The man retrieved her phone then knelt beside her while she took quick breaths, trying to keep the nausea at bay. “Come on.” He tucked her phone into her left hand and held a hand out to her. “Let me help you over to the fire.”
Kaylee glanced in that direction. The three people that remained around the barrel paid no attention to them, instead they all stared at the flames, swaying back and forth.
“They’re okay.” The man jerked his head toward the others. “They won’t hurt you.”
The screen on her phone was shattered. She tried pushing the home button anyway, hoping it would still work. No such luck. The spider-webbed screen remained dark. She’d have to trust him. He did just save her from that other man. And he seemed sane enough. There was no way she could get to her car in this state, much less drive it.
She raised her hand to his and his fingers closed over hers. He said, “Take it easy. Just stand up real slow. I got ya.”
She’d assumed he’d be frail, living on the streets and all, but when she wavered and leaned heavily into his side, he encircled her waist with a strong arm, supporting her weight until she got her balance. Maybe he was newly homeless.
As they neared the fire, one of the three standing around it—a waif of a girl wearing layers of mismatched winter clothing—looked at her with half-lidded eyes. “She okay?”
“She will be. Has a cut head and probably a concussion.”
“Good thing Doc Blayne is here to help her out,” said a kid that couldn’t have been older than thirteen or fourteen. Around the same age as Kaylee’s little brother.
“Shut up, dork,” Blayne said with a teasing lilt to his voice. “Grab my bag and drag it over here to give her something to lean against.”
The boy rolled his eyes but shuffled over to a large duffel bag leaning against a concrete pillar. He dragged it over next to Blayne and Kaylee, then tromped back to his spot by the fire.
“Sit down, lean your back against my bag,” Blayne said as he helped her down to the ground. He unzipped his coat and shrugged out of it, then draped it over Kaylee’s legs.
“No,” Kaylee protested. “It’s freezing out here. You’ll freeze.”
“I’ll be fine. Can I take a look at your head, now?”
She nodded and leaned forward.
“It looks like it finally quit bleeding. You should go see your doctor, though. I bet it needs stitches.”
Another wave of nausea struck. Kaylee leaned forward, pulling her knees up so she could prop her arms there and rest her forehead on them. The gravel crunched, announcing a new arrival. Kaylee’s heart jumped. Had her attacker come back? She lifted her head to see an older woman—barely old enough to be called elderly—walking toward the group, arms loaded with grocery bags.
“Mama C!” the young boy yelled. “It’s about time you got back.”
The woman stopped in front of Kaylee as Blayne and the others relieved her of the bags. Kaylee greeted the newcomer with a grand mixture of street tacos and bile as she lost her battle with the nausea.
“Here,” Mama C held a well-used water bottle out to Kaylee, “take a couple of sips of this. Don’t overdo it.”
Kaylee tried not to show disgust on her face, but the prospect of drinking out of that bottle made her already-sick stomach turn with greater vigor. She shook her head. “Thank you, but I’m okay.”
Mama C looked down at the bottle in her hand, then back at Kaylee. Her face softened in understanding and she handed the water to Blayne. “I’m afraid I don’t have any fresh water. That’s a luxury we can’t often afford here.” She smiled, her cracked lips parting to show surprisingly healthy teeth. She raised an eyebrow. “So, what in the world are you doing out here, young lady?”
Heat rushed to her face and Kaylee looked down at her hands. “I…I was looking for you,” she whispered.
“You were?” The older woman bent down closer to Kaylee. “Did you say you were looking for me?”
Kaylee nodded.
Squinting, Mama C stared at her until she looked up at her. “Do I know you?”
“No.” Kaylee sighed. This was not how she’d wanted this introduction to go. “I’m a college student at CU Denver. I heard about you, about what you’re doing here.”—she gestured to the teenagers, the grocery bags—“I was…I am hoping to interview you as part of a…a school project.”
“Hmmf.” Mama C frowned and walked away, returning to Kaylee’s side a moment later with an upside-down five-gallon bucket on which she sat, muttering, “I can’t sit on the ground like you young people. It isn’t exactly the sitting that’s hard, it’s the getting back up part.”
“Why do you want to interview her? What kind of ‘project’ are you doing?” Blayne scowled.
Kaylee swallowed and glanced back and forth between them. “I’m a student.”
“Yeah, you already said that,” Blayne said.
“Be nice, Blayne,” Mama C said. “I’m sure she means no harm.”
Kaylee fixed her gaze on the woman. “I want to interview you and maybe observe you for a while. For my master’s thesis.” Did these people even know what that was?
“I see.” Mama C leaned in closer. “What is your major?”
“Psychology.”
“And, what is the title of your thesis?”
Mama C, at least, appeared to know what a thesis was. “The working title is, Benevolence and Family-like Groups Among the Homeless.” She didn’t add the rest of the title—What Drives Even the Hopeless to Desire Family-like Relationships—afraid it would sound insulting to them. She might have to reword that a little.
The woman’s mouth tightened for the briefest of moments before relaxing into a neutral expression. “And you thought it would be a good idea to come down to this part of town by yourself, after dark no less?”
“Probably not my brightest idea, huh?” Kaylee shrugged. “This was
