90
Alice sat outside the hospital doors on a low concrete wall. Holding a gray blanket around her shoulders, she watched night give way to morning. The sky was a blue-orange melt. The air fresh and settled. The puddles all but dried out.
Alice felt the dress Kilbride's people had clothed her in. Still a little damp. She touched the top of her head. The sting from the thorn wounds had numbed thanks to physical and mental exhaustion.
She heard the automatic doors shush open behind her; the hard sole of a single boot. Ray swung into view on a pair of wooden crutches.
He stopped next to her. "Mind if I—?”
"Sure," Alice said.
Ray eased himself onto the wall and swung his legs over. The right leg of his combats had been cut off mid-thigh, with a large, padded bandage wrapped above the knee
