Waking

I was surprised to be awake after the running as long as I could through the forest away from a warm jail cell that had to be waiting for me.

The room in which I found myself looked as if it could be from a hundred years ago. All the furniture looked hand made. Not in the way you might lash some branches together and call it a chair, but in the differences in the wood made it clear it didn't come from a factory.

Yellowed wall paper hung on the walls, many times patched and holding some form of it's own identity.

"Oh, you're finally awake," a somewhat harsh voice spoke from outside the partially closed door. Not rough, but sounding unused and not at all used to speaking to others.

"Yes," I called out, "I'm certainly surprised to be here, wherever here happens to be."

She came in the room finally, looking embarrassed for some reason. Her gray hair hung down, parted in the middle and framed a pair of dull blueish eyes.

"You should be surprised, running around with a knife wound isn't exactly a smart thing to do."

Her voice changed a little bit as she pulled the bandages away to look at wound. It became magnitudes warmer as she said, "You were almost dead, all gray from the cold and blood loss. I stitched you up though."

Through the spots I was seeing in front of my eyes I whispered, "Thank you for that. Where did you learn sew people?"

"In prison." Came the reply.

I could tell she wanted me to ask the obvious follow up question, so I did, "Were you in prison?"

She liked the way I framed the question in that neutral way and not asking what she had done.

"I was a guard and the prisoners paid me to take care of them. It was an orderly process, a professional one, where they would ask about what you would do and what you wouldn't. Then they would get together and decide on what to pay you." She said all this while looking out the window, perhaps thinking back to those days. I didn't sense any regret from her over this though.

"You must have gotten a lot of practice sewing people up then."

"Sometimes them, sometimes other guards who crossed someone. We kept everything in house, well almost everything. We moved drugs in which made our jobs alot easier. Nothing worse than cleaning up after an addict half way through withdrawal. A cell phone means a lot there too. Too many of our 'guests' where locked away from distant family.

"The women's prisons are a lot different from the men's prisons. They aren't as hung up on race there and they tend to work together more. They are also much meaner when they have to be."

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked a little too quickly.

She pulled this big hammer from under the bed and yelled, "You aren't going anywhere!"

At which point I passed out, letting the spots in front of me consume the rest of me.

It was dark when I awoke again. Thirsty and hungry in some dim way. Suddenly I looked down at my legs recalling a scene from some weird movie I had seen. I was only mildly disappointed that there didn't appear to be any damage.

"That was a joke, sorry my sense of humor isn't so...sane."

I laughed as much as the stitches would let me. "Don't worry about it. Life has played some better jokes on me lately too."

"I heard." She said quietly.

"What exactly did you hear?"

"You know it's funny when people say 'exactly', they already fear what you're about to say."

So we waited until the mental tug of war could be complete.

"Bill Jeffers was the first officer on the scene in that motel room. Did you know that that was the eleventh time someone had been badly hurt in that room? Makes you think doesn't it?"

"I could tell from the person working the counter that the room had some sort of reputation to it. I didn't think it would turn out so bad though."

She leaned back a little and said, "Bill used to work for the FBI. He said he got tired of all the politics that where as much a part of the job as enforcing laws. Every decision he made came under review by different groups of people. So now, he just likes to patrol the highway that runs in front of the hotel.

"He could tell from the scene that her stabbing had been self inflicted and that there had been another person in the room. What he didn't find were any defensive wounds on her, even incidental ones that happen during a confrontation. Still all the 'extra' blood there got him thinking and he checked out the woman."

"She had been taking various prescription drugs. I didn't know her anymore." I said trying to hold back old emotions, ones that didn't fit me anymore.

"He checked you out as well, didn't find out anything much though. Divorced. No arrests."

Now, she looked closely at me as she asked, "Why did you run then?"

I closed my eyes to see Sandy standing there with the hateful look on her face which was far more destructive than any knife could have been. I said, "I've been to a few small towns and they were mostly the same. If you came in from outside, you were already nothing more than a criminal. You were a stranger and if anything happened it would be you to bear the blame.

"Plus, I knew Sandy all through high school. She was a good person. We never connected though, either then or recently.

"I guess I couldn't face what she had become. I couldn't see her anymore without drowning in the pain that old memories give.

"So I ran, knowing at the time it was a terminal choice. I had hoped in that final time I would at least gain some insight into why she had done what she had.

"I got nothing though."