The Shepherd

  “I can’t leave her here.” That made no sense. Home was only a mile away.

  Just load her in the car and drive home to call for help. The phone company had threatened to disconnect the landline, but it was probably still on, and I could always call from one of the neighbors.

  Having decided, I worked up the nerve to reach down and touch her arm. “I’m going to move you, I’ll try to be careful, but it’s probably gonna hurt.”

  She didn’t respond. I’d read somewhere that paramedics assume silence is permission. I scooped her up into my arms and her cries of pain broke the dead quiet of the empty highway.

  “It’s gonna be okay. I got you. You’re gonna make it.” I placed her as gently as possible into the front passenger seat of my car. She moaned and whimpered, but didn’t seem conscious. As an afterthought, I leaned the seat back all the way, so she could lie down.

  The urgency of the moment finally set in. A hit and run victim. A girl who was probably dying right now. I was taking her to my house and calling the police. Adrenaline spiked hard as I scrambled around to the driver’s side and leapt behind the wheel. No time for seat belts, no time for second thoughts. I floored the accelerator and popped the clutch, spitting gravel everywhere as I peeled out, fishtailing onto the pavement of the highway. I pushed that four cylinder for all it was worth, slamming through the gears, jamming the pedals to the floor. A NASCAR driver couldn’t have finagled a better performance out of that little Japanese motor in the three minutes it took to get home. I slid into the driveway, peppering the side of the trailer with a spray of gravel.

  I scrambled around to the passenger side so fast that I slipped in the gravel trying to jerk the car door open. I had to steady myself for a moment. My hands shook, my heart pounded hard and fast.

  Then I noticed the blood on my hands.

  Her blood.

  At fifty plus miles an hour, the colliding car made her right thigh an oozing mess of torn flesh. Her leggings were torn open enough to expose the raw wound. Her blood coated the front passenger seat but the vinyl upholstery cleaned easily. My stomach turned at the thought of scrubbing her blood off the seat. I began to realize I’d bitten off much more than I could chew.

  “Oh God, what the hell am I doing?” My breath came in short pants, I couldn’t suck in enough air.

  I backed away from the bloody wreck of a girl and breathed in and out, trying to calm down, trying to focus on what was important. She needed me. She needed me to do the right thing. She needed me to do what was necessary no matter how disgusting it may seem. I got control of my breathing and wiped my shaking hands off on my jeans.

  Okay, get the girl and do what needs done.

  I scooped her out of the front seat and carried her up the rickety old warped steps to my front door without any real effort. She was so damn light. I could feel the contour of her bony shoulder blades and skinny legs, like an injured little bird. The brief recollection of her shoving me back into my car and slamming the door in my face puzzled me. How could this tiny little slip of a girl muster the strength? How she could do so much for me and yet weigh almost nothing?

  Inside the house, it finally occurred to me that Dad could help. I’d been so panicked earlier I hadn’t thought of Dad. He would know how to deal with the police, and paramedics, and … yeah right. Whatever. Dad wasn’t there. I yelled, “Daaaad! Daaaad!” But I already knew Richard Evans was gone for the evening.

  His silver Ford F-250 pickup wasn’t in the driveway. My father was never around when I needed him most. On my own, as usual.

  I debated laying her on the couch, but then remembered all the blood on the car seat. Better not ruin the couch. It was the only one we had. I took her to my room and laid her gently on the bed, stripping away the blanket. Blood was everywhere, my hands and arms, the sheets, my shirt and pants. The sheets were getting sacrificed on this one. I couldn’t stop thinking about the blood. It stained everything. I would never forget how a moment of stupidity might have killed this delicate little girl.

  I jogged out to the living room and snatched the cordless phone off the charging base. I hit the on button, no dial tone. “Shit! Come on!” Then I remembered, suspended lines are supposed to work for emergencies.

  I punched in 911. The phone rang three times. “Yes!”

