Chapter 18
The road to Port Angeles wound through forest and along water, the sort of Pacific Northwest scenery that usually made me want to pull over and just look.
Not today. Today I kept my eyes on the road and my foot steady on the gas.
Scout sat in the passenger seat with the rigid stillness of someone managing serious pain with the only tool available to her-- willpower.
Pure stubborn willpower. She didn't complain.
She didn't shift around trying to find a comfortable position.
She just sat there, hands folded in her lap, jaw clenched against the throbbing.
I didn't make her talk. I don't think she could have managed much conversation anyway.
After about twenty minutes of silence broken only by the hum of tires on asphalt, I glanced over at her.
"You want to listen to some music? Might help take your mind off things."
Scout nodded carefully, minimizing jaw movement. "That would be nice."
I thought about what Scout would like. Classical literature, a classical education cobbled together from library books and her father's teaching. Shakespeare and Thoreau and Bront?. She probably grew up on Bach and Beethoven.
"Hey phone," I said. "Play classical music. Something soothing. Piano."
The speakers filled with soft piano notes, something gentle and measured. Chopin maybe, or one of those composers I could never tell apart.
"This the kind of thing you like?"
Scout tilted her head slightly, listening.
"It will do."
"Or maybe you prefer folk music? Something with guitars and banjos, that kind of thing? Jazz? Whatever you want, just tell the phone."
I tapped the screen to show her the interface. The little microphone icon, the way the voice recognition worked. Scout watched my finger on the glass with focused attention.
"You just say what you want to hear," I said. "It'll find it."
I nodded at her. Waited.
Scout looked at the phone for a long moment. Then at the road ahead. Then back at the phone. She cleared her throat, wincing slightly at the movement.
"Phone? Play K-Pop," she said.
I blinked in surprise.
The piano music cut off. A heavy electronic beat filled the truck cab, synthetic and driving, and then a woman's voice started rapping in Korean, fast and aggressive and absolutely nothing like what I'd expected.
I turned to stare at Scout. She was watching the phone's screen, where the album art showed a group of young Korean women in elaborate outfits.
"K-Pop," I said.
"Yes."
"You like K-Pop?"
"I do."
I couldn't help it. I started grinning.
"That's... not what I would have guessed. How did you even find K-Pop?"
Scout's eyes stayed on the road ahead, but I could see the ghost of something that might have been embarrassment on her ashen face. Or maybe it was just the swelling.
"Last summer. I was at the library in Port Chasten.
A car parked outside, playing music I could hear through the open windows.
" She paused, listening to the song. "I had never heard anything like it.
The rhythm. The beat. I couldn't understand the lyrics, of course, but it didn't matter.
The sound was..." She searched for the word. "Electrifying."
"So you asked someone what it was?"
"No. I listened from inside the library.
Through the window." Scout's voice was careful, measured against the pain.
"Then the song ended and one of the girls inside the car started laughing.
She said her parents hated that she listened to K-Pop.
She said they thought it was ridiculous. The other girls laughed too."
The song changed. Another girl group, another aggressive beat, more lyrics I didn't understand.
"The car drove away after a few minutes. But I wanted to hear more. The library has computers with internet access. I found out what K-Pop was." Scout touched her swollen cheek absently. "I've listened to it whenever I can since then. At the library. On the computers."
I nodded slowly, feeling like an idiot. I'd done exactly what I'd done with Abner, looked at the surface and made assumptions.
Backwoods girl, classical education, probably likes classical music.
Probably likes folk songs and acoustic guitars and whatever else fit the picture I'd painted in my head.
I should have known better by now. People were always more complicated than the stories you told yourself about them.
"What do you think of it?" I asked. "Now that you've had time to really listen?"
Scout was quiet for a moment. The Korean woman on the radio hit a high note that seemed impossible with that much bass underneath it.
"I adore K-Pop," Scout said quietly. "It makes me feel... I don't know the word. Alive? Like something is possible that wasn't possible before. Can you make it louder?"
I laughed, the first real laugh I'd had all morning. I reached for the volume knob and turned it up until the bass thumped in my chest.
Scout closed her eyes. Not sleeping, just listening. Letting the music wash over her while ignoring the pain in her mouth.
