Page 71 of Cain
“Thanks for coming,” she said, her voice so small that I had to strain to hear it.
“Of course I’m here. What hurts the most right now?”
“My face. And neck. And knee. And stomach. And chest.”
“So basically the general whole body region.”
That got a huff of a laugh out of her.
“Yeah.”
“But you’re alive. That’s what matters.”
“My car…”
“Your car doesn’t matter. It can be replaced. You can’t.”
“And I don’t have insurance.”
“You don’t need to worry about that right now.”
“I’m already drowning,” she said, voice hitching, eyes flooding. “I can’t have medical bills on top of my attorney fees. I don’t know—”
“Babe, don’t do that. Now isn’t the time to spiral. Now is the time to be grateful you’re alive. Because, fuck, that was a bad wreck. You could have easily not been.”
She sniffled and blinked hard to fight the tears back.
Luckily, she was saved from any more spiraling as she was finally moved into a room and evaluated by the nurse.
For the next two hours, there were nurses and doctors in and out with long stretches of waiting in between.
At some point, I stepped out so she could be examined under her clothes and called Fallon for an update.
“They lost the car in traffic, unfortunately,” he told me. “They didn’t want to risk a high-speed chase with the cops all up and down the highway, trying to catch drunk drivers.”
“No, I get it. Did they get anything? Make and model? Plates? Descriptions?”
“We have the make and model, but it’s a common black SUV. Thousands of people around here drive one. No plates. Two men. Dark hair. That was all they could get.”
“No plates,” I repeated.
“Yeah. Seems more like pros to me,” Fallon said. “What is your girl into?”
“Nothing. She’s not into anything. She lives at a motel. She does gig work. She dreams about being able to work with clay.”
“There’s gotta be more to this,” Fallon said.
“Yeah, I—”
“Cain?” Georgie called.
“Coming, babe. Hey, I gotta go.”
“You bringing her back here?”
“Yeah. I think she’s gonna need to have someone take care of her.”
“It’s that bad?”
