Page 50 of In a Haze

After a while, I grow sleepy, but I’m still sitting up in bed. As fatigue overtakes me, I rest my head against the wall—and it isn’t until I hear Joe’s voice that I realize I gave in to it.

“Anna, you ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Hurry. I figure we have a minute at most before he comes back around.”

Standing up, my back sends lightning bolts of pain through my body, and I must make a sound I don’t even realize.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you when we get there.”

I’m not even sure where we’re going, but I follow him through the door. He opens it without unlocking it and sticks his head out the door, looking both ways. “Come on.”

We’re practically running down the hall but he pauses at the bend. Then, once we’re around the corner, we move a few feet until we get to a locked door.

Thelocked door, one of the few that leads out of our limited existence.

In his hand, he has a flattened paperclip, but there’s a bit of a bend at the end. That tip he slides inside the lock while taking another flattened paperclip with a loop at the end to it. I don’t want to distract him, but I have to know. “How’d you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Just open my door back there. You didn’t do this.”

As he jams one of the pieces of metal in and out of the lock, he says, “Tape. I put a piece of scotch tape over the latch after I unlocked it. If the guard pulls on your doorknob, he’ll figure it out, but this time of night, they’re pretty lazy.” With the clip he’s been jamming in there, he suddenly turns the knob, pausing before using his other hand to turn it all the way. Then he’s pushing the door open. “Go,” he says as he removes his hardware and glances out the window. “Get down,” he says, actually waving me back toward the door instead of down this new hallway.

The window at the top of the door is big and full of that crisscross-y wire. I join Joe as he hunches underneath it, staying away from the glass panes on the side of the doors. He’s looking to one side out of that glass, and I know why now. He’s waiting for the guard to walk past before we move away.

He’s not looking at me when he asks, “What’d you do to your hands? Everything okay?”

I don’t want to talk about it, but he needs to know. “Bobbi tried raping me in the shower.”

“Oh, fuck, Anna.” Now he turns, taking his eyes off the hall. “Maybe we shouldn’t even be doing this.”

“She didn’t succeed. I knocked her out.”

“Seriously?” He’s grinning now, easy to see with the light spilling in from the hallway we just left. “That’s my girl. Goddamn.” After he moves forward to kiss my forehead, he pulls back and I see his gaze shift to behind me.

To the glass.

His voice is but a whisper. “Here he comes. Stay still.”

Not only am I unmoving, but I’m holding my breath.

I’ve been squatting this whole time, and my muscles are starting to quiver. The guard pauses just in view, and I’m convinced he’s spotted us. But Joe, who can see him even better, isn’t raising his hands or even standing, so I’m following suit.

After a few more seconds, I see the guard begin to walk away, and I finally let out the air I’d been holding in my lungs. I whisper, “Was he looking for us? Did he see us?”

“No, he was on his phone talking. I wanna give him another minute to clear out.”

Not too long after, though, we’re standing, and as soon as my muscles relax, the other sore spots get my focus again—the back, the jaw, the knuckles. I take in the view: a long hallway with several doors and, at the end, I see what looks like an elevator. When I point to it, Joe says, “Doesn’t work without a badge.”

“Figures.”

Slowly, we make our way down the hall and I pause outside one unmarked door. Suddenly, I have a flash of a wooden spoon-like paddle being shoved in my mouth. When Joe realizes I’m not walking with him anymore, he turns. “ECT room. Do you remember it?”

“A little.”

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