The goons all but threw Crutchie down on his bed in the Refuge before they left him alone. Their rough actions didn't help any of his injuries, that was for sure. They had put him on the top bunk, and he was supposed to be sandwiched in alongside two other boys who, sad to say, probably had just as many injuries as he did.

Crutchie ran a hand through his light hair, and he could feel a slightly sticky sensation on the side of his head. Upon looking at his hand, he sighed. Blood. There were a lot of other deep cuts on his arms and legs, still bleeding just like his head was. Even his good leg was damaged. He glanced around the room to get an idea of what the place was like now, and his face fell. There were a lot of boys crammed into the small room, and each of them had more than their fair share of bruises, cuts, and other injuries. All of the boys were thin, likely malnourished. They probably hadn't gotten food in a while, and whatever food they had received couldn't have been great. Sadly, he recognized the place all too well. He had been hoping that the place had improved since Jack's time, but he was sadly mistaken. And now he was stuck here again until his leg felt better at least, likely longer. How was he supposed to get out, even with his leg back to its normal condition?

Crutchie managed to tear his eyes away from the other boys, just as he heard some voices from outside the door. They were pretty quiet at first, as if they were just entering the building, but they soon got louder as the people they belonged to drew nearer. From outside the dark space, he could hear a woman talking with the guard. "Please just let me see him. I came for the sole purpose of taking care of him," a young, female voice pleaded. It sounded familiar, but it couldn't be who he thought it was. She wouldn't do something like that, no matter how kind she was.

Then, he was proven wrong yet again, as the speaker walked right through the door. Her blue eyes scanned each bed for the person she wanted to find, darting between the bunks at rapid speeds. Then, Elizabeth's gaze landed on him. She breathed a sigh of relief and practically leapt across the floor to him. She looked up at him from the bottom of the ladder, a relieved smile gracing her lips. "Crutchie!"

"Elizabeth? Whaddya doin' here?" Crutchie asked as he leaned over slightly to get a better look at her. Curiosity and confusion was clear in his voice and eyes. He hadn't seen Snyder lead her along behind him, because he had rounded the corner before Snyder and Elizabeth made their deal.

"I couldn't let them take you away like that, and from the little you told me, I was pretty sure you wouldn't be taken care of here. So, I came to help," Elizabeth explained, smoothing out her dress slightly. "How much space is up there? Enough for me to sit down and patch you up?"

"I think so," Crutchie replied and scooted over to make a little extra room for her. "C'mon up."

Elizabeth did just that and sat down right next to him, her legs hanging directly over the ladder to get down. As soon as she was settled, she asked, "Well, how are you feeling?" Immediately, she regretted asking it, since she knew it was a dumb question to ask in the first place.

"Horrible," was all Crutchie replied with before he heaved a sigh. "I guess Snyder soaked me real good with my crutch, huh?" He managed to let out a small laugh, but then sighed again.

"That's why I'm here though, to put you back together, good as new," Elizabeth replied. She attempted to give him a comforting smile, but it didn't even convince herself. She shook it off and declared, "Let me get a good look at you." She shifted in her place and started examining the side of Crutchie's head, searching for bumps, bruises, and cuts. Sadly, there were plenty of each, albeit some were smaller than others. She found the bigger cut on the other side of his head and chewed on her lower lip. "Hmm...you don't seem to be bleeding too much there anymore, thank goodness, but let's bandage it up to be safe." With a quick nod, she bent down and pulled at the hem of her dress, starting to tear the fabric apart.

"Ah, no, Elizabeth, ya don't need ta do that," Crutchie started as he reached a bruised hand out to try and stop her.

Elizabeth shook her head and insisted, "It's just a dress, an old one at that. I can always get new ones once we get out of here. Your needs take precedence." With that, she tore the hem and yanked it back towards her, creating a strip about an inch and a half thick, definitely long enough to go around Crutchie's head. "Hold still so I can put this on you," she ordered, and he complied, though he had a guilt-ridden look on his face. She tied the strip around his head with some pressure to keep it in place. "How does that feel? Is it too tight?"

