answer. We walk three more laps. She collects the lunch plate and leaves.
Later, after she brings dinner, I lie on the mattress and pretend to sleep. The damned light is still on and I have no clock. I have no way of measuring time other than counting.
So, I count. It’s better than my brain making me crazy.
It’s four hours before I hear the bolt go.
The sound is different. Softer. Someone being careful. The bolt moves and the door swings inward.
Cath is in the doorway. She's a silhouette against the faint glow of the security lamp. She doesn't speak. She reaches for my arm and her hand finds my wrist and her grip is firm and warm.
I stand. Cath steadies me. We move through the door.
Outside, the sky is enormous. I haven't seen the sky since September and now it's November and the stars are out and the air is so cold it burns my lungs and I want to stand here and breathe it forever.
The night air hits me, cold and damp and full of earth and grass and rain and openness. I haven't smelled outside air in nine weeks and the shock of it fills my lungs and my eyes sting.
"Move," Cath whispers.
We move. The gravel bites my bare feet. I can see the main house, twenty yards away, dark. No lights in the windows. The barn beyond it, a black shape against the sky. The security lamp on the front of the house casts a pool of light that we skirt around, staying in the shadow of the outbuilding.
I can see two figures on the ground near the house. Not moving. The guards. Not dead — I can see the rise and fall of one man's chest in the lamplight. Sedated, maybe. Or restrained.
