I gripped the steering wheel. I started to cry. It took me many minutes to calm down; to regain an equilibrium where I could focus again on the world in front of me. A strip mall with a yogurt joint, a donut joint, a thrift store joint. And the clinic, marked out as nothing more than a place you can go for your health … but which had triple bars on its windows and a reinforced steel front door, and where there was a guy out front with an assault rifle strapped across his big chest. I watched Elise head toward this establishment, her walk a little hesitant, as if something was about to again blow up in her face. She stopped, straightened her shoulders, becoming very purposeful. Very determined. Very don’t look back.

But she did look back. I saw the way she regarded me. Not with anger or fury. More with concern. Borderline concern. Yet concern, nonetheless.

I nodded back. Telling her … well, I had no fucking idea what I was trying to tell her. But I watched as she pushed forward into the clinic. She punched some numbers into a keypad. The door opened. She moved inside it. The heavy steel door closed behind her. I reached over and retrieved all the money dropped in front of me. I counted it. Eighty dollars. Crazy. I pulled out my cell. I texted her.

Please come back and let me give you half of all this.

Pause. Silence.

I leaned against the steering wheel, suddenly letting go. Sobbing again. Uncontrollably. But within minutes I was back in control. Or something near to that. Within minutes I could put the car into drive and get the fuck out of here.

Five minutes later …

A bing on my phone.

A text.

From Elise.

Please pick me up at 8 tonight. Same address where you dropped me.

I looked at this text for a long time, thinking: she is even more twisted up than me.

But I still texted back:

Okay.

She then texted back a single word:

Courage.

ten