A knock sounded on the clinic door. Andrew wiped the back of an exhausted sleeve across his face, beige pathways of strewn tears marinating his cheeks even then, as he tried to be stronger for her. She kept her hands on his own, then turned her eyes away, giving him leave to answer the door. He stood, afraid to turn his back to her, afraid a shadowed demon would steal in behind him and hurt her again. Andrew faced her, his eyes pained by her bruised lips, her bashed pride.

He turned to the door, opening the fresh wood with a gentle creak, allowing only the barest sliver of the cruel outside into his sanctuary. An elderly woman stood without, a tattered grey hood drawn politely over her blanched head, the autumn trees a myriad of heat behind. She had a sore kindness in her eyes, but a pursed mouth, that told of years spent sheltered and spoiled. She began to smile, when Andrew closed his eyes, wishing himself by Colleen's side, and stepped outside onto the morning porch, careful to allow no glimpse of the patient within. A muted spark of curiosity reared its red head in the woman's eyes, but she cast her gaze downwards as the bright Dr. Cook latched the door quietly behind him.

"May I help you, ma'am?"

"Are you Dr. Cook?" She seemed surprised by his youth, by the charming boyishness in his smooth cheeks and flopped hair.

"Yes, I am. Are you ill?"

"No, no, but Mr. Lodge told me you might have some sort of tonic for my headaches. You see," and she paused, raising her hand, a patch of wrinkled fabric that bore expensive jewelry, "my husband and I came here for a few weeks of rest. He's a businessman in Denver, you know, and barely has time to breathe at night, poor man. So we came here, and, well, I'm afraid I'm doing more harm than good, what with my waking him up for glasses of water during the night. But I tell you, Doctor, I simply cannot sleep. I was speaking to Mr. Lodge and he told me you had a variety of helpful tonics here. May I come in, and let you look me over? Perhaps the problem is more serious than what I've described."

Andrew held his jaw rigid, smiling, the pain of his realized weaknesses written in modern language across his face. She seemed to take no notice, looking up at him, the hood beginning to fall from behind her ears. Mountain birds spoke in the distance, and the young doctor became aware of creaking wagon wheels and fine ladies with violet parasols parading around the hotel. Her insistence on coming in was obvious, though unspoken. Andrew didn't know what to do. Should the man turn her away, or the doctor allow her admittance?

"Ma'am, would you mind waiting here? I know the tonic Mr. Lodge was speaking about. I have a patient inside who shouldn't be disturbed. I'll just be a moment."

Closing the door patiently in the face of her objections, Andrew turned around and crossed to his selection of variously colored bottles, with fancy labels from industrial cities, where they were mass produced, never to have the creator touch the faces of the patients he was helping. Or hurting. Andrew had never trusted tonics. But he would dole them out, under higher command, to pull in a lifetime of tainted money.

Careful to keep the glass vials from hitting against one another, he replaced the selections behind the partition that separated them from his virtuous cures. Always hiding the bad, promoting the faithful. It was his oath, no matter what Preston wanted. Colleen's breath came regularly, though her mouth painted the air with a bloodied pain. Andrew felt it, stinging his heart, pulling at his stomach, making him angered and desperate in the same moment.

He touched her hand, watched her eyes beneath her eyelids. She was dreaming. Her mouth contorted, her face seemed pained. It took his greatest strength to pull away from her, to face the needy world outside the door. They demanded so much of him, when he had now to give his all to this broken woman who had come to him for help. Help. He would give her that, and all the love he believed he had within him.

Her hands gathered together scorningly, the older woman waited outside, back a few feet from where she had previously stood. Her eyes were accusing, as if she were demanding to know the face of the impropriety that had left her standing to face a closed door. Andrew could not look at her with his usual dignity. He cowered, afraid to admit that his love was injured, himself to blame, his life broken, and his profession always calling.