We drove the rest of the way to Port Angeles with K-Pop blasting from my truck speakers.
Every time a song ended, another one started.
She told the phone to skip some she didn't like.
My phone app eventually figured out what she liked and kept serving it up.
Girl groups with attitude. Boy bands with synchronized harmonies.
Electronic beats that belonged in a Seoul nightclub, not a twenty-year-old pickup truck on a forest highway.
I didn't mind. The music was catchy as hell, and watching Scout bob her head slightly to the beat, even through the pain, was worth whatever confused looks we got at stoplights.
Port Angeles finally appeared around a bend in the road, spreading out along the waterfront. A real town. Not big by any standard, but bigger than Port Chasten by a factor of ten. Strip malls and medical complexes and chain restaurants. Traffic lights and crosswalks and people on sidewalks.
Scout sat up straighter, eyes moving across the unfamiliar landscape.
I followed the GPS directions to the medical center. It was a multi-story building with a parking garage, institutional architecture that said "healthcare" at a glance. I pulled into a spot near the entrance and killed the engine.
The sudden silence felt loud after two hours of K-Pop.
Scout didn't move. She was staring at the building through the windshield, and I could see something on her face that I hadn't seen before. Uncertainty. Maybe even fear.
"Ready?" I asked.
She nodded, but she didn't open her door.
I got out, walked around to her side, opened the door for her. She stepped down from the truck and stood there on the pavement, looking at the medical center like it was a foreign country.
Which, I realized, it basically was.
"It's okay," I said. "I know how this works. Just stay with me."
Scout took my arm.
The contact surprised me. Scout was not a person who reached for help.
She was not a person who admitted weakness or uncertainty or fear.
She was the girl who swam naked in my pond without hesitation, who walked through forests like she owned them, who quoted Thoreau and carried a revolver and had never seemed unsure of anything in the time I'd known her.
But now she held my arm like a lifeline.
I understood, suddenly, the weight of what was happening. That time Scout had guided me through the forest, showing me paths I couldn't see, reading the land like a book. Now it was my turn. Now I was guiding her through a world she'd never learned to navigate.
The automatic doors opened. We walked inside.
The emergency dental clinic was on the second floor. I led Scout to the elevator, pressed the button, waited while she stared at the numbers above the door. The elevator dinged. The doors opened. We stepped inside.
The clinic waiting room was already bustling.
Fluorescent lights humming overhead. A television mounted on the wall playing a morning talk show with the sound muted.
Rows of plastic chairs, half of them occupied by people in various states of dental distress.
A reception desk with a woman typing on a computer.
The faint smell of something chemical and medical.
Scout's eyes moved rapidly, taking it all in, processing. I could see her trying to categorize everything and fit it into the frameworks she knew. But this was outside her experience. Nothing in Thoreau prepared you for an emergency waiting room.
"Stay here," I said, guiding her to a chair. "I'll check you in."
I walked to the reception desk. The woman behind it had the tired efficiency of someone who'd been doing this job for years.
"Emergency walk-in?"
"Yes ma'am. She's been in pain for days. Kept trying to treat it herself with home remedies. Got worse overnight."
The woman nodded and pulled out a clipboard. "Insurance?"
"She doesn't have any. I'll pay out of pocket."
"Name?"
"Liberty Scout Flint. F-L-I-N-T."
"Complete this form, please."
I gave the form to Scout to fill out. Name, address, date of birth. Most of the medical history she had to leave blank or write "unknown." Scout had never been to a doctor in her adult life. No records to pull, no baseline to work from.
"Someone will call her back shortly," the receptionist said.
We sat together along the wall. Scout watched the television, her brow furrowed.
"What are they doing?" she asked quietly.
"Makeup tutorial. I think they're trying to match her eye shadow with her dog's outfit."
"Why is there no sound?"
"Waiting rooms usually keep the sound off. People have headaches. Toothaches. Don't want noise."
Scout nodded slowly. "That is considerate."
A door opened. A woman in scrubs stepped out.
"Liberty Scout Flint?"
Scout looked at me. I stood and helped her up.
"I'll be right here," I said. "The whole time. They'll fix this."
Scout nodded. But she didn't let go of my arm until we reached the door.