"Nah, it's...great actually," Crutchie replied honestly, brushing some hair from his face. "I, ah, I don't wanna make ya do too much for me, but could ya take care of the rest of these?" he then asked, gesturing to the deep cuts scattered across his body.

Elizabeth nodded, tearing up her left sleeve to make another two or three wraps. Her left sleeve was now nonexistent, just a strap to hold the dress up. She then wrapped each of the cuts up snugly and made sure that he wouldn't lose feeling or blood flow in each place. "I think I got all of the major ones. Should we try to bring down your swelling with some ice?"

Crutchie shook his head. "Don't even botha. They won't let ya have nothin' that'll help us," he explained, going off of personal experience.

"Not even a little ice?" Elizabeth inquired, surprise evident in her voice. She knew this place was rough, but she was learning quickly how bad this place actually was.

"Nope."

Elizabeth sighed and looked over at him pitifully. With a frown on her face, she apologized, "I'm not sure what else I can do for you then. I'm sorry."

"Ya done plenty. Thanks, Elizabeth," Crutchie told her gratefully, flashing a smile in her direction.

"Well, I'm glad I could be of some use," Elizabeth replied. She started to leave the bunk, but then hesitated and turned back to Crutchie. "You know, you can call me something shorter if you want. Apparently Sniper's given Rebecca and me some nicknames, so you could use those," she offered, flashing a smile at him.

"Oh, yeah, he told us 'bout that last night afta you left. What'd he say was yours 'gain...Lizzie, right? I don't think I like that, to be honest," Crutchie admitted, earning a small laugh from the young lady. Then, he thought about it for a second before an idea of his own popped into his mind. "Can I call ya Liza?"

Elizabeth grinned at him. "I like that. Sounds good to me," she told him and started to push herself off the bed. "Here, let me go see if they'll let me have my stuff from the bag I had when they took us. I have one of Kath's old notebooks in there and a pen. We could write some letters to Jack and Becky, possibly. Do you want to do that?"

"Sounds good ta me. Go give it a try," Crutchie began. Then, a thought occurred to him. "Liza?" he called. "Why'd ya come here if ya knew it was so bad?"

Elizabeth shrugged, looking up at him from her position halfway down the bunk ladder. "Like I said earlier, I wanted to make sure you were taken care of somehow. The girls and I saw what happened to you from where Davey had brought us, and it was painful to watch. I didn't want you to be hurt like that without someone there who cared enough to help take care of you," she explained, then finished descending the ladder.

Crutchie was surprised by this. Was all this really for him? Nobody else he knew would have thought to do this, not even Jack. "Liza..." he began.

"I'll be right back. Sit tight. Brainstorm an escape plan, possibly." With that, she was out of the room at a rapid pace, and within a few seconds of her exit, she could be heard arguing with the guards outside the door. For the twin who seemed to be less confrontational, she sure was able to hold her own with the Refuge's goons.

"Hey, you, with the gimp leg," one of the boys in the bunk next door addressed him. "That goil, she a nurse?"

"Who, Liza? No, she ain't no nurse. She just reads a lot of books about nursin', I think," Crutchie replied, shrugging and wincing as he spoke. "She wants ta be, though."

"Well, ya think she could fix me up too? They busted me up real good too last week, and I ain't been gettin' betta yet," the boy explained.

"Me too? My foot ain't lookin' straight no more," a different kid, from the bunk by the door, called out. His foot was definitely not right, pointed and bent in a way that a foot shouldn't have been.

"I think she can try. Gots to ask her, but..." Crutchie mused, looking around at all the boys. There were quite a few that required medical attention, as he knew was always the case when it came to the Refuge.

"Yous a lucky fella, ya know. Havin' a goil who came in here just ta take care a'ya, yous lucky," the first boy said. "If I had a goil like that..."

"Whaddya mean? She ain't my goil," Crutchie informed them, a little surprised by the words that were coming out of this other boy's mouth. It was adding something to his thoughts from before, but he still wasn't sure.

