Out of the Cold (5 page)

Ben was beside me in an instant. He gently tucked my hair behind my right ear and pressed a clean towel against the wound. He snagged a chair with his free hand. “Sit back,” he said. He eased me down onto the chair. “Let me take a look.” He pulled the towel away gingerly and then quickly pressed it back against my face. “I think you should get that looked at,” he said. The somber expression on his face scared me.

“How bad is it?”

“Where's your coat? I'll get a cab. We'll go to the hospital. It isn't far.”

“But Mr. Donovan—”

“First things first,” Ben said. “Wait here.”

When he came back a few moments later, he was wearing his jacket and carrying mine. He helped me into it, told me to keep applying pressure to the wound, and whisked me out the side door. When we got to the street, he flagged a cab. Andrew, the scruffy young guy who had recognized me by my boots, was standing near the curb when Ben helped me in and told the driver he wanted to go to the nearest emergency room.

“Hey Ben, is everything okay?” Andrew said as Ben climbed into the taxi beside me. Ben didn't answer. He slammed the door shut and asked the driver to hurry.

We waited for nearly a half hour in the emergency department of the closest hospital. Ben kept getting up and going to the main desk to tell them that I was bleeding. Finally, a nurse led us to a small room where we waited some more until a doctor appeared and examined me. Diagnosis: a mild concussion (he handed me a pamphlet on head injuries) and a facial laceration (why does
laceration
sound so much worse than
cut
?). “I'm going to put a couple of stitches in,” the doctor said. The next thing I knew, he'd stuck a needle into my face. “Local anesthetic,” he explained. “This may pinch a little.”

  .    .    .

“With any luck,” the doctor said when he had finished, “there won't be a scar.”

Scar?

“And if you don't wear your hair back,” he said cheerily, “no one will notice.”

Right after the doctor finished with me, someone knocked on the door. It was Art Donovan. He glanced at Ben before asking if I was all right. I said yeah, even though my head still hurt. All I could think about was the possibility that I'd end up with a scar on my face. After I told him what the doctor had done, he came closer and looked at the bandage.

“I called your father,” he said. I had listed him as my emergency contact on the volunteer info sheet. My father tends to be a lot calmer than my mother in tough situations, probably because he used to be a cop. “He's on his way here.”

“How did you know where we were?” Ben said.

“Andrew saw you and Robyn leaving the shelter in a taxi and heard you tell the driver that you wanted the nearest ER. He said he thought Robyn had been hurt.” Art gave Ben a sharp look. “You've been with us long enough to know the procedure, Ben. When someone is injured, I'm to be notified immediately.”

He turned to me. “Do you want to tell me what happened, Robyn?”

“It was an accident,” Ben said. “When I saw she was bleeding, I panicked.” I looked at him. He had seemed perfectly calm and levelheaded to me. “I decided I should get her to the hospital right away. I was going to call you.”

“Wait outside, Ben. I'd like to talk to Robyn alone.”

Ben's eyes caught mine and he stared hard at me, as if he were trying to tell me something. He nodded at Art and shook his head. What was that about? Then he went out into the hall. Art closed the door behind him and listened quietly while I told him what had happened. When I finished, he said, “Mr. Duffy can be a little unpredictable. I'm sorry. Do you want to press charges?”

“Press charges?” I hadn't even considered that. “I don't think he meant to push me as hard as he did.” At least, I hoped he hadn't. “I guess after what happened yesterday, he doesn't like me very much.”

“Yesterday?” Art said.

Uh-oh. Betty had told Ben not to mention Mr. Duffy's cookie-stealing episode to anyone.

“What happened yesterday, Robyn?”

Duffy had stolen food. At least twice. Surely Art had a right to know. I told him what had happened.

“Ben says he's harmless,” I added. “But, to be honest, he scares me a little.”

“For the most part, Ben's right,” Art said. “Don't worry, Robyn. I'll have a talk with Mr. Duffy.”

My father arrived. Art spoke briefly to him. He asked my dad the same thing he had asked me—whether he wanted to press charges. My dad looked at me. I shook my head.

“If this man was violent toward you, Robbie, he could be violent toward other people,” my father said.

“He usually doesn't give us much trouble,” Art said.

My dad looked skeptically at him before turning back to me.

“Mr. Donovan is going to talk to him,” I said.

“I'm going to make myself very clear,” Art assured my father.

My father still looked doubtful, but he said the choice was mine. Just before Art left, he said, “I hope this won't stop you from volunteering with us again, Robyn.” My dad gave him a sharp look. After he left, dad inspected me.

“Your mom is going to be upset when she sees that,” he said, taking a closer look at the dressing on my face.

Talk about an understatement. She was going to freak out. She was already overprotective, especially after what had happened with Nick. This was only going to make things worse.

“Actually, Dad, I was hoping I could stay with you tonight.”

“Sorry, Robbie, no can do.”

“What do you mean, ‘no can do'?”

“You know I love it when you visit—”

“
Visit?
You told me when you and Mom split up that I would always be welcome at your place because it's my place too. My second home.”

“My place
is
your place. But if I know your mother, she's already pacing up and down. She's going to want to see for herself that you're all right.”

“You
told
her?”

“I called the hospital on the way over to see how you were,” my father said. “Then I called your mom. I told her that there had been an incident at the homeless shelter and that you'd been taken to the hospital to get checked out, but there was nothing to worry about. The only reason she's not here right now is that I swore I'd call her as soon as I found out what was going on.”

