How to Free an Old Woman

When you enter the room, be quiet, say nothing, or as little as possible. You may get lucky and she may be alone, but more than likely, she will be surrounded.

By her daughter, the one that asks too many questions and immediately forgets the answers. Or the son, who wants to be anywhere but here and thinks you don’t know what you’re doing.  But hopefully not the husband, if you are the least bit lucky, the husband will not be there. Because he is the one that will make you look away in shame. 

You should have gloves, sterile gauze and kerlix. Do not bring tape. You might forget and use it.  Whatever you do, do not use the tape.

If forced, tell them what you are going to do. They will protest. They will tell you that the nurse in the ER just put the dressing on. Listen to them.  

Sit gently at her bedside. Smile if you can do so without crying.  She will smell soft and perhaps a bit sharp. She will look at you with trust.  That will terrify you.  Her hand will feel like a bird’s wing, do not squeeze it; just let it rest in your palm.

Find the end of the tape and begin to pick.  Do not pull. Never pull. Just pick.  If you pull, she will bleed. And if she bleeds, she will not stop

Prey

The pain didn’t start until well into the mornings, a few hours after the sun cleared the highest trees on the highest peak of the western edge of the ravine that held her. The cold night air settled like a heavy blanket on the floor of the small valley, causing a welcome numbness to curl around her right shoulder and hip, holding her still and allowing her to get a few moments of restless sleep.  

 Now that the initial terror had worn off, the reality of what was happening had set in and she knew time was not on her side.  It was clear that she wasn’t going to be rescued. And he was still out there, somewhere, waiting for the chance to have another go at her. 

 She lay still for one more second, dared to close her eyes and feel the touch of the sun on her forearm, one of the few spots on her battered body that still looked human.  Quietly she listened for anything that would tell her whether it was safe to move or not.  She had become an expert at being still and silent, of not taking up space or demanding attention, and it was finally serving her. 

 She was thirsty. And hungry. And scared.  Every time a twig snapped, or a branch rustled, she was sure he was back. But then the noise would stop, and in the brief window of stillness she felt hope again. 

 She crawled out from under her makeshift shelter and slowly made her was to the small creek that ran next to the rutted road in which her van had come to rest.  It had flipped and rolled so many times down the steep embankment that it was hard to tell that it had ever even been a van, her van, her home. It lay there twisted, misshapen, axle broken and wheels akimbo, embarrassed at what it had become, useless. 

She’d been examining the steep slopes going up in either direction around her, to the east and west, and knew climbing out was not an option, not in her condition. To the north, the road had been completely washed out and was impassable as well. So, it was only the way south that offered her any chance at escape. She was a fish in a barrel, one way out and easy picking. 

Digging through the corpse of her van she was dejected at what little was left.  Almost everything had either been scattered in the crash or destroyed by the attack.  She took inventory and found a shattered ice cooler, some clothing, a broken flashlight, and an old air pump that she used to inflate her raft. He had dragged the raft off into the trees and she was too scared to try to retrieve it, even though it would make a much better shelter from the rain than the flimsy tarp she had managed to drape over a low-lying pine bough.  

The extremes in weather in the mountains constantly surprised her, even before she found herself in the bottom of this steep canyon.  In better times she had come to places like this often.  Always alone, to think and recover. Reconnect with the rhythm of nature. Mornings, afternoons and evenings blended together in a sensible pattern, cool, then warm, then cool again.  But the nights stood out in their callous disregard for the comfort and safety of anything or anyone.  The nights were made for death. 

When her van had been there to protect her, she felt invincible against the threats of the night. But now, naked, bruised and battered she was completely helpless and vulnerable. Feelings she hated more than most people, being more familiar to her than they had a right to be.  Now, in this new state of rawness, rain, sleet, or snow came unannounced out of an angry night sky and abused her while she slept, forcing her to crawl out of the heavy wetness of a coffin of snow and ice as morning finally showed up.  A few times, on mornings like that, she had almost been disappointed that the gentle caress of hypothermia hadn’t put an end to her suffering while she slept. 

Pausing for a moment, she remembered reading that the Inuit would put their old and sick out on ice floes to die.  Once hypothermia sets in, there is no more pain, only sleep. And then the body gets returned to the earth. On days she was feeling particularly hopeless, she held onto these thoughts and found them reassuring.  At least she could be certain of one thing.  This was not going to last forever. This hell would end.

A flash of heavy blackness burst for a second in the corner of her eye and before she knew what was happening, he was on her again. This time ready to finish what he had begun. She blindly clawed in the back of her van, once her home, and her fingers found the cold hardness of the pump that once gave life to the raft that carried her on the water like an ice floe.  

Clenching the tool with her one good hand, she swung around and struck him.  The metal landed on the bridge of his nose and he went down. She struck again and again, until she was sure that he would not be getting up again.  

She sat for hours as night began to fall. Until finally, with barely any light remaining, she crawled into the forest to get the raft he had hidden somewhere.  She would hide under it tonight and let the cold blackness of the night return him to the earth. Tomorrow she would keep breathing and keep hoping. And she would start walking south.  No longer hunted. Free.