Eppie awoke peacefully after a long, restful night's sleep. She had not slept this well in months. Although she did not particularly enjoy being in the hospital, she had to admit that her two-day stay here had done her a great deal of good. Her injuries still caused her some discomfort, but the healing effects of a couple of days of bed rest had reduced the pain to a level which was barely noticeable. The food she was given was the standard cafeteria fare and left quite a lot to be desired in terms of taste and presentation, yet she found that her appetite was strong and she ate all that was brought to her. In these clean, comfortable surroundings, she felt a vitality returning to her body which had been missing in recent days. After spending most of the last two days lying in bed, her limbs yearned to stretch themselves out and take up some invigorating activity and her lungs longed to breathe the fresh, unstarched air which looked so inviting outside her window. The doctor had told her that she would be released that day and she looked forward to her departure with great anticipation.
She did not know precisely where she would go or on whom she would rely for her living arrangements after she was released, but she knew that she did not want to return home right away. She had a couple of friends from school who might be able to put her up for a little while. She had spent more than a few nights away from home in the past, when staying in her parents' house had become unbearable. After several days she had returned home to find that her parents did not seem very concerned by her absence. She would receive little more than passing recognition from her mother that she had been away, along with a stern rebuke from her stepfather that her chores had not finished themselves. She was therefore not surprised in the least that her parents had not shown up to visit her here in the hospital. She did not know what length of time would be sufficient for her parents to become concerned enough to begin looking for her, but she did know that two days would be scarcely enough time for them to notice that she was gone. In the back of her mind she wished that she would never have to return to that house, but unless she found another place to stay she knew that in time she would surely be forced to return, and the thought depressed her immeasurably.
Eppie looked around her hospital room slowly and carefully, as people do when they are moving away from a place where they have lived for a long time. There was nothing even slightly domestic about the room. Not a single picture adorned the walls. They were painted an austere shade of near-white and were encumbered with only a pair of florescent light fixtures over the bed and a few panels of switches and electrical outlets. The floor was a polished, hard linoleum, and every piece of furniture rode across it on plastic casters which made an identical sound—a low, rolling growl; an artificial thunder—whenever that object was moved from one place to another. There were no flowers in the room, for nobody had sent her a bouquet or a get-well balloon or even a card. She would not miss this room after she left.
Still, she began to think that maybe this place was not so bad after all. The nurses were friendly and attentive to her, and the doctors seemed genuinely concerned for her welfare. Even the cleaning staff was nice to her. It gave her a strange feeling to be surrounded by people who labored for her well-being. Her concept of home was pale in comparison to that which was held by most people, and an unfamiliar feeling of comfort and security came over her when she thought of how well she had been treated here. For the first time in a period longer than she could recall, Eppie felt completely relaxed. The tension which had been an unrelenting part of her daily existence had fallen away with the realization that the next person to walk into her room, whoever he or she might be, would do so with the intention of caring for her rather than preying upon her.
Savoring these feelings of contentment, a part of her did not want to leave the hospital. But she was young and restless and physically unable to simply lie in bed all day and do nothing. Her youth gave her body the ability to recover quickly from her injuries and it gave her spirit the desire to move on from her past. She resolved that she would do all that she could to avoid returning to her parents' house. Her last beating had been more severe than any other, and her stepfather's viciousness had been increasing over time. Although she had loathed him for years, she had only now reached the point where she felt able to break away from him and from her mother. It was a decision that was, despite its magnitude, made easier by the utter unacceptability of the alternative.
It was time, she told herself. She had endured more than she would ever have thought possible just five years earlier when that fiend had entered her life. The child that she had been back then could not have imagined the oppression to come. And even if she had seen it coming, she saw nothing that she could have done to avoid it. She had been only nine years old—still in grade school. She could not have defended herself or escaped from his clutches any more than a baby bird could have flown away from its nest on scrawny, down-covered wings. But she had grown into a stronger person in the years since and she knew what she could do now. She was an adult now, or nearly so, and she could fend for herself. Life on her own would not be easy, and she held no illusions that it would be. Where would she live? How would she eat? Would she return to school or try to find a job to support herself? She did not know the answers to these questions, but she saw quite clearly that any hardships that she might face in the days ahead were unlikely to be more difficult for her than the torment that had been her life until this day. She had no fear of inadvertently taking a step backward, because that was virtually impossible. The direction in which she moved from here—any direction—seemed a great improvement over remaining in place. The act of simply taking a step on her own was itself the goal to be realized now. The chosen direction was secondary.
