Then a spike of pain—unprecedented in its shock if not its intensity—pain that sent her off the pavement of the path and onto the damp, cool ground. The man with the gun had shoved her; her face—left side—had hit the pavement. These facts struggled to make themselves clear, to rise to the top of her consciousness and meet with the throttle of pain itself, as she registered heavy treads of rubber soles rushing away. She heard the sneakers through her own high-pitched wheeze on top of coughing; for a moment she struggled to breathe. She saw nothing but staunch gray bark. Undulating green. I am a big old tree, she’d sung to her baby daughter, stuck in the ground is me. She sat up too quickly and felt blood running down her right arm, which was confusing because her arm felt fine. The blood was coming from her arm? Her eye? Her nose. The blood was coming from her nose. It was gushing from her nose and down her arm.

Matthew came into focus. “Jesus, Sarah,” he repeated, keyed up. “Are you okay? Honey?” Taking her face in his hands, looking, checking. “Here”—he took off his running tank—“bleed on this.”

“I’m okay,” she said, after what felt like a full minute, but still she wasn’t sure. “I’m all right, I’m fine.” She touched the tank to her nose—there was tingling, throbbing, but most unsettling was the blood.

“Let me see it again,” he said, and she moved the tank away.

He gently put his fingers at the bridge of her nose; she flinched but didn’t cry.

“I don’t think—” she started to say. Two dogs were barking in the distance. Blood wasn’t exactly gushing anymore. “I don’t think it’s broken.”

“Jesus. But, yes, I think you’re right.”

She’d been mugged at gunpoint. Their assailant had shoved her hard, her hands were scraped and stinging, but here she was: still breathing. Her face hurt but not enough that she was worried. She should take an Advil, though. She always kept a bottle in her bag in case of bad cramps, because despite the expectation that her period would begin tapering off—she was almost forty-nine, after all—no such tapering had occurred. As she reached for her bag, she realized that of course the Advil was gone, because her bag was gone and, most important, her phone.

“We have to get some ice on this,” Matthew said, and helped her up to start walking.

“It’ll be fine.” She nodded. “I’d know if something was broken.”