And then it dawns on me.
He still does.
BIRDIE
The tray that Ollie brought to her before making his rounds with Sid and Jeff sits untouched on the bedside nightstand. Birdie looks over at the food grown cold. She should eat. She grits her teeth and hauls herself up, stifling the unending urge to scream at every little movement. Maybe it will be like soreness after a workout; maybe if she moves enough, the pain will lessen, little by little.
Still, she hasn’t felt the baby move. It’s not a good omen, if Birdie was invested in omens. But it’s not the end. Not yet. There’s still some fight left in her.
She uses her good arm to get a spoonful of the oatmeal. Cold, it touches her lips and turns her stomach. She forces herself to eat, each bite provoking the urge to vomit. She feels her stomach contract involuntarily, threatening to spill everything she’s consumed since morning. And the image of the blood-soaked rag hovers in her mind, a ghost haunting her. It makes her more nauseated to think of it.
After a few bites, she gives up. She hauls herself back into a sitting position in the bed and relaxes her body. The action of allowing her muscles to go slack makes pain radiate from the gunshot wound like a sunburst. She cries out and stifles it by digging her fingers into the blankets around her, burrowing down into the fabric like worms with bones.
The pain subsides to the point that she can focus on the ceiling. The fan sits, lifeless above the bed with the electricity cut. It would be nice to feel the air circulating, she thinks. She notices a bead of sweat on her brow and wipes it with her palm. She draws her hand away and looks at the sheen of perspiration. A dull throb in her shoulder reminds her that sweat is the least of her problems. For a moment she wonders if the sweat on her brow means the infection is subsiding. She isn’t sure. She touches her collarbone gingerly and feels heat there.
She groans once more, this time more at circumstance than at pain. And then she hears the voices.
Down below the floorboards, in Tom’s study, someone speaks.
“…radioed in on the solar walkie. They’ve got a journalist with them,” says one voice.
“Some girl from the city looking for a story,” the other clarifies.
Tom is silent. Birdie imagines his face, calm contemplation.
“This could be a good thing,” says the first voice, making it obvious that Tom is skeptical.
“How do you figure that?” the second voice asks.
“He’s saying that we might be able to get a message out,” Tom says.
“A message that’s not filtered through the FBI,” the first man says.
A journalist. The thought thrills Birdie’s heart, making it flutter at a dangerous pace. She feels the blood thunder through her veins, suddenly conscious of every inch of her body. She wants to get up, to run, to leave. She wants to see this person. She wants to talk to them. Hope hasn’t been lost after all.
Her mind whirs like a wheel, a hamster racing toward nothing. Her thoughts spin out of control, losing their original thread.
The conversation goes on.
“Did they give you a name?” Tom asks.
“No. The message was short. Sounded like Jeff stepped away long enough to relay the message out of earshot of the others.”
The realization dawns on Birdie that Ollie is part of the party that went out scouting the perimeter of the ranch. He told her when he brought the food by earlier. He’s with the journalist. If anyone would advocate on her behalf, it’s him.
She wonders what he’s said to the woman. If he’s told her about her situation. She wonders how much the press already knows about the pregnant woman who was shot. Though she hardly feels like a woman right now. She feels like a girl. She feels helpless against her situation.
But that’s not the case.
Not now.
There’s hope.
BIRDIE
6 YEARS AGO
Almost a year passed from the time that Birdie officially received the Gorman Fellowship until she put a pen to paper and wrote a single word of her own.
It had been eight months since the night that Ione left the ballroom and walked out of Birdie’s life. They didn’t speak after that. They both graduated the following spring, and from the same college at the university. But they didn’t acknowledge each other at the ceremony. Birdie was grateful that the student population was so dense that she saw Ione only when she walked across the stage.
Another school year was on the cusp of beginning and Dr. Wolsieffer had dedicated himself to preparing for it. The last three-quarters of a year, Birdie had spent her time running errands for him—getting his coffee, his dry cleaning, returning his library books—and hadn’t spent a moment working on her own masterpiece.
Bitterness had begun to creep in at the cracks in the foundation of their relationship, built on the betrayal of her best friend. Her position in his life had become an intimate one, though not in the way that Ione’s had been. She kept up with his appointments and did his scheduling for him. Sometimes she even prepared class lectures for him. Birdie sometimes wondered what the hell she was doing with her life.
It was that summer that his wife, Vanessa, discovered the Unitarian church just off the university.
At first, Vanessa went alone. She’d begged him to go with her. It was something that he vented to Birdie about. He had zero desire to participate in anything that might give Vanessa any amount of satisfaction. Something was broken inside their relationship, but Birdie could never quite identify it.
After a while, though, Dr. Wolsieffer came around.
Birdie
