Patricia, the nurse who told Hammond to move, runs the clinic now. Rachel works there too. Pony donates his time twice a month.
The new clinic doesn’t ask about insurance.
Mia is fourteen now.
She has scars. On her arms. On her chest. Up the side of her neck. She used to hide them under long sleeves no matter how hot it got.
Last summer she stopped doing that.
She told me she’d decided her scars weren’t something to be ashamed of. They were proof she fought something and won.
She wears tank tops now. She rides on the back of my bike with her vest on, the same one Tank had made for her when she was eight.
Her vest has one patch on the back. Just one.
It says BROTHERHOOD.
Last month she asked me a question I’d been waiting seven years to answer.
We were sitting on the back porch. Sun going down. She was drinking a soda and I was drinking coffee. She looked over at me with those green eyes she got from her mother.
“Daddy. Why did that doctor refuse to help me? When I was little. Why did he do that?”
I thought about it for a long time before I answered.
