Anton sat up in bed, gasping in fright. It had been years since he had experienced any real nightmares, but this one seemed almost too real. He couldn't ignore it, nor could he erase it from his mind. Breathing heavily, he looked around the florescent bedroom and found he was still alive. He turned his head right and looked towards the window. Not a speck of white was anywhere to be seen, except for the window frame. He looked down at his left arm and found, both to his relief and mild disappointment, that it was still in a sling.

Anton walked out into the hall and saw that Elena's bedroom door was open. He slowly approached it and pushed the door open gently, but she was not in there. The lamp was on and the top drawer of the nightstand was open.

Anton walked out into the dark living room and saw Elena sitting on the couch, holding her head down as she looked at the gun in her hands.

"What are you doing?" Anton asked her, suspicious, but with hidden alarm at her strange behavior.

Noticing his presence, Elena looked up at the hitman, her eyes slightly red and her cheeks stained with tears. "You wanted to see me?" She asked him, her voice slightly hoarse from all her crying.

"Yes, I did", he answered, calmly.

Keeping himself distant from her, Anton stayed close to the wall and walked over to sit down in the chair next to the window, keeping himself hidden in the shadows. He placed his right hand on his knee and slouched back casually, looking at her.

Elena hesitated for a minute before speaking. "I know you must think I'm crazy", she said. "You have every right to think so. I'm so sorry for yelling at you, Anton. It was nothing to do with you. I just..." Unable to finish her sentence and lacking all courage to speak or even look at him, Elena lowered her head again, fresh tears falling from her eyes, and put a hand to her face, a sob escaping from her throat as her body started trembling.

"If you start crying again, I'm going to walk away", Anton warned her, his voice gentle, but menacing.

Elena sniffled and took a shaky breath, exhaling deeply in order to stifle her crying. She sniffled again and wiped away the tears from her face. Taking another deep breath, Elena lowered her hand back down into her lap and looked over at Anton, who remained silent.

"You're not a paranoid schizophrenic, are you?" Elena asked him.

"No", Anton answered. "Why do you ask?"

"That was Andrew Pittman who called me", Elena explained. "He came to Brainerd about six months ago. When he first came here, nobody knew who or even what he was. I use that term because I refuse to view him as a person after what he did to me..."

Anton waited for her to continue, but Elena remained silent. "Did he hurt you?"

Elena looked down and pulled up the bottom of her shirt, showing him a vertical scar on the left side of her abdomen.

Anton said nothing, but turned his head right and looked away from her. She did not see the sadness reflected in his eyes.

Elena lowered her shirt and looked back at him. "When Andrew first started visiting the hospital, I didn't think anything dangerous about him", she said. "But then he started saying and doing things around me that made me feel uncomfortable. When I finally confronted him about his behavior, Andrew told me he had fallen in love with me. I told him I wasn't interested and he seemed to understand...But then something snapped inside of him..." Elena paused and looked down at the gun in her lap, gripping the handle tightly. "...I don't know how he found me...But one morning as I was about to go to work, I stepped out of my house and found the body of Owen Preston hanging outside by a tree. He was one of my old high school friends. I got so scared, I ran back inside screaming like a maniac and called the police. By the time I hung up, I turned around and saw Andrew standing there with a knife in his hand. I didn't have time to react before he stabbed me."

You damn fool, Anton thought to himself, looking back at her. You're too stupid and too beautiful for this world to even live in it. Oh, how he wished he could just put her out of her misery right now. But then he remembered the voice in the back of his head that told him not to and retained his composure.

"He tried attacking me again, but I managed to run down the hall and lock myself in my bedroom", Elena continued, not looking at him. "At that point, Andrew tried breaking his way through the door. I was starting to lose consciousness from blood loss and was afraid I was going to die that day. When the cops finally arrived, they took him away and transported him back to an asylum in Florida. I had to undergo a splenectomy and was in the hospital for about a week because of the incident."

"How long ago did this happen?" Anton asked her.

"Three months, last March", Elena answered.

"Does Marge know about this?" Anton asked her.

Elena nodded her head. "Yeah, she knows", she said matter-of-factly. "She was one of the first responders here when it happened."

"Hmm", Anton said to himself, tilting his slightly to the left, his eyes studying her.