"This should be enough to help you through the rest of your stay here at the hotel, ma'am. If you have any further problems, please feel free to come back. I have a good deal of these tonics, and one or another usually does the trick."

Blinking against the sudden sunlight that dripped over the porch, smiling with a culpable boyishness at her accusing mouth, he handed her the blue bottle, watched her gaze become approving, and heard without listening her strong thank-you, as her hooded form turned back to the entrance of the hotel.

Dr. Cook watched her go, thankful there were no other patients waiting for him. He would have to turn them away. Preston. He would have to explain the situation to Preston. The clinic could not remain open. It had taken his last vestiges of strength to tend to that woman's headache. A real injury would do him in. He had had no sleep, had had no peace of mind since she had screamed his name under the cover of night. The cover of night. Little had it done to protect her.

A gentle murmur rocked its way from inside the clinic to his anxious ears, and he then heard a scream building carefully. He threw aside the door, slamming it behind him as he ran inside to Colleen. She was sitting up straight on the examination table, her face washed clean of color, blanched in the darkness of the closed shades. Her eyes were wide, her mouth birthing a separate fear from what she remembered. Her dreams had carried her back to the heart of the rape, and she was living it again. And again, he had let her slip away unprotected.

His arms grabbed her, his mind a bystander in his fierce response to her agony.

"Colleen! Colleen, stop this! Stop, I'm here..."

Andrew wrapped himself around her, stroking her tangled hair, careful to keep her wounded face from his shoulder. He could smell the fear in her skin, hated the rigidity that had kidnapped her body. She could not wake up. They sat, her scream dying in the tepid air of the clinic. He said nothing, only held her, wished her to him.

She relaxed, one moment a lifeless form, beaten, conquered. Andrew pulled her slowly back from him, keeping her face loosely held in between his symmetrically paired palms. She wept, her bruises a myriad of spring colors as the tears reflected the light. She shuddered, looked at him as though he were the attacker, then let the touch of recognition claim her once more.

"Oh, Andrew..."

Colleen was exhausted, dark rims beneath her eyes, her cheeks hollowed in from chiseling fear. She was so afraid. Would he never be enough to protect her?

She laid her face against his chest, her nose pressed to him, her lips. Andrew placed one hand around the back of her head, gently. He could say nothing. He could be nothing more than he was, and pray simply that it was enough. She pulled back, looking up at his olive face with frightened eyes, poring over him for assurance. Andrew tried to offer it, to smile in the cruel glimpse of her shattered hopes, her shattered heart.

"What did...did he do to me, Andrew?"

The doctor was ashamed of the diagnosis, and he merely turned his eyes from her, too fearful of her just face to pronounce it. Looking over the shining diplomas on the wall, which seemed to him a mere mockery of what good he was able to do. Taking in the contents of the medicine cabinet. Wishing he were beside her in the sunlight. Colleen put a tear-drenched palm across his cheek, drawing his gaze reluctantly back to her.

"Answer me, Andrew. Please. I have to know what he did to me."

Those freckled cheeks. Oh, my love, don't ask me to revisit this for you. Don't ask me to do this.

He put his hands around her own. He could hear the sounds of an early afternoon beckoning at the shuttered windows. He smelled the aroma from the next-door dining room. There was so much life around them. Why was she not deserving of unbothered happiness?

"Colleen, you were...raped. Your right shoulder was dislocated. You were bleeding when I brought you inside, so I...I undressed you, reset your shoulder, and performed an examination."

His eyes had been turning from hers, but he now looked directly to them. He was embarrassed, ashamed.

"I never would have presumed to do such a thing, but you were so hurt, and if I hadn't done it..."

His mouth was furiously working to reach an explanation, the young man awkwardly reasoning through a necessity. Colleen only smiled, with what little happiness remained within her to properly color a grin. Her face was too bruised to convey her acceptance, but her clenching of his nervous palms was enough to make him stop. It was alright.