An orderly arrived at her door with a tray of food. He smiled at Eppie and wished her good morning as he placed the tray on a small table and wheeled it into position in front of her. Eppie smiled back at him and thanked him with a lilt in her voice. She dug into the food eagerly, knowing that it might be the last free meal she would have for a while. As she ate, she recalled the conversation that she had had with the young woman who had come to visit her the day before. Rachel was her name, Eppie reminded herself. She was not always good at remembering names, but she would make a special effort to remember this one. Eppie had had difficulty relating to Rachel when she first introduced herself because she had not recognized her as the woman who had come to her aid. Her incomplete recollection of the episode consisted of places and events but not of people. She recalled escaping from her stepfather's truck and falling toward the ground. She also recalled being driven to the hospital in a car and being attended to by strangers, but she had no recollection of who those strangers were or even what they looked like. Rachel told her everything that she had seen that day and most of it matched Eppie's clouded memory of what had happened, so she concluded that Rachel must indeed have been the woman who had helped her.
Rachel seemed to be a nice person, and the fact that she had been there to assist her in her time of need gave Rachel an air of saintliness in Eppie's mind. The further fact that she had taken the time to come back to the hospital the next day to see how Eppie was doing put her near the top of a very short list of people who had ever been so kind to her. Eppie was impressed by her thoughtfulness and wanted to trust her in a compelling way, but trust was not a feeling that came easily to a heart so ravaged, and Eppie was hesitant. Rachel had asked her about her home life and Eppie had been characteristically vague in her response. She was deeply ashamed of her parents and the mistreatment which she had received at their hands, and any discussion of them, especially with an inquisitive stranger, made her uneasy. Rachel had recognized her discomfort and had not pressed the subject. She had asked Eppie whether she had a place to stay after she left the hospital, and Eppie had told her, truthfully, that she had not yet decided where she would go. To Eppie's surprise, Rachel had then offered to let her stay at her apartment for as long as she liked. She had a sofa-bed in the living room that was always available, she had said, and a roommate who would not mind her presence at all. Somewhat embarrassed and puzzled by the offer, Eppie had told her that she might be able to stay with a friend, but that, if that possibility did not work out, she would think about her offer.
Now Eppie considered the offer again. Perhaps it was not so unusual as it had first seemed. She had to remind herself, against an instinct bred by countless incidents, that generosity and unselfishness were not uncommon gestures among people, even, perhaps especially, between new acquaintances. The more she thought about the possibility of staying with Rachel, the less uncomfortable she became with the idea. She realized that her situation was difficult and that she would not be able to sustain herself on her own for long without assistance. Rachel was not a malevolent person; to the contrary, she had gone out of her way more than once to help Eppie when she had been under no obligation to do so, and Eppie's initial mistrust of her now seemed silly. Having no better prospects at hand for her immediate future, Eppie decided that she would accept Rachel's offer and stay with her, at least for a short time, until she could find another place to live.
Eppie finished her breakfast and sat back in her bed with a feeling of relief. Having made, albeit tentatively and with much apprehension, the first decisions of any real consequence in her life, she relished the sense of satisfaction that such self-sovereignty brought. She began to realize that her life had changed permanently in these last couple of days. She had slipped off the shackles of her earlier life and would now fling them away into the distance as far as her unfettered arms could hurl them. No longer would she be the frightened little girl who was trapped in her hopeless situation with no avenue for escape. She felt that she had stepped across a threshold and would, from this day forward, assume control of her life. This must be what adulthood feels like, she told herself. This must be the feeling of freedom that comes on that day when a person is forced—through pain, through persecution, through a thousand injustices great and small—to abandon the flawed and incomplete notion of who she used to be and to embrace—with confidence, with hope, with newly discovered courage—the person that she is meant to be.
Eppie put a hand up to her face and felt her bruises through the overlying layers of gauze and tape. They did not hurt as badly today as they had yesterday. She knew that the bandages would not be needed for much longer.
