help you walk out of the woods, and we’ll find a place for you to sit, closer to the street. Then I’m going to go get help.”
“No, Hank.” Even though he’s sick and hurt, there’s no doubt Jack would attack like a rabid dog if he felt cornered. “We didn’t come all this way for you to get us sent back to our fucking father.”
He scratches at his face like he wants to peel off his own skin, and Nessa starts to whimper again. I pull his hands from his face.
“Jack, relax. I promise that won’t happen. I have friends here, and I trust them. One is a nurse. She helped me when I was sick, and she’ll help you.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Nessa whispers gently to Jack.
“We can’t go back to New York. We have to trust Hank.”
Jack gives me a long look that flickers between suspicion and hope. “Okay,” he says at last.
I stuff my backpack under a rocky ledge and make a mental note of its location so I can pick it up later. Then together, Nessa and I help Jack to his feet. I pull my own coat over his shoulders as he cradles his injured arm. His other arm, I drape around my neck.
The three of us stagger through the woods near the beginning of the path to Walden Pond, not far from the parking area. “Stay here,” I say. “I’ll be back with my friends as soon as I can. Don’t go anywhere. Promise?”
The two of them sit down on a stone wall near the beach area of the pond. Jack stares hollow-eyed into the shallow water, clearly surrendering to whatever might be next.
“Right. Where else we gonna go?”
“Sweetie, I’m so sorry, but this is going to hurt,” says Suzanne in a soft voice.
Jack is lying on the green leather couch in Thomas’s living room. Suzanne kneels in front of him with his injured arm cradled in her hands, while Nessa, Thomas, and I stand nearby, feeling useless. Still dressed in the blue scrubs she wore during her overnight shift at the hospital, Suzanne is in total nurse mode.
“The good news is that your arm isn’t broken,” she says. “The bad news is that it’s dislocated, and getting the joint back in place takes some messing around with your sore shoulder. Ready?”
Jack’s face is white and his eyes look enormous in his thin face, but he nods. Nessa buries her face in my shoulder as Suzanne takes hold of Jack’s arm, pulls it toward her, then pushes back. Jack howls in pain, but through gritted teeth, says, “Do it,” so Suzanne does. With a sick, audible pop, his shoulder slips back into its socket.
“Better?” asks Suzanne.
“Yeah,” says Jack in a strangled whisper. Nessa lets out a deep breath into my chest and I feel the heat of it through my shirt.
Suzanne folds a big black bandana into a triangle and knots it around Jack’s neck to create a sling. Gently, she tucks his arm into it and presses it against his chest.
“It’s still going to hurt for a while, Jack. But you should feel better in a few days.”
Jack closes his eyes without responding, and Thomas pulls an afghan off the back of the couch and spreads it over Jack’s body. He looks so small just lying there with the fight drained out of him, but I know it’s temporary. Jack’s a fighter. He’ll be back.
“Get some sleep now, buddy,” Thomas says.
Suzanne turns to Nessa. “So, Nessa,” she says, using her nice-nurse-lady voice, like she’s talking to a five-year-old. “Would you like to take a nap too or maybe a bath?”
After all the sick adult stuff Nessa has been through on the streets, it probably feels good to have somebody speak to her like she’s a child. She smiles and I get a glimpse of the girl she might be if she’d had a normal life. “Both, please,” she says. “Can I have the bath first?”
Suzanne leads Nessa upstairs. We hear them discuss bubbles versus bath salts, whatever those are, and Nessa sounds so happy being normal, just being a kid and a girl.
Thomas juts his chin toward the kitchen. “Coffee?” he asks me.
“Sure.” We go in, and I sit down at the nicked wood table. He pours a cup for me in a blue mug that says The Thoreau Society on the side. Hands it to me with a tight smile.
“I’m sorry, Thomas,” I say, low enough that Jack won’t hear me,