"And you had suffered some tearing and were still experiencing some internal bleeding, so I stopped it and kept you here all night. You were unconscious for hours, but you were muttering, stirring a bit."

Andrew did not want to offer more, but she had not been appeased.

"Andrew, what did he do to me? Will I ever be able to have..."

The question remained unasked, as a fresh wave of sobs rushed through her small frame. He held her. His shoulder seemed insufficient to provide for her, but she made no comment, only let her fear drip out violently.

A door on the back side of the clinic was situated on the hotel's porch only a few feet from his own room. When he felt Colleen beginning to relax, to loosen her hold, Andrew stood, carefully laying her head down, amazed at her gentle eyes. He opened the door and crossed back over the small space to pick up this fallen woman.

Carrying her in his arms, Andrew felt the man he'd always wanted to be. Someone in love. He'd grown in Boston with such a technical outlook on life, worried only about achieving, about success, about making his father's name once again proud. The city had been a prison. But here, in Colorado, he had found the peace he had so long sought. All his memories, it seemed, began when he had gotten off of the small train which ran through the center of town. Colleen had stood there, awaiting her grandmother, as struck with him as he had been with her. That was when his life had begun.

And it had brought him here. The bearer of his beloved from an examination table to his bed. What hopes he'd had, and how they'd been so viciously shattered. She was asleep even as he stepped crudely across the fine wood slats of the porch. She remained so as he bent to turn the handle of his bedroom door.

Inside was warm, a shelter from the coolness of the autumn without. Andrew turned from their pale reflections in his hanging mirror, concerned only with laying her where she could be in a fashioned peace. His pillow was wrinkled, the sunlight across it from the window opposite. Colleen's face was in the heavenly display for only a moment as she turned herself, asleep but fighting. Placing a blanket across her thin form, Andrew exhaled, a worry of days ripping from him. He kissed her forehead, drew up another blanket and laid it beside the bed on the floor. Her hand lay barely exposed from underneath the blanket, and he touched it with a wishing pair of lips as he let himself go to sleep. Andrew prayed he would dream of her healed, his heart restored. He prayed only to be released. He prayed, and he loved.

Colleen opened her eyes, the brilliance of the day outside refusing to be shut out by the inexpensive shades drawn on the windows. A gentle breeze blew in from a tiny crack in the window. Andrew must have opened it. Andrew. She smiled to think of him, to think of his concern, that grin in his eye, his boyish nonchalance. Colleen loved him. And she hated herself now, forced to offer him only what she had left of herself, this beaten shell of the young woman she had so recently been.

He was not in the room. She spied the manly hangings on the walls, the panoramic pictures of Boston, the crisp, grey coat hanging cleanly on the door corner. His closet door was ajar, and she saw the dark pants folded within, the shiny black shoes. He was the East, the proud city from which he had stolen himself away, to end up in Colorado Springs. She wondered so often if he was happy here, if being under Preston's command was enough for a man so young, so full of hopes. Colleen questioned the small town's ability to make him happy. She questioned if she would be able to make him happy.

Crushing her teeth together, breathing in deeply and closing her eyes, Colleen swung her legs out from beneath the blanket and placed her bare feet on the wooden floor. She could feel the uneven slats of wood, married together in a splintered union beneath the balls of her feet. Pain danced through her stomach like a crimson seductress, and she had to rest her head motionless to keep from passing out. Her face felt enormous, swollen, cracked like an ancient marble chiseling. The smell of burning wood radiated from the window opening, and Colleen imagined the strong man throwing logs on the fire, a hat shielding his head against the autumn sun, gloves to keep his hands from becoming further callused. What if he was the man who had done this to her? What if he was out there, watching her, knowing that she had run for help? Would he come back for her? Would he do this to her again for having the audacity to scream out in the night?

