Chapter 2 #2
She accepts this with the grace of someone cataloguing a partial victory.
And then she talks.
For the next forty minutes she doesn't stop.
Theories about what happened tonight and why.
A story about a patient she treated last month that connects to something she read about federal witness programs, which is, I must admit, insightful.
Apparently, she is under the impression that those in witness protection survive on protein bars and offers a detailed and passionate case for why protein bars are not adequate nutrition for a human adult under psychological stress.
Then her apartment.
“It’s east facing,” she says. “Good light. That's why I took it.”
She talks the way some people breathe. Easily, naturally, without apparent effort.
The truck fills with her voice.
I note, with some concern, that it isn't irritating.
It is entertaining.
I’m enjoying hearing someone work out their stress through harmless banter that doesn’t even require me to participate except in limited ways.
I keep my eyes on the road and occasionally nod in agreement or grunt in support.
Around the ninety-minute mark, she either runs out of topics, or energy.
I break the silence as I say I’m making a quick stop at a gas station to get a drink and give her a chance to use the restroom.
“We have another thirty minutes to go. Would you like a drink, or a bathroom break?” I ask.
“Water,” thank you.
She takes her break in silence and meets me back at the truck, still seemingly out of words.
I restart the truck and then sip my black coffee.
The rest of the ride is quiet.
Outside, the city gives way to suburbs, suburbs to highway, highway to the dark of rural nothing.
She turns to the window. Her reflection in the glass is pale and still.
She's not sleeping. She's thinking. I can already tell the difference.
When she's thinking she goes somewhere behind her eyes that she doesn't go any other time.
Somewhere quiet.
The cabin sits back from a dirt road three miles off the main highway.
There are no neighbors, no streetlights.
The tree line comes right up to the fence on the north side.
I cut the headlights a quarter mile out and drive the last stretch on memory and ambient light.
She doesn't ask why. I note that.
When we get to cabin, she remains quiet as I go around to open her door.
Quietly, almost shyly, she follows me towards the front door and patiently waits while I unlock.
She looks everywhere and absorbs as much as she can see in the dark.
Inside, she does a circuit of the main room in fifteen seconds.
Quickly and efficiently, she assesses the exits, the angles, what's available.
She notices the windows and the door to the back.
The same way I'd do it.
I don't say any of this out loud.
I just observe in fascinated silence how she operates in a tactical way without any tactical training.
She stops in the hallway and turns around.
"There's one bedroom."
"Yes."
"One bedroom and one—" She looks past me. "Is that a couch?"
"Yes, it’s comfortable."
"It's five and a half feet long," she objects.
"I've slept on it before. Trust me it’s comfortable," I reiterate.
She does the math and objects, "No, there is no way. You're going to be very uncomfortable."
"That's not your concern."
"I'm a doctor. Musculoskeletal health is literally?—"
"Take the room. It's non-negotiable. Believe me, I’ve slept on much worse."
She opens her mouth.
"Non-negotiable," I say again.
She closes her mouth and starts down the hallway.
Then she stops in the doorway.
"Lange."
"Yeah."
"Thank you." Quieter. "For catching me on the ramp."
She says it to the doorframe rather than to me.
Like she's not sure she wants to see my face when she says it.
"Not a problem. Get some sleep. We’ll get some of your things picked up tomorrow, until then feel free to grab my T-shirts or whatever you need to sleep comfortably. Make yourself at home."
The door closes.
I stand in the main room for a moment, then walk the perimeter outside.
I check the fence line, the tree line and the north approach. All is dark and quiet, exactly as it should be.
I'm not thinking about the way she said Lange .
I'm not thinking about what she must’ve been feeling when she thanked me.
When I come back inside, I’m surprised that she's at the kitchen table.
Changed out of her scrubs top and into one of my T-shirts.
Her hair is down, loose around her shoulders in the low light.
Her phone in front of her, a full pot of coffee on the pot, a mug of coffee in her hands.
A second mug on the counter.
I stop.
“I can’t sleep. I’m too wound up.”
She doesn't look up. "It's just coffee. Don't make it weird."
I cross to the counter and pick up the mug quietly.
It’s black, strong, no ceremony, no frills.
She didn't ask how I take it.
Somehow, she knew, somewhere between the parking structure and here, and remembered from the gas station stop.
I stand at the counter and drink while she reads whatever is on her phone.
Her brow slightly furrowed. Her mouth moves occasionally, like she's arguing with the text.
Her hair keeps falling forward. She keeps pushing it back without looking up.
This woman made me coffee at midnight in a safe house she was brought to against her will and told me not to make it weird.
I realize she’s been traumatized so I don't make it weird, even though I’m not entirely sure what that means.
I don't tell her it's good, either.
But when it's gone, I pour a second cup.
Somehow, after a full cup of caffeine she heads back to bedroom and the light under her door goes out.
I settle on the couch.
All five and a half feet of it.
I stare at the ceiling and run Crane's known movement patterns and review the threat assessment that I know by heart and make a safety to do list for tomorrow.
I review my conversations with Melinda, with special attention to the way she said good when I told her I was revising my estimate of her difficulty upward and the phrase don’t make it weird.
Then I think about Chu.
Then I hear it.
The quiet, muffled, careful sound of crying.
The practiced kind.
The kind that comes from years of learning to fall apart in ways that don't inconvenience anyone.
The kind that comes from always being the responsible one.
The one others look to for calm in a storm.
I sit up and look at the door.
She held it together through all of it: the shot, the running, the collision with me, Torres and her federal briefing, ninety minutes in a truck with a stranger who answered two of questions and the couch argument she lost on principle.
She waited until she was alone.
I stand and cross to the door.
I raise my hand and hold it there.
I have cleared rooms and extracted assets and kept people alive in conditions that would break most.
But I’m not sure what to do standing outside a door while she cries on the other side of it.
Eventually, I lower my hand and go back to the couch.
I decide to give her some time.
But I’ll stay awake, just in case she can’t stop.
After a while, it stops.
I stare at the ceiling for another hour.
I failed Chu.
I'm not failing her.
I don't examine why that second part feels like more personal.
Not tonight.
Tonight, I lie here and listen to the cabin settle, and note, how she noted my preferred coffee order just by observation.