I'm headed over to do an intake on rad-onc when I run into the girl—she's in food-stained scrubs and soaked shoes that don't fit, wandering around like a wasp in a glass jar. "Hold on," I say, and she stops dead. "Do you work here?"

She turns to me with eyes like the mouths of huge urns, wide and deep and full of echoes. "I was trying to get warm," she says. "I'm sorry."

"It's all right," I say. I feel warm toward her, paternal. She's young—not young enough to be my daughter, but young enough that I'd get shit for dating her. Younger than Meena. "Look," I say, "I have to work for a couple of hours. Why don't you go and sit in the stall in the ladies' until about 2:00?" I point to the bathroom. "Then we can grab a bite."

She giggles. Something about her seems familiar. "Are you sure it's safe?"

"It'll be fine."

"I already ate."

"Well, I haven't. Just wait for me."

She does—inside the ladies' room, so I have to go in. It's a harrowing experience. I formulate the language of the write-up in my head: I thought he was a good guy until I found him in the ladies' with a hobo. But no one comes. I give her a pair of clean scrubs and paper overshoes, then finally ask her name—Tasha—and leave her to wash up, which she has not thought to do. When I observe this, she says "You said just wait," which I can hardly deny.

We have a bite to eat near ped-onc; I take my meds and we talk a little bit. She's still disoriented, though I don't smell alcohol. She says her husband got drunk and tried to cut her face off with a knife. I see the silver scar along her temple, the mess he's made of her neck; she shows me the defensive wounds on her palms, flexes her fingers. "I'm just getting back the use of this hand," she says with what sounds like wonderment.

"I was mugged a couple of months ago," I say, attempting sympathy. "I stopped for dinner on the way home. Some bum came at me out of a back alley by the pizza place on 65th and stabbed me in the neck with a fork. I had to change my whole life after." I shake my head. "Moved to Wallingford, switched to day shift. I always eat before I go home if it's humanly possible, just so I won't be hungry on the way."

"Day shift?"

"Turns out I'm a morning person."

Tasha quirks a smile, the first time I see it. "Been mugged again yet?"

"Hell no. Don't ever let anyone tell you superstition doesn't work."

Tasha hides out for another couple of hours and my shift ends, and without either of us saying a word about it, she follows me to my bike. It's not quite sunset; the sky is bright, making brilliant crystals of the gentle rain. As I coil the chain around the bike's battered frame, I catch a familiar stride out of the corner of my eye, then see it halt. I don't have to look at it straight on to know it's Meena. Tasha balances on the handlebars, pearl face scattered with bright water. We weave through traffic as if it were standing still, the afterimages of taillights etching a drunken red mesh over our eyes.