"C'mon, young lady.  Let's get you inside." The bus driver said."looks like you've been in a bit of a tussle."

"Yeah, a tussle with a windstorm" I responded listlessly.

"That how you got all those scapes and bruises?" The driver asked.

I nodded and slowly sat up then, attempted to gain my feet.

Staggering a bit, he took my arm and helped me onto the bus.

Warmth...it encompassed me like a long-lost friend. It was not lost on me that I was alone, other than the driver, I was alone on this bus.

"I have some coffee. I'm sure at your age you don't like coffee but, it looks like you could use some. I also think you could use a hospital too," the driver remarked passing a lidful of coffee.

"No! No...thank you. This bus takes me near home. I'll be fine there," responding with alarm a split second before I quashed it.

"Not liking that young lady...can't hold you prisoner though. Here, will you take this instead?"

He passed me over a used but warm turtleneck miles too big for me.

Putting it on, I gratefully accepted.

My eyes were begging me to close. The toothpicks that currently held my lids up were beginning to snap. 

I took the chance because I had to. I told the bus driver where my stop would be and asked, "If I fall asleep, would you please wake me before my stop?" To which he agreed.

Streams of light zipping by horizontally, entrails of fluorescence bleeding out the line.

Peering through the window with sleepy eyes. I'd forgotten how light could be refracted through glass. How the image itself could be made to lie.

I drifted off. 

The lull and sway of the moving bus made its move and I was asleep.

"Young lady? Your stop.  Make sure you get looked at and keep the sweater, looks better on you," the driver remarked.

Offering a small, genuine smile of thanks, I moved as normally as I could exiting the bus trying to hide my pain. The bus drove away slowly while I looked around.

There I was back in the neighbourhood where my parents lived, where I once lived and where my memory lived. 

It started to rain as I walked to the phone booth outside of a pub near the corner next to a coffee shop.

"Ok, now what?  S said their phone was disconnected".

I thought to myself I had to try. I popped in a dime and dialed their number.

To my surprise, the call was answered.

It was "him".

"Hello?" he asked. 

My heart chatted through the chicken dance in my chest. I said,

"Hello, Dad."

"Yup," he said.

"Can I come home?" I asked.

He responded, "No"

"Click" The phone went dead.

So strange...relief then panic.

I weakened fast, I had to sit down, I had to rest. I had to do something where I could. There's only one other phone number I could remember. My grandmother's so again with the dime and I dialed the number now soaking wet and with shivering fingers,  I listened for the phone to ring. After a couple of rings my grandmother answered.

"Hello Oma"

"Vee is dat?" She asks in her thick Dutch accent.

"It's me Oma, your eldest grandchild."

"Vhat you doing?" She asks."

I told her where I was, I told her I had nowhere to go.

She asked another question, "You call home?"

"Yes, he won't let me come home." 

"Heh heh," she responded. "I'm sending a social verker to you." She asked if there was somewhere I could sit and wait. 

What I didn't know then that I know now was, how deep the rabbit hole goes. How very much involved in Social Services she was and had been for years. She had a front row seat down that rabbit hole.

"There's a coffee shop here I can wait in." I gave her the name of it then hung up. I could barely stand but, I walked into that coffee shop and found a booth. 

Collapsing inside I ordered another hot chocolate and mug of soup which cost a total of two dollars and twelve cents.

When the waitress came back with my hot chocolate and soup, what looked like two aspirins sat on the tray beside them.

"That should bring down your fever. You got someone?" She asked.

"Yes, my grandmother has sent a social worker to come pick me up."

"Okay," she responded.

I ate as quickly as the heat of my soup would allow and sipped my hot chocolate alleviating the "caved-in" feeling I often had. 

Leaning back and losing the fight for consciousness, thoughts drifted...

"C'mon...come and get me.  Is that all you got?"

I couldn't care anymore that day...

Maybe tomorrow I will...or won't.