It must have been about three-thirty in the afternoon, three days later, when we came tear-assing out of the bank at Third and Main. The alarm was ringing; the cops were right down the block with those damn sirens going and those lights. Noise everywhere you turned your head.

We were good together. Not for the robbing part - I'll just skip over that - but when it came to running, you never seen anything so coordinated. It's like we were twins separated at birth who had just discovered each other and realized they had something profound in common. We could flee the scene like nobody's business. First I didn't think we'd make it, but after only a few minutes of the forces of order hot on our trail, I thought, there's no way in hell they can get their ham-fisted hands on us. And they couldn't.

But there was a price to pay. We stopped in an alley. We snuggled up close. She said, "Baby, they got me."

First thing I thought was, she never called me baby before. And the second thing was, "What do you mean, they got you?" And then I could see. There was blood all down her arm.

I took her to her car, about five blocks away. I didn't know where she'd been hit, but she moved pretty well. When we walked from the car to the apartment, it was harder, but I got her to the bed all right. It doesn't take a doctor to know that life fades as the blood runs out, so that was the first thing: keep the blood inside where it can do what it's meant to do.

They'd got her in the arm between the shoulder and elbow, and they probably busted that big bone in there pretty bad. I worked on the blood with towels and washcloths, and she didn't say much, just lay there on the sheets that were turning wet red. She was working to keep a hold on her brain, trying to stop her brain from floating away - I could see that. I'd been hurt a few times. Got hit by a car once, and I just lay there in shock, and my head just floated away, and my eyes were probably round like a scared kid or like a hurt animal when about half the systems have shut down.

She wasn't like that. She wasn't letting any of her stuff float away. Except the one big thing, life itself. So it came to this: her job was to keep from wigging out, and my job was to see that she kept as much blood as possible.

I mentioned that an ambulance might be a good idea.

She said, "Have you ever been in jail?"

I said I hadn't.

"Don't call the ambulance, baby." I didn't.

Oh, it was awful all right. What do I do when she dies, I thought. I just leave the room, that's what happens. Maybe say a little benediction or something, then leave. Maybe call 911 and say there's a lost soul that needs your attention in room so and so.

She said, "If I can get up and walk, there's a doctor I can see, but he's not going to come here."

There's another thing I know that goes along with my understanding that if you don't stop bleeding you die, and that is if you don't keep an open wound clean a festering wretchedness may take place. She went into a fever, and her brain floated away.

For two days I mopped the blood and cleaned the wounds (entry and exit) with soap and water. I found some little syringes (a diabetic not a junky, as it turned out), and I used them to squirt a little water in her mouth. I cleaned shit and piss.

There was one extra set of sheets in her small closet. The shower stall was my laundry. I washed and washed as her ravaged molecules ran down the drain.

And somewhere out there she found her brain and snagged it and brought it back. Her eyes showed a light, and her tummy wanted soup. Two days after that she said, "Now we can see the doctor." She told me where to drive. When we stopped, we were in front of The Logan Animal Clinic. A man was coming out the door with a beagle. "You sure about this?" I asked.

"He's my cousin Lloyd. When it's raining, you go where they'll let you in."

I nodded.

She said, "Now listen, baby. Leave me here. Go to my place. Tomorrow I'll call you. Can you take me back home when he's done with me?"

I went to her place and waited.

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© Ragnar Kvaran 2003