Outside she could hear the big man’s voice booming in laughter, hear the clatter of fork and knife on his plate as he went about his breakfast. This same ritual he practiced every morning, seated at his table in the shade of the tent awning after he had completed his foul business with her. Such a creature of habit, this one.
She stared at the crock.
Somewhere inside, a small voice echoed, dimly calling out to her in a voice Gritta did not recognize. Not at first. Yet it was the voice of a woman calling to her, a voice somehow familiar. Tantalizing her with the promise of release from woe: a means to leave behind this mortal, earthly veil.
“Don’t wait. You can’t afford to tarry a minute longer.”
Whirling about, Gritta expected to find someone chiding her. But found no one there in the tent with her.
Loud noises swallowed up the small voice and invaded her small, private world. Horses whinnied and stamped out there, just beyond these tent walls. Something deep within her, something that clung on to the familiar routine of each day now reminded Gritta that the men would be breaking camp shortly.
“You must act now—if you are going to act at all,” scolded the tiny voice inside her head.
She glanced over her shoulder again, found no one there, and shuddered to think it was her disembodied soul speaking to her. Ordering. Demanding.
“The crock. Go to the crock.”
Glancing one last time at the gap in the tent flaps, Gritta willfully stepped over to them and straightened the canvas so that they overlapped, just as she did whenever she sponged herself of the mornings before leaving the tent and boarding the ambulance to ride out the day. She went back to the table where the bowl and crock sat, then stared down at her hands. They had gone soft, not feeling like her hands at all. Marveling at their smooth texture, she ran one over the other, then pushed up the loose sleeve on the left arm and gripped that wrist tightly in the vise of her right hand. The white skin slowly bulged as the blood trapped in the veins, gone bluish beneath her skin—so pale now after so, so long without the sun. They did not look as if they were her hands.
Perhaps it would not hurt her—since these were not her hands any longer.
“The crock. Take the crock.”
“Yes,” aloud she answered obediently, releasing her wrist and seizing the tall crock between her trembling hands.
“Break it!”
Bringing it over her head, she flung it down against the edge of the table, clenching her eyes at the explosion as shards and slivers rained across her, warm water splattered, steamy, drenching the front of her open dressing gown. The sudden flush of moist heat felt welcome, reassuring as she fell to her knees in the muddy puddle there beneath the tiny table and found what she was instructed to find.
“A big one. Do it right the first time!”
Savagely dragging the gleaming shard of crockery across her wrist once, she gazed down at the sundered flesh beading with the bright red blood.
“Again! Cut it—you must hurry! Cut it—again, again!”
Once more, twice, then three times more she raked the shard across her inner wrist. Shiny, gleaming, warm liquid made her swoon as she crouched there on her knees, drenched with crimson as the clamor suddenly ballooned around her.
Hands seized her, yanking Gritta’s left arm away from her body, other hands grappling with her right hand, prying the sharp sliver of crockery locked in her fingers. Gritta felt far more pain in those fingers the others bent backward than she felt in that welcome, reassuring warmth in the wrist.
“Damn you! Damn you, George!”
“I’m sorry. So sorry, Colonel Usher!”
“Get her feet!” Usher ordered as Gritta began kicking to free herself: lashing out, flailing about at those rescuing her.
There were more than two of them on her now. The fog of faces, smells, cursing voices all tumbled together as they pinned her legs, lifted her.
“Get the wrist, dammit!” Usher growled. “Stop that bleeding.”
“She’s fighting too much, Colonel! Goddamn—it’s just spraying all over me!”
“George—by God! Get something and wrap her wrist!”
“Yessir!”
As they threw her down on the mattress, yanking her arms out from her body and pinning her legs atop the rumpled blankets, Gritta began to sense the first rise of pain in the wrist. The warmth was seeping out of her—replaced by spidering slivers of a cold so icy, she knew she had done some damage.
In the struggle an arm crossed in front of her eyes, and she snapped for it, feeling the taut flesh give beneath her teeth.
“Eeeeiks! The bitch … she’s got a holt of me! Get her off! Get the goddamned bitch off me!”
Someone pulled her hair, yanking her head back brutally. Gritta felt some of her hair come loose as she struggled against them, at the same time sensing some of the flesh tear loose from the man’s arm still locked between her teeth. His blood felt warm and thick on her tongue as the pain grew across her scalp.
“Jesus damned Christ! Lookit this, Colonel! The bitch gone and took a hunk outta my arm.”
