She’s just another detail.
Irrelevant to the acquisition plan.
2
Freedom isn’t found in escape, but in the deliberate choice of which chains to wear.
That’s what I tell myself at 5:47 a.m., staring at the water-stained ceiling tiles of New Beginnings Women’s Shelter, where my finger throbs like it’s auditioning for a percussion solo in the Trauma Symphony. The glass shard embedded in my flesh is giving a masterclass in the physics of pain—sharp when I move, dull when I don’t, constant regardless of my preference.
Last night’s emergency self-surgery by flashlight app was apparently less successful than my WebMD consultation suggested. The wound has the angry, puffy redness of something plotting rebellion. Infection: 1, Emmaleen’s immune system: 0.
I need a bandage. Maybe antibiotics. Definitely tetanus protection against whatever century-old bacteria lived on that Baccarat crystal. But the first aid kit—like everything else in this repurposed rectory—is perpetually empty. Budget cuts dressed up as “temporary resource allocation challenges.”
I swing my legs over the edge of the twin bed, careful not to disturb the privacy curtain separating me from Diane, who snores with the rhythmic intensity of a chainsaw orchestra. The floor is cold against my bare feet. My finger throbs inharmony with my temples. I am a walking percussion section of discomfort.
“You’re up early.” Lena’s voice carries the warmth of a tax audit as she pauses in the entrance of what this place calls a ‘bedroom’. Bedrooms have doors. There are no doors here. How would Lena pry into our tragic private lives if doors got in the way?
Lena Newton is the shelter’s nightshift guardian, queen of the sign-in sheet and sovereign ruler of the curfew clipboard. Last night she stood in the doorway like Cerberus with a bad perm, blocking my entrance despite Sister Margaret’s explicit permission to return late.
“I have your paperwork right here,” I told her, brandishing the note like it was the One Ring to rule them all.
“Sister forgets things,” Lena replied, her eyes narrowing with the satisfaction of someone who’s found a loophole in the Geneva Convention. “Rules are rules.”
Twenty minutes of doorstep diplomacy later, she’d relented—not from compassion but from the mathematical certainty that standing there meant postponing her 10:30 p.m. soap opera viewing schedule.
“Good morning to you too, Lena,” I murmur, reaching for yesterday’s jeans. “Love what you’ve done with your judgmental stare today. Very vintage disapproval.”
She doesn’t hear me.
Nobody does at 5:47 a.m. in a women’s shelter.
That’s the point.
The kitchen smells like burned coffeeand institutional despair. I’m pouring myself a cup of what appears to be liquid asphalt when Sister Margaret materializes like a habit-wearing ninja.
“Emmaleen! Just the person I wanted to see.” Her smile is genuine, her eyes kind, her memory a sieve with holes the size of Texas.
Sister Margaret—Saint Forgetful to those of us who’ve learned to get everything in writing—means well. She really does. Her arthritis-gnarled hands clutch a clipboard like it’s floating away, and her wire-rimmed glasses magnify eyes that have seen too much human suffering to ever fully process it all.
“I’ve made coffee,” she announces, gesturing to the cup in my hand.
The coffee is always lukewarm, the color of muddy creek water, and tastes like someone described coffee to an alien who then tried to recreate it using only pencil shavings and regret.
“Delicious,” I lie, because some chains you choose to wear willingly.
“I need to discuss something with you.” Her voice drops into that particular octave that social workers reserve for delivering bad news wrapped in bureaucratic necessity. “We have a mother with three children coming in three weeks from Monday. Priority case.”
I nod, the translation software in my brain converting her gentle phrasing:Your trauma isn’t quite traumatic enough. Your homelessness isn’t homeless enough. Your need isn’t needy enough.
“I understand,” I say, because I do. Hierarchy of suffering. I’m a single woman with employable skills and no visible bruises. In the economy of desperation, I’m practically privileged.
“You’ve been doing so well,” she continues, her praise landing like a participation trophy at the Apocalypse Olympics. “I know you’ll land on your feet.”
My feet. Right. The same ones that carried me here six weeks ago with nothing but a backpack and that special kind of terrorthat comes from knowing the person who loves you might also kill you. The same feet that now need to find stable ground in twenty-three days.
I sip the offensive coffee, letting the bitterness coat my tongue. It matches my thoughts perfectly.
This morning’s philosophical musing about chosen chains feels less profound now, more like wishful thinking dressed up in sophomore year existentialism. These aren’t chains I’ve selected from some cosmic jewelry box of confinement options. These are rusted cuffs, emergency measures, temporary solutions that are starting to feel distressingly permanent.