Chapter 4
Rainwater streamed down her long hair, wet strands stuck to her cheeks, making her face look almost ghostly pale. She turned to Winston, her eyes hollow, like staring into a winter well covered by a thin sheet of ice. When you looked in, there was nothing but your own reflection staring back.
She kept her gaze on him for so long that Winston's hand on the umbrella started to sweat.
Finally, she gave a slight nod. Her words were drowned out by the rain, so soft they were barely audible, yet somehow it felt like a promise.
"Okay," she said.
It wasn't because she felt grateful to him.
It was because her hands couldn't be ruined yet. She still had debts to collect and revenge to take. She needed these hands to personally drag each of them down to hell, one by one.
*****
The car ride was silent.
Every now and then, Winston would glance at her, his lips moving as if he wanted to say something, but he always held back. Zora rested her head against the passenger window, her forehead pressed to the cold glass, eyes half-closed, her lashes casting a faint shadow on her cheek. She looked like she might be asleep, or maybe just lost in thoughts drifting somewhere far, far away.
The emergency room lights were an icy, glaring white, making your eyes ache.
The doctor, a woman in her forties with gold-rimmed glasses and a sharp, short haircut, snipped open the makeshift bandage on Zora's hand. She took one look and gasped.
"What happened to your hand?" she asked.
She looked up at Winston, her voice low but unable to hide her shock and anger. "A whole liter of boiling hot water, poured right over her hand? Second to third-degree burns. If she'd waited even a few more hours, her hand would've been done for. What was she thinking? Why didn't she run it under cold water right away? How come..."
She suddenly stopped mid-sentence.
She stopped because she caught sight of Zora's face.
That young, pale face was completely blank. There was no pain, no resentment, no fear. Just... nothing. It was like something had hollowed her out, leaving only an empty shell.
Winston's face went pale. He stood there, his lips moving, but no words came out. Guilt crashed over him like a tidal wave, leaving him breathless. He was the one who had brought her out of Verdant Hill Mental Health Facility, the one who had sworn, "With Jacob here, you'll be safe." But just now, in the Ralph family's living room, he had stood right there and watched as she poured that boiling water over her own hand; he hadn't even tried to stop her.
He didn't stop her. He didn't even realize what was happening until it was too late.
While the nurse cleaned her wound, she carefully wiped away the blisters with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball. The alcohol seeped into the tender, raw skin, and the pain was sharp as a knife.
On the next bed, a little boy, maybe five or six, had a scraped knee. His mom was holding him still while the nurse applied medicine. The kid was wailing so loud, his cries could be heard all over the floor.
Zora sat up straight, watching as the nurse fussed over her hand. She didn't move at all. When the alcohol touched the wound, her lashes would tremble for a moment, but that was it.
Her right hand, hanging at her side, slowly curled into a fist, her knuckles turning white.
It was not that she didn't feel the pain.
She'd just gotten used to it.
After two years in Verdant Hill Mental Health Facility, she'd been through pain a hundred, a thousand times worse than this.
When the stun baton pressed against her skin, the crackling of electricity tangled with her own screams. When the orderlies shattered her ribs with a single kick, she heard her bones snap, just like breaking a dead branch. Locked away in a dark cell for seven days and nights, no light, no sound, no people, only hunger slowly gnawing at her stomach, leaving her curled up in the corner, trembling.
All that pain had shattered her, ground her down, and then pieced her back together, bit by bit.
This pain was nothing.
The doctor wrapped her hand in a thick layer of gauze, giving instructions as she worked. "Keep it dry, don't use it for anything heavy. Come back in two days to change the dressing. If you notice any redness or fever, get here right away. If it gets infected, that's trouble."
Winston stood off to the side, looking like a kid caught doing something wrong. He nodded at every word the doctor said, his head bobbing nonstop. He kept his gaze averted; he couldn't bring himself to look at Zora's face, or at her bandaged hand.
*****
By the time they left the hospital, the rain had stopped.
The sky was starting to lighten, that gray-blue just before dawn. The streets were empty, except for early market vendors gradually setting up their stalls one by one. The distant sound of tricycles splashing through puddles drifted over.
The car moved slowly. Winston gripped the steering wheel, occasionally glancing at Zora, who was leaning against the passenger window.