For a second, I remembered a different alley in a different city, rain on my face and a warmth in my arms, but I slammed the door on that memory so hard it shivered the back of my eyes.
I walked fast. Every step was a calculation: where to plant my foot, how to keep the jacket closed, which streets would get me to the Subaru without drawing too much attention.
The lamp at the far end of the alley made the rain look like hot metal, splattering in random streaks across the pavement. The city noises faded out, replaced by my own heartbeat and the steady, ridiculous breathing of the baby.
I got to the car, unlocked it with a chirp, and yanked open the passenger door. I set the grocery bag down and cradled the baby in the crook of my arm while I rooted through the backseat for the emergency blanket I kept rolled up for earthquake season.
My fingers shook, but not from fear. Just too much caffeine and not enough sleep. The blanket came free, orange nylon, and I wrapped it around the jacket for an extra layer. The baby made a chuffing sound and went still.
I slid behind the wheel, hands already moving for the ignition, and did a quick check of the rearview. Nothing. No one.
I sat for half a beat, eyes on the baby, waiting for the next step to present itself. I expected panic, or at least some trace of sentimentality, but all I felt was a hard-edged responsibility, the same shape as the voice that used to bark orders at me across miles of sand. Get it done. Do it now.
I checked the mirrors, eased the Subaru out of the lot, and pointed it toward OHSU. The baby’s weight pressed against my chest, inconvenient and shockingly real, like the universe hadjust handed me a new mission and didn’t care that I’d clocked out years ago.
I drove, the city sliding by in streaks of orange and blue, my mind already plotting the fastest way to the hospital and wondering, not for the first time, why weird shit like this always found me.
If you ever want to see a city for what it really is, get yourself followed by professionals. The suburbs will try to sell you on safe neighborhoods and recycling bins, but Portland after midnight was all exposed nerves.
I clocked the bikes before I hit 41st—a pair, maybe three, running black and formation tight. No plates, headlights modded down to a mean slit, each helmet the same matte nothing.
I didn’t panic. It’s not my thing. But the baby on my chest was an issue.
The first motorcycle flashed in the rearview at the intersection, just a shadow over my left taillight, not even a pretense of traffic law.
I took Belmont at a normal pace, kept my signals casual, and watched as the bikes hung back just close enough for intimidation.
They wanted me to see them.
Whoever they were, they’d done this before, and the fact they were out in this weather told me something had changed since I’d picked up the baby.
I popped a fresh lollipop and ran scenarios in my head. Hospital was four miles and change, straight shot over the bridge and up the hill, but the parking structure was a bottleneck. They’d have backup waiting.
I had no illusions about my own importance in the world, but if a random Tuesday baby-dump could buy me this kind of attention, then the baby was the draw, not me.
Which meant the hospital was a trap.
The baby, for her part, had gone inert. Not the limp, boneless kind of inert. More like a grenade with the pin out. Her breath was hot through my shirt, not the quick, erratic pattern I expected but a measured in, out, in. I had to resist the urge to check her pulse at every stop sign.
The bikes closed up as I hit the light at Burnside. Third bike, this one running lights-off, slotted in behind the other two. Textbook shepherding, right out of the convoy defense playbook. I’d been on the giving end of that formation more than once, overseas, so I knew how hard it was to shake.
But I had one advantage they didn’t. I knew Portland’s every back alley, service ramp, and pedestrian cut-through. Six years and three breakups worth of midnight walks will do that for you.
At the next green, I broke pattern. Hard right down 32nd, then a quick left onto the delivery lane behind the old record shop. The pavement here was crap, pitted and slick, but I kept the Subaru’s nose ahead of the first bike and floored it up the alley. Behind me: the distant snarl of engines opening up, close enough to rattle my fillings.
The first turn at 29th almost cost me the grocery bag, but I caught it with my free hand and felt the baby shift, her fist tightening around the placket of my shirt. She still didn’t make a sound. Just watched me with eyes I knew were open, because I could feel them.
Left, left, another left, and I was behind the Thai place, the same one that seasoned the air with sweet oil and old garlic. One of the bikes tried to cut me off at the next cross, but I dropped the car into neutral and skidded past him, the Subaru’s backend fishtailing and slamming me against the baby’s weight. The biker’s helmet turned, caught my eye for one second—no expression, no panic, just a flick of calculation.
They were not amateurs.
I wound through the Pearl District on pure instinct, cutting past loading docks and over a sidewalk that had probably never seen a car before.
I lost two of the bikes at the Yamhill crossing when a TriMet bus decided to run its schedule like the world depended on it, blocking their line of sight just long enough for me to duck into the covered parking garage at 10th. I killed the lights and rolled to a stop, heart thrumming, breath steady but shallow.
The baby’s fist thumped once against my chest, then relaxed. I looked down at her—still wrapped in my jacket, face pressed to the hollow between my ribs. If this was trauma, it was the most Zen trauma I’d ever seen.
I envied her.