The first boy's eyes widened a bit at that revelation. With a shrug, he pointed out, "She ain't your goil? Well, she's doin' stuff that only your goil would do for ya, but okay." As the last word left the kid's lips, Elizabeth reentered the room with the bag on her shoulder.

Elizabeth pulled out the notebook from the bag as she walked over to Crutchie's bunk. "Tear out two pages, one for each of us, while I look for my pen, could you?" she asked.

Crutchie nodded and complied with her request, though his thoughts were focused slightly on the information from the first nameless boy. Once he had the two pages torn out, he passed one back down to her. It was exchanged with the pen she had just found in the bag.

"Did you come up with a plan, or something we could work with?" Elizabeth asked Crutchie as she took her paper from him.

The honest answer would be no, but Crutchie wasn't going to say that. "Well, kinda." Elizabeth gave him a look as if to say to continue, and his eyebrows furrowed. Maybe it would have been better to be honest. "Uh...we can tie a sheet to the bed by the window and toss it down, then climb down when my leg's right," he came up with after scanning the room for anything at all they could use.

"I like that. We could make that work. Well done, Crutchie," Elizabeth praised him, giving him a small smile before sitting down on the bunk below him.

"Thanks," Crutchie said softly, a small smile forming on his lips at her praise. With that, he started to write.

Dear Jack,

As Crutchie wrote, those two boys, and a few others, asked Elizabeth to take care of their injuries. Being the kind girl she was, she agreed and started preparing more bandages. She stopped tearing at her dress once the blue fabric hung barely above her knees. By that time, she had made eighteen more bandages, not including the three or four used for Crutchie. Her dress was now without both sleeves. If her parents were here, they'd probably yell about her indecency. But, nobody here cared. In fact, the boys were all too grateful for her care to spend time ogling her.

She wrapped the bandages around all the cuts, trying her best to be as helpful as possible. She floated between bunks, going to them instead of letting them come to her. After each boy who needed her had their care finished up, they thanked her. However, they didn't use her name, or even say something like "lady" or "miss". Instead, they called her "Doc", and Elizabeth liked that nickname much more than she let on.

She finished up with the boys fairly quickly, since there was only so much she could do for these boys. Sadly, she couldn't fix the one boy's twisted foot without some skill she didn't have yet, but she managed to clean up pretty much everyone's cuts with a makeshift bandage.

Crutchie was still writing his letter at that point. The delay was due to two things. First, he spent a little bit too much time admiring Elizabeth's actions around the room, thinking about how kind she was being. And second, he wasn't sure exactly what to say to Jack for some pieces. He already missed his fellow newsies more than he could ever say. If his emotions about this situation were ineffable, what could he put down on the paper in the first place?

Elizabeth sat down on the bunk below him, her bag clutched tightly in her hands. She was going to wait for Crutchie to finish his letter, but she didn't know what to do in the meantime. Though she was glad she was here to help out these boys, she already could tell that there wouldn't be much to do. And, considering the fact that she was a woman, she would likely be treated differently than these boys. Whether or not it would be better than the conditions she was witnessing was an altogether different question.

Then it hit her. A smile spread across her face and she immediately dug into her bag for the copy of Treasure Island she had snuck from her brother's shelves. With a glance around at the room, she held the book up and inquired, "Are any of you boys interested in a story?"

It was as if the sun had just risen in the boys' eyes. Pretty much every boy she could see nodded excitedly, and some of them started to make their way over to sit on the floor in front of her. Patrick, the boy with the good foot who had talked to Crutchie before, said, "We've been wantin' a new story for ages, ta be honest. Anythin' is betta than just sittin' quiet." The only story they'd really been able to share before was the story about Jack's escape. As thrilling as Jack's story was, the idea of having a brand new tale to hear was quite appealing.

Elizabeth flashed a smile at the boys and nodded. "Well, then, let's get started, shall we?" she replied before opening the book. And, for the first time in a long time in the Refuge, a new story was finally being told.