Everything hurt. Existence felt like something she had to fight for. She reached out with her hand and felt the perimeter of where she could reach. Hard, cold floor but then something else. Something swishy. She grasped it and pulled whatever it was into her vision.

A coat. Nothing that would help.

She felt an overwhelming sadness. “Help,” she tried, but found the word quiet and gargled. Then she clamped her mouth shut.

Why wasn’t she in a hospital? Why hadn’t someone found her? Unless—whoever had hit her had brought her here. And if that was the case, then she didn’t want to alert them.

How was she going to get out of this? She couldn’t feel her legs—let alone walk, let alone run. She shifted her head to try to see around the room. Stairs. Stairs—she couldn’t get upstairs. She was stuck.

Call for help? Not call out, but maybe there was something she could find to get a message out to people. Maybe—what was one of those things called? A phone, yes, a phone.

The coat.

She reached her hand out again and pulled the coat even closer. She patted it down, fully expecting to find nothing. But there was something—in a pocket. Something rectangular and solid. She tried the zip, but every time she pulled, the coat went with it. It wasn’t going to work when she had no way to stop it.

A phone. She knew, in her mind, that it was a phone. And she couldn’t get to it because of a bloody zip. To her, the phone meant instant salvation—as though she’d use it and instantly the police would come and the doctors would come and the paramedics would come and scoop her up and fix her.

She tried pulling on the zip again to the same result.

How was she going to—She thought of something. She pulled the coat over, so it was in front of her face, blocking the room out of view entirely. She moved the fabric as close as she could and then bit down on the corner. She pulled the zip, and the fabric held. The pocket opened. She put her hand in and brought out a phone.

Relief plunged into her like a wave. This was it. All she needed.

She tapped it. Thank God it wasn’t password protected. She tapped the phone symbol and then tried dialing 999. But her fingers weren’t working very well. At least one of the nines always came out as an eight or a six. She kept trying—over and over and over to the same result. She tried one last time and that was the worst of the lot—856.