Carrying a Brillo pad and a half-full jug of bleach to the downstairs bathroom, I turned the water to the hottest setting. The bathroom filled with steam. When the mirrors were hazed, and I couldn’t see myself, I climbed into the shower and watched my skin turn red. I scrubbed my body until my skin bled and the water turned pink around my feet. Screwing the cap off the bleach, I lifted it above my shoulders, and poured. I cried out and had to hold myself up while I did it again. Then I lay on the floor with my knees spread apart and my hips raised, and poured it into my body. They’d given me a pill, told me it would take care of an unwanted pregnancy. Just in case, the nurse said. But, I wanted to kill everything he touched—every skin cell. I needed to make sure there was nothing left of him on any part of me. I walked naked to the kitchen and pulled a knife from the block I kept next to the fridge. Using the tip, I ran it up and down the inside of my arm, tracing my favorite vein. Too many windows; my house had too many ways to break in. What if he’d been watching me? If he knew where I lived?

I pierced the skin with that last thought and dragged the tip about two inches. I watched the blood trickle down my arm, mesmerized by the sight. When my doorbell rang, the knife clattered to the floor.

I was so afraid, I couldn’t move. It rang again. Grabbing a dishtowel I held it over the cut on my arm and looked toward the door. If they were here to hurt me, they probably wouldn’t ring the doorbell. I grabbed for laundry basket that was resting on my kitchen counter, pulling out a clean t-shirt and jeans. They dragged stubbornly over my damp skin as I rushed to put them on. I took the knife with me. I had to push the couch aside to reach the door. When I looked through the peep hole, my hands were shaking so badly I could barely hold the knife. What I saw was Doctor Asterholder, in different clothes.

I opened the deadbolt and swung the door wide. Wider than a woman who’d experienced my day should have. I wouldn’t have even done that before what happened today. We stared at each other for a good thirty seconds, before his eyes found the dishtowel and my fresh blood.

“What did you do?”

I stared at him blankly. I couldn’t seem to speak; it was like I’d forgotten how. He grabbed my arm and ripped the cloth from the wound. It was then I realized he thought I was trying to kill myself.

“It’s not—it’s not in the right spot,” I said. “It’s not like that.” He was blinking rapidly when he looked up from the cut.

“Come,” he said. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

I followed him into the kitchen and slid onto a barstool, not quite sure what was happening. He took my arm, more gently this time, and turned it over, peeling back the dishrag.

“Bandages? Antiseptic?”

“Upstairs bathroom, under the sink.”

He left to retrieve my little first-aid kit and came back with it about two minutes later.

I only realized I was still clutching the knife when he gently pried it from my fingers and set it on the counter.

He didn’t speak as he cleaned and bandaged my wound. I watched his hands work. His fingers were deft and agile.

“It won’t need stitches,” he said. “Flesh wound. But, keep it clean.”

His eyes traced the rawness on my exposed skin, left from the Brillo pad.

“Senna,” he said. “There are people, support groups—”

I cut him off. “No.”

“Okay.” He nodded. It reminded me of the way my shrink used to say okay, like it was a word you swallowed and digested instead of one you spoke. Somehow, from him, it seemed less condescending.

“Why are you here?”

He hesitated briefly then said, “Because you are.”

I didn’t understand what he meant. My thoughts were so contorted, choppy. I couldn’t seem to…

“Go to bed. I’ll sleep right there.” He pointed to the couch, still angled across the front door.

I nodded. You’re in shock, I told myself again. You’re letting a stranger sleep on your couch.

I was too tired to over think it. I went upstairs and locked the door to my bedroom. It still didn’t feel safe. Picking up my pillow and blanket, I carried them to my bathroom, locked that door, too, and lay down on the mat. My sleep was that of a woman who had just been raped.

Chapter Twelve

I woke up and stared at my ceiling. Something was wrong … something … but I couldn’t figure out what it was. A weight pressed down on my chest. The kind that comes when you feel dread, but you can’t quite place your finger on why. Five minutes, twenty minutes, two minutes, seven minutes, an hour. I have no idea how long I lay like that, staring up at the ceiling … not thinking. Then I rolled onto my side and a nurse’s word came back to me: discomfort. Yes, I felt discomforted. Why? Because I was raped. My mind recoiled. I’d once seen a neighbor boy pour salt on a snail. I’d watched in horror as its tiny body disintegrated on the pavement. I’d run home crying, asking my mother why something we seasoned our food with had the power to kill a snail. She’d told me that salt absorbs all of the water that their bodies are made of, so they essentially dry out or suffocate because they can’t breathe. That’s what I felt like. Everything had changed in a day. I didn’t want to acknowledge it, but it was there—between my legs, in my mind … oh God, on my couch. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. I rolled over, reaching for the inhaler in my nightstand and knocking the lamp over. It crashed to the floor as I struggled to sit up. When had I even come back to my bed? I’d gone to sleep in the bathroom, on the floor. A second later, Dr Asterholder came crashing through my bedroom door. He looked from me to the lamp, then back to me again. “Where is it?” he barked. I pointed, and he was across the room in two steps. I watched him rip open the drawer and rummage around until he found it. I grabbed it from his hand, biting down on the spacer and feeling the albuterol fill my lungs a second later. He waited until I’d caught my breath to pick up the lamp. I was embarrassed. Not just about the asthma attack, but about the night before. That I’d let him stay.

“Are you all right?”

I nodded without looking at him.

“From the asthma?”

Yes. As if sensing my discomfort, he took leave of my room, closing the door behind him. It jerked into place as if it didn’t sit against the seam so well anymore. I’d locked the door the night before, and he’d managed to get in with a hard shove of his shoulder. That didn’t make me feel very good.