Elena shook her head and said, "But it doesn't matter now." She looked at Anton and informed him, "Andrew told me he's escaped and that he's coming after me. I didn't do anything to him and yet he still wants to kill me." Elena shook her head again and asked, "That doesn't make any sense, does it?"

Anton paused for a minute, sighing to himself. "Why did you choose to become a nurse, Elena?" He asked her.

Elena shook her head. "Don't avoid the question", she told him. "You don't answer me, then I don't have to answer you, remember? Now does him wanting to kill me for no damn reason make any lick of sense to you at all?"

"No, it doesn't", Anton answered her.

Elena looked down at the Beretta 92 in her lap. "No, it doesn't", she said. "But it doesn't make any difference whether he wants to kill me or not." Elena looked over at Anton and held the gun up for him to see, a determined, but maddening look in her eyes. "I promised myself a long time ago that if Andrew were ever to come back, that I would be ready for him. Marge doesn't know I have this. I've got a license for it, but I intend to keep this a secret just between you and me. Can I count on you to do that?"

"I wouldn't worry about it", Anton reassured her.

Elena lowered the gun and set it aside on the empty spot on the couch next to her. She placed her hands back into her lap, intertwining her fingers, and leaned back comfortably against the couch, staring at the brown-eyed handsome man with the pageboy haircut sitting in the shadows. Though she couldn't quite make out the expression on his face, the young woman with the turquoise eyes could have sworn she saw a sign of hope, if not pity for the way she had told Anton her near-death encounter with a man far worse than he was. If only she knew.

"I already told you my reason for becoming a nurse", Elena reminded him. "But if I had to name a second reason, I'd say I did it because I thought that if I could help people with their problems, then I could make up for my guilt at having failed to help Andrew with his...Please tell me I'm not a failure, Anton."

For the first time in weeks, if not months, the hitman found himself at yet another intersection of a difficult situation. Slowly, the hidden depths of this woman's painful reality were only now starting to unravel themselves, and the more he found out, the less he liked about it. Everyone had their limits. Even him. While he appreciated that she had tried to live an honest, God-fearing, conservative life, it was the choices and decisions she had made up to this point that had allowed her to come across him. An agent of fate, as he continued to view himself.

With no other choice, Anton Chigurh reached into his pocket and pulled out a quarter, looking at it. He then flipped it into the air and caught it in his hand, placing it onto his right knee. He looked at her and said, "Call it."

Elena paused for a minute. "What?"

"Call it", Anton repeated.

Elena shook her head. "I don't understand."

"You have to call it", Anton told her. "I can't call it for you. It wouldn't be fair."

"How would it not be fair?" Elena questioned him. "I just asked you to tell me whether I'm a failure or not."

"I can't decide that for you, Elena", Anton told her. "You need to answer that for yourself. You've been following certain rules all your life that led you down this road, that brought you to this path. You're asking me to judge you based on your own insecurities. Distasteful as it is, I don't have anyway other way to put it. It's the truth of the matter based on your answer that will determined whether you are a failure or not. And the answer is either heads or tails. Now call it."

Why can't you just give me a straight answer? Elena thought to herself, sighing through her nose. She lowered her eyes and shook her head. She had no idea what he was talking about, but it was the hurtful truth and brutal honesty of his words that proved to Elena, once again, that he was right and she was wrong. She looked at him and said, "Okay...Tails."

Anton looked at her for a minute, before looking down at the coin. He removed his hand and the coin revealed to him the embalm of a silver eagle.

"Well done", said Anton, a hint of a smile on his face.

Elena placed her right hand over her heart and breathed a sigh of relief.

Anton stood up and walked over to Elena, handing her the coin. "Here."

"Anton, I can't take your money", said Elena.

"Keep it for luck", Anton told her, ignoring her protest.

Elena took the coin and said to him, "Thank you."

Anton nodded and said to her, "I'm going back to bed."

With all that said and done, Anton turned around and walked over to the entrance of the hall, but then stopped himself and turned his attention to the painting of the two sparrows hanging on the wall. He turned his head left and looked at Elena, as he pointed at the painting and asked her, "Is this one of Norm's originals?"

Elena nodded and said with a smile, "Yes, it is."

Anton lowered his right arm and looked back at the painting, nodding his head in agreement. "I like it."