  “Your call has been forwarded to the Qwest service center. Please wait for a Qwest customer service representative. If you’d prefer to arrange payment on your delinquent account through the automated system using a debit or credit card please press one. If you’d like to make arrangements with a Qwest customer service representative …”

  “Son of a bitch!” I screamed into the phone. “You ASSHOLES!” I slammed the useless plastic back into its charging base. “What are the odds I don’t have a single working phone at a time like this? That’s gotta be a friggin’ million to one!”

  I ran back to my bedroom, to my cellular plug-in wall charger. The screen on my cell glowed with the cascading bar graph pattern. It was charging. I was about to turn on my cell, but the hoodie girl groaned and mumbled something.

  Her eyes were open and glazed with pain. She had rolled over on her left side, and her shredded blood-soaked stretch pants revealed a gaping wound on her thigh. She looked right at me, but it seemed like she looked past me, like she saw someone else, not me.

  She called to me, “Mikhail.” Kinda sounded like Michael, but not exactly, and spoken with a slight accent.

  I never told her my name, did I? A chill crept down my spine. The little hairs on the back of my neck and arms stood up straight with goose bumps.

  I looked at my cell again. I tried to turn it on.

  The power cord jiggled loose as I pressed the on button, and the phone powered down as quickly as it had begun to power up. “Oh you cannot do this! Fuck!” I’d been having problems with it lately, the charger plug-in was sketchy. It would disconnect at times, leaving me with a dead battery when I expected it to be fully charged.

  I needed to get my ass over to the neighbor’s and call 911. NOW. No more screwing around with my personal telecommunications disaster. Hoodie girl murmured something again. I couldn’t understand her, so I leaned down close, inches from her face.

  She said something in a foreign language, it sounded Slavic, maybe Russian, “Izvinite Mikhail požalujsta, ja teb’a l’ubl’u, izvinite požalujsta minya.” I couldn’t understand a word of it, but it sounded like she was pleading for help or something. And she’d used my name again, or what sounded like my name. It came out Mee-Kile.

  I tried to hold her gaze, but her eyes wandered randomly, out of focus. “I have to leave to call an ambulance, I’ll be right back. I’ll only be a couple minutes … okay?”

  As I pulled away, she reached up to grab me with both hands on my face. She pegged me directly with her gaze, fully focused now. The intensity overwhelmed me. She held me rapt, I couldn’t blink, couldn’t look away.

  She spoke low and even, quiet, but each word resonated through my soul, “No. You will not leave me. You will not call 911. I need you here. Now.”

  I nodded up and down. I couldn’t imagine disagreeing with this poor girl who needed my help so badly. Of course I should stay there at her side. It was indisputably the right thing to do. Why would I ever leave her?

  * * * *

  Chapter 3

  Thursday, September 9th, 10:00 p.m.

  Hoodie Girl let me go after a moment of intense, awkward eye contact. She looked down at herself, assessing the damage. The girl was all there now, all business. I had the strange sensation of dealing with a very mature person in a fourteen year old package. She had the no-nonsense demeanor I’d noticed adults have when shit gets serious.

  She tried to pull down the waistband of her pants to see her injuries, but her left hand was mangled. She groaned with the failed attempt. She hooked me with a pain-filled gaze that demanded all my attention and obedience.

  Through gritted teeth she whispered, “Help me.”
br />   I delicately pulled down the elastic waist band of her leggings, trying to peel it back rather than drag it over her wounds. She grimaced and hissed as she lifted her hips slightly to accommodate me. The heat of my embarrassment flushed across my face. I tried to look every anywhere but directly at this skinny girl wearing nothing but blood-soaked underwear. No matter how hard I tried to respect her situation, my eyes reverted to staring unabashedly at her mangled right hip.

  She looked down at herself and back up to me, eyes full of expectation. “I need to take them off. Please help me. I can’t do it by myself.”

  With an audible gulp, I nodded.

  It was awkward going, not at all the way I’d imagined taking off a girl’s underwear for the first time. She was so … petite. I had a deep sense of the impropriety of the moment, but she didn’t seem to care. A little nudity was the least of her worries. Her severity helped to calm my nerves somewhat. Once again I had the feeling she was in control, I just needed to be there for her.