Her hands on the edge of the short bed, her palms muscular as they retained her balance, she stood on wobbling calves. Her legs seemed unable, or unwilling, to support her weight, as she took infant steps from the bed to the dresser. There was a well-dusted mirror, a comb lying with its toothy head exposed in a half-open drawer. She took it out, anxious to wipe away the blue and black face she saw before her. This was her nightmare, her Hell, and the man who had done this the Devil himself.

Colleen inhaled deeply. There was the scent of Andrew, a young cologne, a strong natural smell that warmed her like a touch of cinnamon in the Christmas air. How she needed him. It surprised her, that she had hidden her feelings for so long, the story of her heart written so plainly across her eyes, but she had turned her face from his in shame, never letting him read what had been his from the start. She needed him.

She dragged the comb through her hair, the satiated teeth spitting out the ragged tangles. There were clumps of blood drawn through her auburn mane, and she was reminded all the more of the pain. The night was unforgiving, and she recalled the feel of the dirt beneath her cheek, the sudden frigidity of her legs as her skirts had been lifted...

Colleen dropped the comb, and was deaf to the sound of it striking the pale brown floor. She ran back across the room, gathered the blanket to her, and wrapped it around her shoulders as she fell to the ground. She weeped, and she saw his face in every window, masked, but there, hungry for her suffering. Her legs were screaming. Her stomach felt as if she had been impaled. What did I do to deserve this? Why?

Her face buried in the side of the bed, her arms frantically rubbing up and down her shoulders, the fringes on the blanket catching in her knotted hair, Colleen heard the door to the room slowly opening. She turned her tearstained eyes to the man who had entered. Andrew.

He was carrying a light tray, and she took quick note of the orange juice, the boiled eggs, the bits of toast and jam that sat beside the silverware. She watched the scene as though removed from her body, and reached out for him with her voice, though her arms remained around her shoulders.

"Andrew! Andrew!"

Colleen was shrieking. He had painted the strongest smile he could summon across his face before he had reached for the doorknob, knowing he had to be strong for her. He had expected her to still be sleeping, or lying in the bed. He found, however, a blanched banshee crumpled by the bedside, pealing out his name.

He put the tray on the nearest chair and ran across the short span between the door and Colleen. Andrew landed on his knees, grabbing her by the shoulders. He didn't know what was wrong. He couldn't tell anymore. Was it the pain? Was it her memories? Was it her heart, breaking within her?

"Colleen, what is it? What's wrong? What's wrong!?"

She saw him, his arms quickly wrapping around her, but she could not feel him. She was lost in the previous night, the scent of her violator's rancid breath, heavy with alcohol and cheap tobacco, pouring over her ripe neck, the rawhide pieces of his jacket all she could focus on as she drove her mind away from the pressure between her legs, the biting pain, the sudden loss of herself. She saw it five times, ten, a thousand, the pain fresh as each thrust wailed at her. No more. I can't take this anymore.

Andrew was quiet, rocking her with as much care as he could. He whispered, his lips placed just above her forehead, pale pink mingling with the hard red of her matted hair. He whispered that he was there, that he wasn't going to let anyone hurt her. He told her he loved her, as many times as seemed right. He wasn't sure she knew, wasn't sure she had absorbed it the night before when he had pulled his heart from out his chest to offer to her, as humbly as he knew how. She was not Colleen. She was a form of pure fear, her arms shaking, her eyes rolling around in the sockets, searching high and low for a danger that had ceased to be. But he knew she lived it over again, and keeping her subdued in his arms, holding her, he felt his own tears coming once more. Andrew was afraid to imagine what had been done to her. He imagined her alone out there, the woods so unforgiving when you allowed yourself to get lost in their darkness. He saw himself hard at work, pen to paper, patients' names strewn across his face. He would never forgive himself. He hadn't known. He would never know. He could only feel her crying. I'll love you. I hate myself, that I can't do more.

Suddenly, Colleen thrust herself away from him, pushing her arms fiercely into his chest. She stood, and turned to the mirror, gripping the blanket ever more strongly around her shoulders, her blackened face staring at itself. Andrew watched, helpless, as she touched a white hand to the reflecting glass, tracing a dim outline of her own radiating shame in the woman she saw before her.