“But Dad—”

“And I promised to take you straight home. Give me a break, Robbie. If your mom found out that you'd had stitches and I hadn't told her, she'd skin me alive. Now come on.” He helped me into my coat.

Ben was out in the hall. As he came toward me, he and my dad exchanged looks. Then my dad said, “I'm going to call your mother. I'll be right back.”

“Nice going,” Ben said after my father stepped outside with his cell phone. “Why didn't you just call the cops and have Mr. Duffy arrested? At least that way he'd have a nice, warm cell and a hot meal.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I talked to Mr. Donovan,” he said. “He's going to bar Mr. Duffy from the shelter for a week.”

“I didn't ask him to do that,” I said. “He asked me if I wanted to press charges, and I said no. But Mr. Duffy
was
stealing. And because of him I had to get stitches. Just because he's homeless, that doesn't mean—”

“How would
you
like to be out in the cold for a whole week?” Ben said. “How would you like to have no place to go?” Before I could answer, he wheeled around and walked away. What was with him? He had been so nice to me when he saw I was hurt, but suddenly he was acting like I had attacked Duffy instead of the other way around. Well, that was his problem. I went to look for my father.

  .    .    .

My mother rushed out of the house as soon as my dad's car pulled into her driveway. She turned pale when she saw the bandage on my face and the information sheet on head injuries that my dad handed her.

“It's a
mild
concussion,” my dad and I said in unison. “It sounds worse than it is,” he added. “She's fine. Really.” My mom glowered at him as though my injuries were his fault. She said, “You're not going back to that homeless shelter. Do you understand me, Robyn?”

I told her not to worry, that I had no intention of going back. I'd had all I could take of Mr. Duffy—and of Ben Logan.

And of Nick. I wouldn't have been anywhere near the shelter if it hadn't been for him. He still hadn't called. Where was he?

CHAPTER
FOUR

T

hat night the temperature plummeted. The forecast called for another few days of severe cold. Billy called me on Monday night.

“How are you feeling, Robyn?” he said. He'd asked me the same question a dozen times at school that day. He said he knew Mr. Duffy, but that he'd never known him to attack anyone before. He said he hoped I wasn't going to think that all homeless people did things like that, because it wasn't true.

“Still fine, Billy,” I said. I had spent the whole day trying not to think about the possibility of a scar on my face.

“Mr. Donovan just called me,” Billy said. “The city has issued a cold alert. When that happens, the shelter operates twenty-four hours a day instead of closing overnight. I was wondering ...”

“Don't even think about asking, Billy,” I said. I had promised myself on my way home from the hospital that I would never set foot in that homeless shelter again, no matter who asked me. Even if I'd wanted to go, my mother would never let me.

“They're really short on people, Robyn,” Billy said. “Especially now. It's hard enough to get volunteers at night, especially on short notice. It's even worse so close to Christmas. Nothing will happen, I promise. We'll be working in groups. I'll make sure you're safe. Please? I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important.”

Now that I had actually been to the shelter, it was much easier to picture how much the place meant to the people who relied on it and so much harder to tell myself that it wasn't my problem. Still...

“I don't know, Billy ...”

“They need people to help inside, and they need people in the vans.”

“Vans?”

“They do patrols. They round up anyone who's sleeping outside, bring them in out of the cold. You would be in one of the vans with me. Come on, Robyn. It's brutal out there. This is the kind of night when people could literally freeze to death.”

I pictured Andrew. I pictured the women with the bundle buggies who had been clustered around the TV.

“Well ...”

“I'll meet you at the bus. We'll go together.”

I hesitated.

“What about Morgan? Is she coming too?” I said.

“She can't. She's got some family thing.”

Family thing? She hadn't mentioned any family thing to me.

“So you'll come, right?” Billy said.

“Well ...” If it were anyone else, I would have said no. But it was Billy, and Billy was so kindhearted that he was making me feel like a grinch.

“I'll talk to my mom,” I said. “I'll call you back.”

My mother started shaking her head before I'd even finished explaining what I wanted to do.

“I thought we agreed you weren't going back there,” she said.

“But Billy says they're shorthanded.”

“That may be, but after what happened the last time you were there—”

“I don't think that man meant to hurt me, Mom. Besides, he's been barred from the shelter. And anyway, I'm not going alone. Billy's going to be with me.”

My mother started to relent. She comes across like a mother lion when it comes to making sure I'm safe, but she isn't hard-hearted. And, like everyone else, she liked, trusted, and respected Billy.

“Billy said we might be late,” I warned her.

“Robyn, it's a school night.”

“I know. But I have a spare first thing in the morning. And it's not like we're doing much. Most teachers are giving us class time to finish projects and essays, and all of mine are done.” Come Friday morning, we would be off school for a two-week winter break. “It's for a good cause. It's cold tonight. All I'm going to do is help people stay warm.”

“What about you?” she said. “How are
you
going to stay warm? And how will you get home?”

“I'll be in a van,” I said. When she still didn't look convinced, I added, “I'll bundle up. Promise. And when I'm finished, I'll hop a bus over to Dad's place. It's not that far from the shelter.” My father lived downtown. My mother lived uptown in a more suburban neighborhood.

Eventually, after double-checking that I had packed extra mittens and making me promise that I would keep my hat on my head, my mom let me go.

  .    .    .

Art Donovan came over and welcomed me when I arrived with Billy.