Chapter 4: Jane Doe

Room nine smelled of bleach and old carpet.

I sat on the edge of the bed with the key in my fist and tried to think.

Beth had paid for this room before my father ever asked me to leave.

She had known where I would end up, hours ahead.

I opened my duffel bag and took out the amber bottle the oncologist in Tucson had given me.

The pain started at nine thirty.

It began low in my back and climbed, and I took one pill, then a second, and neither touched it.

By eleven I was on the bathroom floor with my cheek against the cold tile, counting my breath.

I had told myself I would die gracefully, in a quiet bed near my parents.

I had not planned on the floor of a motel on Route 6.

I reached up and knocked the phone off the nightstand by its cord.

I pulled it down to the tile and pressed zero.

"Front desk."

"I need an ambulance," I said. "Room nine. Please."

"Ma'am?"

"Please."

The next hour came in pieces.

The clerk's face over mine.

Two paramedics with a stretcher, and the cold air in the lot.

A ceiling of white light tiles going by overhead, one after another.

Then a curtain, a bed rail, and a needle in my arm.

The pain turned down slowly, then went quiet.

"There she is," said a man's voice.

I opened my eyes.

He stood at the foot of the bed in rumpled blue scrubs, reading a tablet.

He was about thirty-five, with dark hair going gray at the temples and a pen behind one ear.