Victoria's Journal

June 22nd 2020

I fell today.

Right through a roof I’d been using to get a look at the neighborhood. The wood gave without warning. One second I was testing my weight, the next I was swallowed by dust and rot, landing hard in what used to be a teen’s bedroom.

The sun had shifted enough to send narrow bands of light across the floor. Posters peeled at the corners. A desk by the window. Glow-in-the-dark stars scattered across the ceiling around the hole I’d made. The bed still neatly made. Closet door half-open.

Small room. Intact life.

Pain followed the silence.

My left arm screamed where it had already been broken days ago. Now my right ankle joined the chorus. Swollen. Discolored. When I tried to put weight on it, white heat shot up my spine.

Maybe broken. Maybe just ruined for a while.

Then the sound.

At the window.

A shadow moved across the light. A hand gripped the sill and before my mind caught up, she was there, climbing in like she belonged to gravity differently than I did.

A bow was slung across her back.

Not decorative. Not something scavenged for show. The string was waxed. The grip wrapped in dark tape worn smooth from use. A small quiver rode against her shoulder with a handful of arrows fletched in mismatched colors.

I jerked back, nearly rolling off the bed.

Her hand moved automatically, not toward a gun but toward one of the arrows resting over her shoulder.

“Hey. Easy. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Her voice wasn’t loud. It wasn’t scared either. Controlled. Measured.

She looked at me the way hunters look at terrain. Quick assessment. Limp. Dust. Blood. The angle of my ankle. The way I held my left arm too close to my side.

Then she disappeared.

Just gone. Out the window as fast as she’d come.

For a moment I wondered if pain had made me hallucinate her.

Then I heard movement downstairs.

Not frantic. Not sloppy. Deliberate steps. A door. A drawer. The hum of something mechanical below, faint and steady.

I pushed myself upright. Bad idea. My ankle buckled and I swallowed a curse, using my good arm to brace against the wall. If she meant harm, I wasn’t in a position to argue.

I followed the sound.

She was in the living room when I reached it, waiting.

The bow leaned against the wall within easy reach.

Ice packs already sweating on the table. Clean wraps. A bottle of Tylenol. Laid out with the kind of precision that comes from repetition, not panic.

“Sit,” she said.

Not a request.

I lowered myself onto the couch.

She worked without commentary. Pressed here. Rotated gently. Tested stability. Wrapped tight but not cruel. Her hands were steady. No tremor. No hesitation.

She didn’t ask what happened. Didn’t ask who I was.

She fixed the problem in front of her.

When she finished, she reached into her pocket and handed me a can of peaches and a small metal opener.

P-38.

“Dad kept two of these in every go-bag,” she said. “Mom had one in hers too.”

That was all.

I turned the little piece of steel in my fingers. Military issue. Ugly. Reliable. The kind of tool you forget about until you need it and then you’re grateful someone thought ahead.

I hooked it into the lid and started working the metal open, one careful bite at a time. My left arm throbbed uselessly at my side, but the right was enough.

Hook. Twist. Reset.

The sound of tin giving way filled the quiet room.

“…Thank you,” I said finally.

She nodded once. No smile. No softness. Just acknowledgment.

Then she stepped back, giving me space, watching in that quiet way people do when they’re deciding whether you’re worth the risk of keeping alive.

I leaned into the couch cushions, ankle elevated, peaches syrup-sweet on my tongue.

For the first time in days, I wasn’t alone.

I don’t know if that makes me safer.

But it makes me human again.