I was standing outside the old hospital’s emergency exit, where the night was bitterly cold and snow was starting to settle on the cracked pavement.
Just moments ago, a homeless girl I’d seen around the back alley—always near the dumpster—had sprinted through the snow, breath ragged, to save someone hurt on the sidewalk.
She collapsed immediately after whispering, ‘It’s what I’m trained for.’
The biker who came to check on her bent down, and something fell from her pocket.
He stared silently at the ground, unable to speak.
It all felt too urgent, too strange to process in that ordinary, frozen night.
Why did the girl say she was “trained”?
And what was that thing that dropped from her pocket?
Neither seemed to fit the quiet desperation of her usual presence behind the hospital dumpster, where she sought shelter.
It left a weight in the air—unsettled and uncomfortable—something I couldn’t shake.