* * *
Rachel arrived at the hospital at a quarter past twelve, carrying a manila envelope stuffed with papers and looking a bit bedraggled. It had been a long morning for her. She had received the phone call from the hospital's administrative clerk at eight o'clock informing her that Eppie was to be released that day at noon and that a parent or legal guardian must be present when she signs out. If no such person was available to take her at the appointed time she would be taken by the police to the county social services center until a parent or guardian came to claim her. If nobody came to take her that day, she would be assigned to foster care until a court hearing could be held to appoint a guardian.
Rachel immediately called Eppie in her room and asked her if she was open to the idea of Rachel applying for guardianship of her. Rachel felt a galvanizing sense of purpose come over her when Eppie said yes. She took the day off from work and rushed down to the courthouse, where she spent four hours slogging through the Byzantine maze of rules and procedures which had to be satisfied for one to be appointed the temporary legal guardian of an unrelated minor. She went from one office to another, filling out forms, signing affidavits, getting them notarized, waiting in lines, writing three separate checks to three different cashiers for various fees, and committing herself to a long series of follow-up visits and court appearances which would be required until the appointment was made permanent, if she chose to do so. Twice she had to dash back to her apartment to retrieve necessary papers that nobody had told her to bring with her earlier. It was at times like these that she wished she was on better terms with her father, who could probably have accomplished the entire undertaking with a single phone call. But it would have taken a far more desperate situation for her to subjugate herself to him in such a way. She would have filled out forms until her fingers fell off before she would have admitted to her father that she needed his help with anything. Finally, a few minutes after noon, she received an official document appointing her as Eppie's temporary guardian. She ran out of the courthouse and drove as fast as she could to the hospital.
Rachel hurried into the reception area to find Eppie sitting by herself in one of the waiting chairs. Scott Caldwell stood at the receptionist's desk talking with the administrative clerk. Rachel waved quickly at Eppie and walked directly to the desk.
"I'm here to pick up Eppie," she declared proudly, thrusting the freshly processed guardianship form at the clerk. Caldwell turned and looked at her.
"So, we meet again Officer Caldwell," Rachel said, smiling with energetic relief, like a traveler who has just caught a departing train at the last possible moment.
"Yeah," he replied dryly. "How about that."
"Look," she said, "I know we got off to an unpleasant start the other day, but I hope we can put that behind us. I mean, I don't expect us to be great friends or anything. I just wanted you to know that I don't have any hard feelings about it. I know that you have a job to do and I respect that. I hope you can respect the fact that I have a right to do what I'm doing."
Caldwell looked away from Rachel. "Is her paperwork valid, Betty?" he asked the clerk.
"Yes," came the reply. "Everything seems to be in order. She can take the girl with her. Sign here, Ms. Farrell."
The clerk handed Rachel a clipboard with a long, finely-printed release form clipped to it. Rachel signed the form at the bottom without reading a word of it and handed the clipboard back to the clerk.
"You're lucky you got here when you did," Caldwell said to Rachel. "Two more minutes and I would have been driving that girl over to county services." He placed his hat on his head and turned toward the front exit. "Don't screw her up too bad," he said over his shoulder as he left.
Rachel let the comment pass, as she was able to do in certain circumstances. She was feeling triumphant at her accomplishments of the morning and nothing was going to sour her mood. This was not the time to get into an argument with that obnoxious jackass, she told herself. She had a more important task to attend to.
She looked at Eppie as the girl sat in her chair on the other side of the room and was struck by a singular combination of sympathy and respect for her. The girl was dressed in the same clothes that she had been wearing when she was kicked so violently out of her stepfather's pickup truck. Some of the blood from her face was still visible on the collar of her shirt, and one of the sleeves was torn at the elbow. Her jeans and sneakers were well worn and, although they were not really very dirty, they showed their age in the sanitized environment of the hospital. Still, Rachel thought that Eppie looked better in her street clothes than she had looked in her hospital gown. She looked stronger and less vulnerable now—less like a victim and more like a fighter. Rachel liked the look. The girl had been felled by a ghastly blow, but she now appeared ready to rise to her feet again.
Rachel walked over and stood in front of Eppie. The girl looked up at her with soft eyes that expressed all of the hope and anxiety and thankfulness and doubt that she was feeling at that moment. It was a look that was both insecure and resolved, and it contained countless other emotions as well, but fear was not one of them. Rachel saw that the fear which had consumed this girl two days earlier was no longer present in her eyes.
Rachel smiled a relaxed smile. "Ready to go home, Eppie?" she said.
"I guess so."