Page 89 of The Menagerie

“This’ll be a nasty black eye in a couple days, but there’s no external bleeding or broken bones, so there’s not much I can do about it at the moment. Can I see your arm?”

Once she extends it, Rowan slowly turns her palm face up.

But he pauses, seeing the small tattoo inked inside her wrist. Two curving snakes, one larger and curled around the smaller of the two. Similar to what Mal has on his calf.

It can’t be… can it?

Mal hasn’t said anything about any siblings, and Rowan hasn’t asked, still too worried of overstepping. But as he thinks about it, he remembers something he’d said at the diner after one of their first sessions when Rowan mentioned being one of six kids:I thought Savaryns bred like cockroaches.

Rowan can’t help but wonder if she’s a sister or a cousin of Mal’s.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

“Amy.”

She doesn’t offer a last name, and Rowan doesn’t pry, despite that he’s itching to.

“Do you want to tell me what happened to your arm?”

As she talks, Rowan lightly prods her arm with his fingertips, feeling the bones of her forearm and wrist, mentally cataloging each as he feels it.

“My boyfriend… he just gets upset sometimes. He drank too much tonight. And I said….” She sighs deeply, shaking her head before continuing. “He hit me. Grabbed my arm and pushed me. I shouldn’t have… should’a just….”

She sighs again.

“It’s okay, Amy. It wasn’t your fault,” Addison tells her, a comfort and solidarity that, as a man, Rowan can’t provide.

She nods, wincing with a light hiss when Rowan touches one spot on the side of her wrist.

“I don’t think anything is broken, but you may have a bad sprain. I can put a brace on it for now, and we can take you to the hospital to get it looked at, or you can go yourself if you don’t want the medical expense of the ambulance ride.”

The worst thing about his job is seeing the defeated look in his patients’ eyes when he mentions the ambulance cost. Sometimes he doesn’t. Not if it’s a life-or-death situation. But something like this, where it’s clear that the person will be okay for a while and where they look like they’d be crushed with the cost of it, he makes sure to let them know they’re not obligated to go with them.

“I’ll be fine. ’S not the first time this shit’s happened.”

Her face hardens. Clearly, she’s tougher than Rowan initially thought. Again, he’s reminded of the now-familiar scowl he’s grown to look forward to seeing every week.

Addison gets a cold pack from her kit, snaps it to activate it, and hands it to Amy.

“Here,” she says, gesturing to her eye. “It’ll stay cold for about an hour and will help reduce the swelling and bruising.”

The half nod she gives Addison confirms for Rowan that this really isn’t the first time this has happened, and that she’s probably well aware of how to care for her injuries.

“Do you have somewhere to stay tonight? Somewhere else?” Rowan asks.

It’s not his job. But Rowan knows too well that the cops don’t give enough of a shit about people like her to do anything to help.

She nods. “Yeah. I’ll call my brother. Can stay with him.”

Rowan’s head is swimming.

“Okay, that’s good. You have a way to get there?”

“He’ll come get me. He always does.”

It’s as good an answer as he can hope for. He puts a temporary brace on her wrist and tells her to take some ibuprofen to help keep down the swelling, and to get to a doctor as soon as she can.

“Thanks,” she mumbles.

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