The rage was gone. There were only the remnants of a silken regret, a smooth slate of guilt and suffering. The happiness, the smiles, the beautiful dreaming and the crying waves goodbye, all were gone. She was a hollow shell. Could she learn to love him? Could she love anything again?

Andrew stood, slowly, the fabric over his knees clinging to the wood slats of the floor. He felt foreign, out of place, the glint of autumn wiping a toothy grin over his shined Boston shoes. Each step brought him closer to her, closer to her blanketed side. He watched his reflection growing in the mirror, his hair flopped crazily, his eyes red-rimmed, his cheeks heaving with breath. His bow tie was undone, two bits of misplaced fabric trailing down from his neck like exposed veins. He turned his eyes only to her, carefully scrutinizing her face, the eyes that twirled with iced horror. Andrew knew the walls had become abandoned trees, the ceiling a late-night sky, the ground the site of her virginity's crucifixion. He wondered if she would see him, and see only the man who had destroyed her. He wondered if she would see him at all.

No longer rushed, only afraid, the young doctor kept his hands from her, p referring to let her fury and her shame work themselves out. Colleen's heart was twisted on her chest, like a spoiled rag on the clothesline. Each beat, another second, another thrust. Andrew closed his eyes, trying so desperately to cleanse his mind of the thought. He remembered her smiling to him, so often, standing in the door of Michaela's clinic, wishing him a prolonged farewell. They had both been so innocent, so naïve. He had wanted her so dearly, and she had loved him so greatly, and yet they had not found the words to tell each other so. It had been the picture of perfection. It had been his heart's stage. Now, he had been torn into shreds, each time he saw her face, remembering the shriek of his own name in the night, like a curse on him until death, into death. You abandoned me, it seemed to say. You never raised a finger to help me.

Andrew opened his eyes to gaze on her once more, the frenzied rubbing of her shoulders, some way of comforting herself. He couldn't do it for her, couldn't get inside her mind to be the one that stood between her and her attacker. Fate had pulled him from the equation, and he would forever remain apart.

But she had stopped. Colleen was looking up to him, the blanket fallen down into the crooks of her elbows, a few fringes playing themselves in a light tune across her forearm. Her arms rested in front of her waist, her palms turned up, feeble. Her eyes revolved in their blackened sockets, her face motionless, even as her bruises spoke of horrible action.

The night had penned itself across her face. Colleen's breath came regularly, her mouth pursed open, as though she wanted to speak volumes, but could not find the words. Freckles shone through the scratches, the beaten cheeks, and Andrew slowly, so slowly, raised his own hand to touch her jaw, wanting to pull those summertime memories back out. You're full of so much life, my love. Please, Colleen, come back to me.

Without speaking, almost before he realized she had become once again a weak young woman, instead of the stoic statue of pain, Colleen had turned her back to him, his hand clasped in her own. She led him back across the floor, to the small bed that had so often welcomed him, alone, each night when the aged hotel clientele had gone without grievance to their beds, when he could release the faux smile that bejeweled his face and put on the truth of what he was, only half a man while she was not by his side. Colleen laid down against the wall, her eyes beckoning to him to lie down beside her.

Afraid of shattering propriety, the demons of Boston manners and prescribed aloofness, Andrew hesitated, choosing to sit instead on the side of the bed. She did not speak, only touched her hands to his chest, toying around the ecru buttons and the loose black string that fell from his vest pocket. He was undone before her. He could not refuse.

