He strides into the emergency room and she's in those hospital clothes and she's crying and it takes all his fucking strength not to run. She can hardly breathe, he holds her so close, places his hands on her face, dries her cheeks with the palm of his hand. She is too numb to stop the tears, dismiss the pain and her lips are split open, her breath haggard.

"Baby," he whines plaintively, big amber eyes searching hers for signs of life (hardly finds anything).

"How are you?" It takes all her strength to speak because her head is pounding and she can hardly live, hardly live right now.

"Terrified," he breathes, fingers entwined hard with hers. "I fucking love you and I want to know you. I want to know you a long time."

For hours they are trapped in tragedy and confusion, countless faces and emotionless eyes taking her vitals, asking her about her darkest secrets. Suicidal, they think when they see her red, swollen eyes, tear-stained skin, nervous fidgeting.

She's stuck there in the hospital bed with a band around her wrist with her name and a barcode, with hospital gowns that morph her body into a shapeless flow of battered cotton (maybe whoever wore them before was actually crazy). There's no way to get out, she has trapped herself, so she makes confessions to psychiatrists (she's lying, she must be suicidal), to social workers (don't trust them, they've fucked things up before) that make her man squeeze her hand and squirm and lose his words (fuck, how much he accepts her, cares for her, lets her go crazy).

"She slips real hard," he says.

But still, even through all this he lays in the hospital bed with her, lets her cry on his hand, hold onto him and the idea of him just to survive.

"And I was just thinking about how to tell you I love you," she tries to laugh, "And you go and say it first."

He laughs and makes a promise. "I'm not going anywhere."

It's dark and there are crazy people staring at her through the dark. She wraps the hospital gown tight around her, feels the plastic band on her wrist and the eyes of the nurses on her. But those big amber eyes, those big hands, forehead pressed against hers as they say farewell, and the final kiss make her chest pound and make the world seem nothing but the ground underneath their feet.

"This place is weird, I'll get you tomorrow. You don't belong here."

"Okay," she whispers weakly, unsure of her own perseverance.

"Hey," he implores, his sandalwood fingers curled in hers, soft lips pressed against her hand. "It'll be all right."

Weakly she waves as the nurse ushers him out; feels small and insignificant underneath the blanket draped over her shoulders.

She falls in love with the orange glow of his cigarette in the blue night. His right hand finds hers as they fly through a sea of red and white lights, the car filled with his smoke. Their destination this night is his past that intrigues her, is the place that he finally escaped, and she's a little nervous.

Late to every destination they fumble with the room keys in the cold dark, only bother unpacking toothbrushes, lingerie, and lube. They make love in sparsely furnished motels, throw familiar clothes into unfamiliar closets, obsess over each other's bodies into sweaty sunrises and empty orgasms.

When they take walks hand in hand their age difference is blaring to others and sometimes to her. She feels so incredibly young when he talks of life's exhaustions, Jimi, and how long he's been a smoker. She suspects he feels the generation divide when she praises Lana del Rey and when she purchases the newest fashion, but--

"Goddamn, baby." He licks his fingers as he drives and she pants; time accelerated, skin set aflame.

But, she's never been good with numbers. She could hardly care less.

Nearly two decades split them, but passion and affection weave the bond. He's dark and artistic, injured; she's depressed and hopeful, traumatized. The scattered pieces of broken hearts mend each other at contact, and severed, damaged goods are made beautiful again. In their impersonal hotel rooms they make confessions and hold each other tight (her onto him because she's falling in love for the first time; him onto her because she's refreshing and kind) in pitch blackness and for the first time she is unafraid.

"You're sexy."

Across the country they travel, disappear into anonymity and are known only as the strange couple who checked in late last night. When friends inquire her whereabouts she mentions his name and they ask of attributes and she flaunts them; they ask of numbers and she falls silent.

She's with him because she's tired of being judged, after all. So she never answers, because hearts are just as bad with numbers too.

Children covet their wounds. Band-aids, they implore as they cradle scabs and bruises, tears engorged like dew at the corners of their eyes. They ask you for the remedy, for the kisses to make it feel better. They don't know how to fix it themselves.

So, like a child I think of how the fucker drowned me in alcohol for a night that, once excitement and a girl with a lovely name, will fade as the night he took it from a girl who never even kissed anyone before him (too easy, he would say). The chokehold of the taste of Bacardi lips, the two days of bleeding afterwards beckons childlike whimpers and tearful sobs late into lonely nights (and I just don't know how to fix it).

Like an injured child I cry and cry and cry.

I'm sure he joked with his friend the next morning, told him that it was my first everything, that I didn't shave down there and that I tried whispering his name to get him off quicker (James, James). Like a little boy and his first trophy, he probably bragged and bragged, showed off his sexual prowess to other males as best he could. And I'm sure he hasn't grown, has been stuck in immaturity and lies, fake white-teeth smiles. It's certain that he has done the same thing to other girls, and I'm sure with pride he wears their trauma like badges on his uniform.

He's a spoiled child, taking everything that's within his grasp.

He has conditioned me to believe that the only sign that I am enjoyable should be a hickey that I have to hide with my hair. This and whiskey lips and no more words the morning after are the status quo, the customary. Like an abused child I accept this as the way of life, even though friends speak of dinner eaten with parents and timeouts that don't end with a beating; even though friends joke about first kisses and save their virginities for a non-stranger.