Page 106 of Resilience

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Athena woke with Blanche’s paw on her forearm. When her vision could focus, she saw that her dog was alerting her to something at the window—a window she didn’t recognize. Because they were in a motel in Overland Park.

She sat up and looked around, getting her bearings. Heavy drapes were drawn across the window. Blanche was still alerting, but Sam wasn’t in the room ... and the bathroom door was open, showing an unlit room, so he literally was not in the room at all. Huh. That was weird and unsettling. She’d think that through after she figured out what was going on outside.

This was an old-fashioned motel, the kind where all the room doors opened to the outside. They were on the second floor, but that didn’t make her feel any better about opening the door to see what had her dog’s interest.

Slipping from the bed—ugh, instantly nauseated, of course—she grabbed Sam’s flannel off the back of the desk chair and pulled it on. It fell to her knees and served perfectly well as a robe. First she went to the door; the deadbolt was engaged, but the security chain dangled. She slipped that into its groove. Sam would just have to knock when he came back from wherever he’d gone. The peephole was so high that even on tiptoe she couldn’t look straight through it. All she saw was sky.

Blanche was still determined to get Athena to notice something at the window. Stepping into her Docs, just in case she had need of fight or flight, Athena sidled up to an edge of the drapes and lifted it carefully, only enough that she could see the walkway outside it.

Three men, maybe in their thirties, were leaning against the railing, talking and drinking tallboys.

They seemed harmless enough. Drinking beer at—she glanced at the digital clock on the desk—seven o’clock in the morning suggested maybe they should take their confab to the nearest AA meeting, but they didn’t look like they had anything more nefarious than a morning drunk on their agenda.

She signed to Blanche that it was okay and glanced once more through her narrow portal, double checking that they were just three aimless loser types. Before she dropped the edge of the drape, Sam stepped onto the walkway from the steps. He had a tray with two to-go coffee cups in one hand and a white paper sack in the other. He was wearing his kutte.

Those three men, all of them at least a decade older than him, and at least one looking like he could handle himself in a fight, pulled up tight against the railing, clearing the way for a twenty-two-year-old Brazen Bull who obviously was not looking for a fight.

She thought those guys even lowered their eyes, as if they weren’t worthy of meeting Sam head-on.

She’d seen it countless times in her life, the way that leather, its patch, was like a shield, or more like a crown. It said, I have power over you. Some reacted to that meaning with deference, some with suspicion, some with violence. A few responded in friendship. But everybody reacted to it. The Brazen Bulls patch meant something.

Sam passed the men, said a word or two (she thought it was ‘Morning, fellas’) and stopped at the door to their room. Athena dropped the drape and hurried back to the door to release the security chain again. She just managed to back away from the door so it didn’t bang into her when he opened it.

He had the sack in his mouth, the key (an actual key) in one hand and the coffee in his other, but he managed to convey with only his eyes his surprise to see her right there.

She took the sack from him, and he closed the door.

“You left while I was asleep,” she told him after she set the bag down.

He put the coffee beside it. “Sorry. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stay still, either, and I didn’t want to bother your sleep, so I went outside. Then I thought I’d pick up some coffee and doughnuts. There was a pharmacy nearby, so I got online and found a list of things you’ll need and went in to get you stuff.

“Things I’ll need?” As understanding dawned, Athena grinned. “Samwise, did you buy me maxi-pads?” She’d bought herself some and had them in her pack, but she still loved him so much for thinking of it. And buying some! What a cutie he was.

“Maxi-pads and things called ‘panty liners,’ and ibuprofen. I also got a wrap-around heating pad. Two, actually. One that plugs in and one you microwave. I thought the microwave one could work in the truck. For a while, at least. I also bought a big bag of peanut-butter cups and a twelve-pack of Cherry Coke. It’s all still in the truck. I ran out of hands.”

She jumped at him and wrapped her arms around his waist. His arms came around her, and he bent over to kiss the top of her head.

Athena’s feelings about this day were too complicated to fully identify. She was nervous, because she’d never had an abortion before and, though she’d read all the info Planned Parenthood had sent her when she’d made her appointment, she wouldn’t really know what it was like until she’d experienced it. In her research she’d come across some scary stories about abortions with ‘complications,’ and despite knowing how statistically minute that possibility was, she couldn’t eradicate the stories from her mind. Also, she wanted a medication abortion, but by the time she’d been able to get an appointment, she was about ten weeks pregnant. (They counted from the start of her last period, which seemed stupid; since obviously she hadn’t been pregnant then, and also she knew exactly when she had been.) Though she wasn’t showing yet, ten weeks was very close to the upper limit for medication abortion, and the doctor she’d emailed with had told her to be prepared to have a surgical abortion instead, and they’d make that call together at the appointment.

Athena had had a lot of surgeries as a child, and even more procedures. While she was in one way an old pro at them, in another way, the words ‘surgical’ and ‘procedure’ and ‘surgical procedure’ did weird things to her blood pressure. So yes, she was nervous.

But she was also relieved to finally be done with the last of the things Hunter had done to her that night in the cabin. Her relief was so keen it was basically excitement. When she was back home, it would all finally be over. No rapist asshole, no nasty bite mark, no uterus blob, no more need to think of that fucker ever again in her life.

Like it had never happened.

She stepped back from their hug. Sam peered down at her and asked, “How’re you doing?”

“I’m good,” she told him and meant it. “But I can’t have that coffee or doughnuts. Nothing by mouth but water until after.”

“Fuck. Forgot about that.” He looked over at the tray and the sack. The sack had Blanche’s full attention. She sat and stared at it like it might come to life and leap into her mouth.

---