  With her pants and underwear off, the full extent of her injuries was revealed. Her knees were skinned, but that was nothing compared to the bloody pulp of her right thigh. In the mess, I couldn’t distinguish anything but raw bleeding flesh, almost like hamburger. My stomach did a tuck and roll. I thought I was gonna hurl for sure this time. Our eyes met. She seemed to understand.

  “You have to be strong for me. I need your help.” Her words worked a spell to calm my anxiety and nausea, and gave me the resolve to go on. Not trusting myself to speak, I nodded and took deep calming breaths.

  She began to pull up the cuff of her hoodie sweatshirt with her one good hand, looking to me for help. I really tried to be careful, but it hurt her. A lot. She whimpered and grunted as I lifted her arms up while pulling the ruined hoodie inside out. Since she wore nothing underneath, her nudity revealed the rest of her injuries. Her left arm had already turned black and blue, and her elbow had a deep bloody gash. She must have landed on it coming down on the roadside.

  “Is it broken?” I asked while looking closely at her arm.

  “No!” She snapped. “But it hurts like hell!”

  “Oh god, I’m so sorry.”

  I found the courage to look her directly in those unnerving amber eyes. For a moment her face held the accusation, but it quickly morphed to acceptance. I kept staring in her eyes, purposely avoiding looking at all her girl parts. It felt wrong to look at her, and there was nothing remotely sexy about this naked, bloodied girl with eyes full of pain.

  I was at a loss as to what to do next. My only thought was to get a very big Band-Aid, the sum total of my medical knowledge. She had robbed me of any common sense.

  “So what now?”

  She held out her left hand, she could barely move it. Her entire arm was at a weird set of angles. It was wrong … out of socket. I could actually see the freakish displacement of her shoulder.

  “You’ve got to help me put it back in place.” She hissed through thin lips and gritted teeth, “There’s no way I can do it alone.”

  Wishing I could do anything but what she asked of me, I grabbed ahold of her arm.

  “Tell me what to do.” I spoke much more boldly than I felt. This was gonna hurt. I did not have the stomach to hurt her anymore.

  “Pull my arm out straight!”

  She snapped, and I just did it. She cried out as I yanked on her arm. With a single look, I knew to keep pulling. Teeth clamped tight and eyes scrunched in agony, she reached around with her right hand to feel the joint of her left shoulder.

  It finally occurred to me how truly weird this was. She should be bawling her head off, crying for mommy or daddy, something characteristic of a girl who’d just been hit by a car. This was all wrong. A spike of fear slowly worked its way into my gut. All sorts of strange thoughts and possibilities began to materialize.

  She jolted me out of my imaginings with a command, “Pull harder!”

  I pulled until I lifted her right off the bed. Hanging in the air, she shoved down hard on her left shoulder with her right hand. She gasped in agony as her arm visibly popped into place with a wet crunch. I panicked and let go, and dropped her back onto the bed. Little mewling, whining noises accompanied her agonized shudders. She hyperventilated, her face squished into a mask of pain. I knew she was hurt, bad, but I didn’t have a clue what to do. Tylenol and Advil weren’t gonna cut it. Could use some of those pills Justin swiped from his mom right about now.

  When she caught her breath she ordered, “Bandages!”

  Is this really happening? There’s a naked, bloody girl on my bed, barking orders at me.

  Despite the overwhelming strangeness, I rushed to my father’s bathroom and dug through dirty laundry to reach the first aid kit under the sink. As I returned to my room, she was pulling on the index finger of her mangled left hand. It hurt to watch.

  We both cried out as she straightened her jammed finger. She looked at me sharply and snapped, “Hurry up.”

  I stepped up with the hydrogen peroxide and paper towels and began meticulously cleaning each wound as she indicated, starting with the disgusting mess of her left thigh. I worked slowly and methodically to clean out the gravel and dirt from her flesh, being oh-so-careful to cleanse the wounds thoroughly before applying the bandages. That’s what she told me to do, so that’s what I did.

  Eventually, she pulled the blanket over her. I struggled not to look at her. I don’t know if it’s possible for a boy to avoid looking at a naked girl on his bed, but I tried.

