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“No, sweetheart, not unless you want to end up shipped off to parts unknown where they make you a sex worker by night and a drug dealer by day. Until one day when your body gives in and you die.”
She starts shivering even more than before, fear and confusion clear in her eyes.
“How old did you say you were?”
“A-almost twenty-two,” she stutters.
I nod and bounce my knee up and down. “You’ll be good for a couple of years.”
The sob ripping from her chest should break me, but I don’t move. I just continue sitting on the bed, staring at her. There is nothing I can help her with, at least not long term.
“What am I going to do?” she cries. “I wanted to move soon. Can I still do that?”
Jesus, she’s not getting it. But I decide to humor her, nonetheless.
“Where are you moving to?”
“Louisiana,” she tells me in between sobs.
I sigh again before moving around to lean against the wall, feet on the bed now.
“Come here.”
She stares at me but doesn’t move to follow my directive.
“Ruby,” I snap at her, and she jumps. “Come.”
This time, she gets up from the floor and walks to where I am, but not before sniffing and grossing me out with all the snot audible in her head. I look around, wondering what she could clean herself up with.
“Go to the bathroom first and blow your fuckin’ nose.”
She looks almost relieved when I tell her that. She turns on her heels and hobbles along until she walks into the bathroom. I hear her using the toilet and flushing before using the sink to wash her hands. Sounding like she’s using toilet paper, she blows into it so hard, I’m not sure if there’s any brain matter left in her head following it.
When she walks back, the pain in her feet is obvious. To be honest, I’m not even sure why I called her to me. But now that I truly take in the state she’s in, there’s only one acceptable option.
I stand up from the bed and grab her arm to walk her to the spot I just vacated.
“Don’t move,” I tell her before turning around and walking out of the room.
Looking around to make sure no one is around, especially the two crackheads chasing her, I approach my bike. After some digging in the right saddle, I find the first aid kit I knew I had in there. While I’m at it, I fish another pack of cigarettes, too.
I head back into the room and close the door behind me. Ruby is just where I left her, only sadder. Her face has tears running down, the tank top she’s wearing looks weird and crooked on her. Her sweatpants are dirty from wherever she crawled while hiding, and her feet are bloody. The sight of them springs me into action.
I grab a couple of sketchy looking towels from the bathroom, running one of them through warm water. I wish I could say the water gets hot at some point, but that is not a thing at this run-down place.
“What are you doing?” She sniffles when she asks, making her sound a lot younger than the almost twenty-two years she keeps on claiming she has on her.
“We need to take care of your feet before anything gets infected,” I explain and get to work. “The floor here is dirty enough that I can’t see any blood trailing.”
Once I wash off all the grime, I notice a few cuts. While they do look painful when walking, I’m sure they’re not too deep, except for maybe one.
I don’t talk while I pull out a couple of thorns, paying close attention to every single mark on her tender skin. She gasps in pain a few times, but overall, she is a trooper and lets me do my thing.
When I am done cleaning her, I place band aids on the bottoms of her feet, the last one with a flourish.
“Look at you,” I tease. “Like brand spankin’ new.”
“Thank you, Hawk.”