And so he threw his East coast care to the wind, that fierce Colorado wind that whipped with such abandon around the eaves of Preston's hotel. This was not his father's home, not a proper courtship, not a proper moment. She had been used. He had failed her. He owed her this broken reserve. He owed his everything to her. Harvard and his childhood fell so far behind as he curved his body into the form of her own, his very skin demanding a closeness that only moments before had seemed so violently unwarranted. They were the halves of a glorious whole, as the mountain sun married its peaked horizon once more, disappearing slowly and carefully behind the sky. He loved her. God, how he loved her. He held her and watched her eyes close once more. Sleep. I'm here. I'll always be here.

Hours later, the silence of the mountains rained with brilliant weight on the hotel, on the thin glass windows that puffed themselves up to keep out the bitter cold. Andrew lay still beside her, holding her hand, one arm around her back, taking in every fine detail of her face. He imagined her, her skin once again dazzling in its paleness, those deep brown eyes asking him eternal questions, questions to which only his heart knew the answers. He saw her, beside him in white, speaking vows, making promises. He dreamed of her as his wife, his own, forever. And then he saw the skies blacken behind their altar, the clouds swirl with demonic intent, saw her veil and clean face ripped away to reveal the coal heart that had formed within her. Something laughed in the distance, screeching, taunting her. You don't deserve, pretty Colleen. You'll never deserve white. And he stood in horror, as fat drops of blood fell earthwards from her eyes, the cries of a widowed child in infinite dress written all across her face, over, and over, and over.

Andrew awoke, his brow layered in sweat, his hands shivering. It was the dead of night. And how dead it truly was. The crickets and owls seemed otherwise occupied, on some distant tropical coast, while he lay there with his fallen woman. Lay there, trying to take away her shame.

She slept, so still, her chest rising and falling in a metered motion. It was the perfection of woman beside him. How could any man tamper with what God had made? How could any man do what that man had done? It was beyond him. It was beyond his imagining, the hatred, the abhorrence of fragility that would lead to such hurt. But there were men like that. A dime a dozen, who would raise their fists to a feminine face without thinking. A natural reaction. Was this nature?

The young doctor let an errant hand drip through his hair. Was this how it was intended to be, the crying, the nightmarish stillness of day when the very world seemed poised across the dividing line between friend and foe, staring her down? Could anyone live with such an enemy? Could she stand to awaken, when the very rays of the sun were merely poetic threats, lemon jeers?

Never steering his eyes away from her own, Andrew let his hand search hers out in the darkness, lifting it so slowly from her side. He put it palm-to-lip, trying to heal her. He had dedicated his life to healing. He had promised his own years to the giving back of what they were all offered at conception - the future. But could he give her back her future? Could she ever want it again?

A darkness passed before the door, and the line of light under the slat of wood passed submissively into the hierarchy of shadows. Andrew, careful not to disturb Colleen, stood and walked quietly over to the window, perched at waist-level to the left of the door. He turned his eyes from pane to pane, searching out the daring form that had blocked his hopeful moonlight. And he saw them.

An old man and woman, a couple from the hotel, stealing out for a moonlit stroll at midnight. No threat, no malintentioned face. Only innocence reclaiming the elderly, only spontaneity rescuing itself from the precipice. It was a beautiful sight, the pair of them, hand in hand, a cane on the man's left, a wildflower in the woman's right, and only their joining between them. They wore no shoes, and left no mark on the sanded wood of the wrap-around porch that embraced the exterior of the hotel, became only dark pants hitting at the knees, swishing skirts kissing the dust that had gathered since the sun's departure.

Andrew saw himself, aged, similar to the portrait whose back was now turned to him. He saw Colleen, at his side, a strong woman who had learned once again to smile. He touched the window with his fingertips, marveling at the crispness of the air, the boldness of the wise couple to wear no shoes in the autumn moment. They were reckless, contrary to all norms of society, being wild and touching carefree abandon. They loved. They knew no suffering, in those moments, under the witness of the stars, the haughty moon. He wanted to give Colleen such a future, to promise to take her away from all this pain, this hurt. He wanted her never to errantly wander past that spot in the forest where she had been taken. He wanted her to always feel safe. He wanted her. She had to know that.