  She ended up across my lap, gritting her teeth, moaning, occasionally whimpering, but mostly quiet. This girl had courage I had never seen before.

  She twitched and hissed if I was too rough.

  “Sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m really trying to be careful.”

  “It’s okay. Just … be more careful.” Her words were muffled as her face buried in my pillow.

  At some point, with her whimpering and biting the pillow, she actually fell asleep on my lap. After what seemed like hours, I had cleaned up what I could and taped it all up with gauze and bandages to the best of my ability. She would probably need stitches and who knows what else, but she might actually be okay, if she made it to a doctor, like immediately.

  I didn’t know for sure how long I’d been going at it, but by the time I cleaned up the pile of bloody paper towels and gauze, it was already midnight. I slid out from under her as careful as can be, and washed my hands in the bathroom sink. Probably never get the blood stains out of my mattress, but I could at least get it off my hands. I looked like hell. Shaggy hair needed cut bad. My plain dark eyes were streaked with red, bloodshot. I had grown like two inches this past summer, and I looked too lanky, too skinny, almost gaunt. I could look my Dad eye-to-eye now.

  I looked as tired as I felt. “What the hell am I doing?” How stupid. Why take all this on my own shoulders? My phone probably had a charge by now. Why didn’t I call 911? Why didn’t I go get help?

  She murmured something again. Sounded like, “don’t leave me.”

  I checked on her. Still face-down on my pillow, covered in my blanket. I just wanted to sleep more than anything, but I needed to make that phone call.

  She looked up and caught me with her eyes. It was that I-know-you-were-thinking-of-leaving-me kind of look. “Come here.”

  No escaping this girl.

  I sat beside her on the bed, wishing I could do something more. I really needed to call for help. “Don’t go. I need you here.” She mumbled quietly, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She wrapped her good arm around my leg and burrowed in, using me as part of her pillow.

  “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

  I didn’t even know this girl’s name, but I knew that we had something special. An intimate connection. We shared a strange and grisly connection. I’d never forget this night as long as I lived.

  “I gotta call 911. You need more help than I can give.”

  Her grip on my leg squeezed tighter and she
mumbled. “Later.”

  The adrenaline peaks and crashes of this insane night had drained me. I could barely keep my eyes open. I snoozed right there, next to a girl covered in the patchwork of my amateur bandages. My first night with a naked girl in my bed – not the way I imagined – not at all.

  In my sleep I dreamt. Slim pale limbs slipped and slid all over my body, snaking around to ensnare me in an inescapable embrace. I dreamt of whispered words, intimate things spoken in a foreign tongue. The Hoodie Girl called out to me in anguish by that other name, Mikhail.

  I woke later as Richard came hurtling through the trailer, a drunken train wreck barreling past my room to the master bedroom. Instant paranoia hit me. My father would open the bedroom door and see me there, a girl curled around me in bed. All hell would surely break loose.

  Right.

  The moments my father cared enough to talk to me were few and far between. And Richard had probably camped out at The Ripple until closing, blasted drunk. He’d be passed out in minutes.

  With the noise, she stirred a little. Her uninjured hand slid up under my shirt to rest on my chest. This girl was friendly. I had a sense I wasn’t the first guy to share a bed with her. But I was so damn tired I didn’t care. I accepted her embrace and fell back asleep, dead to the world.

  * * * *

  I woke to daylight warming my face. I propped up on my elbows cautiously. I didn’t want to jar Hoodie Girl.

  She was gone.

  I lurched up and scanned the empty room in disbelief.

  How could she be gone? She couldn’t even walk! I’d been planning to take the day off school to get her to the hospital.

  I must be losing my mind.

  The bloody bandages on the floor proved I didn’t dream the entire crazy ordeal. It all seemed so unreal by the light of day. Where did she go? Did she live in the trailer park? What a bummer. All that stress and anxiety and the little brat just up and disappeared without a word.

  Left me with her blood stains on my sheets and mattress and her bloody bandages – but why take off the bandages?