She's at the edge of the bay, a break in the curtains they've drawn around the gurney. Her scrubs are a repeating pattern: a smiling teddy bear with flowers in its lap and a heart-shaped balloon floating at the end of a string its holding. Bright pink piping along the hems in the exact same hue as the pants. These details are easy to remember. Simpler to focus on than the stinging tingle in your fingers and toes. Less demanding than the story you've been practicing in your head. The alternate universe you've been crafting since someone you knew just well enough drove past, stopped, reversed and insisted you get in the car.

"You locked yourself out when went you out for the paper?"

Skeptical enough to terrify you. Do you prefer the part of villain or victim? You haven't decided, yet. The story branches there. The choice between absent-minded stoner and, well, Option B hasn't materialized, yet. Gazing at your knees, your answer is small. "Yeah."

Her eyes are a warm brown veneer painted over steel. A better developed version of what you see in your nursing major friends. Sympathetic, but uninterested in bullshit. Her presence full of a confidence you don't think you have anywhere within yourself. It pins you in place–not that there's anywhere to hide in here.

It's January and you've rolled into the emergency room barefoot in sleeping shorts and a camisole. She sees the small round bruises that dot your arms in sets of four, a larger corresponding fifth exactly where one would look for it in each case. An onlooker wouldn't need the aid of her clinical expertise to match them as sets, the fact clear from the colors. Some fresh purples and blues, others faded into the yellow-green of nearly healed, the rest somewhere inbetween. The big new indigo bloom unfurling on your thigh where you collided with the corner of the half-wall at the top of the stairs. "Mmhmm."

An affirmative sound that tells you everything she wants you to know. She's been her before. She knows you're lying. She's tried every approach and arrived where she is right now; rooted at the perimeter, ready to help in whatever way you'll let her, but nothing more nor anything less. She's right there, not five feet away. Legally obligated to keep your secrets, and you would probably never see her again. You could say all the things you bite back and leave them here with her. That you hate yourself because you can't hate him. That if he disappeared into the ether you'd be as devastated as you'd be relieved. That you've lost ten pounds in three weeks because you found a pair of diamond studs in the bowl on his nightstand and you've never owned a pair and even when whatever monster lives inside him breaches the surface, they're both supposed to belong to you the way you belong to them.

"Dahlly?"

Mandi, your name on her lips sounds almost as small as you feel. Usually, her height makes her seem anchored, like a pylon. Right now, she looks like her center of gravity is too high and the slightest impact in the wrong spot could topple her. Eyes as clear as glass, her worry just as plain. She's twisted herself at an angle to pass the nurse. A flicker in the latter's eye because she knows a window's closing and the new arrival is either going to fling it back open or slam it shut entirely. "Dahlly, Rome called me! What the fuck were you doing out there?"

You could tell her, too. That he'd lost it after you politely declined a homemade breakfast to which you had an allergy. That it had devolved into another screaming match, and then you'd thrown the mystery earrings on the nightstand in his face. That you had teetered at the top of the narrow flight of slate stairs. Back pedaled down them because you knew with absolute certainty that it was heading down under your own force or under his. That he'd stood at the top, staring down at you cross armed and stony faced and told you to go, immune to your pleas for your boots, for your coat, for your phone. It wouldn't be the same as muttering it into the nurse's vault. Mandi would carry it with her, right there for you to see every time you looked at her from now until eternity. If she could look at you again after you rattled it all off. "Ant went to work and I locked myself out when I went to get the paper."

Your delivery is stiff. Over-rehearsed. The nurse's lips press thin. She hears the deception in your self-deprecating chuckle; sees the way you use your shrug to shrink away from further questions and compact the urge to take it back and replace it with the truth. Mandi is oblivious to her, all of her focus on you. "Do you want me to call him?"

There's a hesitation there. One you've never noticed before. An uncertainty you recognize even if it's of a slightly different timbre; marbled with guilt and fear in different proportions, and a third thing: pity. Your panic rises, exorcising itself by fingering through one of the rolodexes in your mind. The impulse to cover for him; to cover yourself, because you're supposed to be the type of person who stands up for herself. Which nights was she there? What had you said? What had he said? You force a cough to clear your throat. "No, thank you."

The tears come so suddenly, they startle even you. They choke you, your throat sealing itself around the contents of the Pandora's Box the simple declination has unsealed. The end has begun, no turning back the way you came nor any clear way forward. She wraps an arm around you and tucks you into her side. You've only known one another a few years, but they feel like forever and you know this is a promise you need and one she'll keep, even if neither of you know what it's comprised of just now.

It wasn't a common sight, but it wasn't entirely unheard of: Dahlia in a thick fleece thing that was as much coat as it was sweater; just a hair too short to provide insulation against the cold seeping through the thin cotton of her pajama pants from the metal fire escape she sat on. An American Spirit settled between the second knuckles of her first and second fingers, the tobacco stale. A pack too long abandoned in her nightstand, acknowledged only when the day was, for better or for worse, far too long. Green eyes set in the direction of the eastern horizon, squinting against the burn of curling smoke and the threat of morning. Dahlia watched pinks chase pale greens into the quickly disappearing ink of the night sky.

Refuge in the not-so-quiet. The City simultaneously heading to bed and waking up on a Sunday morning. The bedroom behind her a crime scene for someone else to explore. A litter of bodies, some curled, some sprawled, all immobile. An old friend, a pair of new acquaintances, and a few strangers for good measure. A chorus of snoring tied together by the warm, repetitive hiss of a needle that had found the Lock In Groove. Content in her exhaustion, she rolled the filter against the pad of her thumb before bringing it to her lips again.

The air was frigid, refreshing, but still not biting enough to break through the haze of whisky, exhaustion, and contentment. A life she had lost track of somewhere along the way, one adventure rolling into the next so seamlessly that there was no clear chain of cause and effect to trace back. Always on the fringes, ready to swoop in and fulfill her role as Den Mother when called upon. A title that had been used for introductions as her visitor had led the way through most of the 5 boroughs over the past 40 hours or so.

It was the sting in her thighs that prompted the clumsy climb back inside. Grace had never been one of Dahlia's virtues, that much more elusive when her limbs knew what her mind had been ignoring--that bedtime had been hours ago. She paused with crossed arms, sighing before grabbing a blanket and heading for the living room. Laying down only after pinning a note to the door.

If you're reading this note, you're on your way out. You're just north of Houston Street (turn left when you get downstairs). If you realize you've forgotten something, you're at Jamie's friends' place, The Den Mother. She has my contact info.
- Dahlia