The guard kept his gaze fixed straight ahead as they walked. Nurses Susan had once mentored suddenly found urgent tasks elsewhere, refusing to look her way. By the time she reached the exit, her name had already been peeled from the office door, as if she had never existed.
She packed what remained of her professional life into a worn cardboard box: her stethoscope, a framed family photo, and the old cartoon-bear clogs her young patients adored. Then she slid behind the wheel of her aging Honda and cried until her throat burned raw. It wasn’t only her position she had lost. It was the one place that had made her quiet house feel less desolate.
When she finally steadied herself enough to check her finances, the numbers were brutal. Five hundred thirty-seven dollars sat in her account. Rent would be due in two weeks. She had no plan—no idea where to begin again.
The Greyhound station in Indianapolis reeked of diesel fumes and stale coffee. Susan asked for a ticket to Brook Hollow, Ohio.
“Coach is forty-seven dollars,” the clerk muttered without looking up.
Her eyes drifted to a nearby sign advertising first class: leather seats, extended legroom, a curtained-off quiet section. Price: $247.
It was reckless. Irresponsible. Yet after twenty-three years of putting herself last, she found she desperately wanted three uninterrupted hours of peace.
“First class,” she said at last.
She sank into seat 2B. The leather felt cool beneath her, the chair reclined smoothly, and for the first time that day she could draw a full breath.
For forty-seven precious minutes, she almost convinced herself that perhaps everything might still work out.
Then raised voices shattered the calm from the front of the bus.
Pulling the curtain aside, she saw a man struggling to wedge himself into a cramped coach seat. Despite the heat, he wore a leather vest. Old burn scars stretched across his arms and neck, tightening the skin. His hands trembled as he fumbled with the seat belt.
The driver’s patience was clearly wearing thin.