Bliss’s patchwork cargo pants were tucked into purple sheepskin boots and she was wearing a black OCCUPY WALL STREET T-shirt. She’d brought a plate of caramel apples, which sat on a tray one of the nurses had rolled in. Bliss’s wooden knitting needles made a familiar clicking sound that Susan found comforting. Those first few hours, when they’d given Susan the good pain meds and she was drifting in and out, she liked hearing that sound every time she came to—it meant her mother was nearby.

“I thought they were coming to discharge me,” Susan said. She was already dressed. Bliss had brought her clothes to change into—a blue and white batik blouse that Bliss had given Susan four years ago and that she’d never worn, green corduroy pedal pushers, and an ancient pair of Keens that Susan had bought at Goodwill to wear when she went beachcombing one summer for a story for the Herald. She looked ridiculous and the shoes smelled faintly of rotting seaweed. But Bliss didn’t seem to notice.

“They said soon,” Bliss said. She smiled approvingly. “Your sling matches the shirt.”

They’d said “soon” an hour ago. Susan still had the IV port in her hand. A small bruise had formed where the needle pierced her skin. Archie’s blood had taken a long time to come off her hands. They’d let Susan take a shower after she swore not to get the bandage wet and Susan had washed her hands raw under the hot water until every speck of blood was gone. But now she saw a faint line of red at the edge of her nail bed.

Susan curled her hand. “I smell like hospital soap,” she said to her mother.

“How does your shoulder feel?” Bliss asked.

Susan rotated her shoulder gently. The doctors had done an MRI and seemed to think she’d be fine. She was lucky, they told her, that someone with medical training had performed what they called a “closed reduction” before long-term damage was done. “My shoulder’s fine,” she said, hopping off the bed. She walked to the window.

“And your vagina?” Bliss asked.

Susan blushed despite herself. “It kind of … throbs,” Susan said. Karim had bruised her, but an examination had shown that he’d never gotten his vicious little hands inside her. “Luckily my vagina had titanium doors,” she added.

“It’s those Kegel exercises I taught you,” Bliss said.

You could see almost all of the east side from her hospital room up on the hill at OHSU. The complex loomed above the city at the top of a winding road. Serious cases, like Archie, arrived by helicopter. There were no mountains on the horizon today. The cloud cover blotted them off the landscape as if they had never existed.

“I want to see Archie,” Susan said.

The clicking stopped. “I know,” Bliss said.