We ease into town and stop-and-go with the traffic. Every stop light crowd is like a Jurassic Park exhibit to you. The sheer number and variety of people seems to overwhelm you, and your mouth unconsciously falls open. I can imagine the shock of learning there are so many colors of skin, so many styles of clothes and hair and cars.

When I swing into a parallel park next to the squat brick building that is Lou's Laundromat and Dry Cleaning, I see apprehension fall on you. It's one thing to see it all from a moving vehicle: it's another thing to step into the wild stream.

"It's okay," I find myself saying. "Gotchyer back."

You glance at me with some worry, but bite your lip and decide to trust me anyway. You unbuckle and open the truck door.

We haul the bags into the laundromat. "Hey, Lou," I greet the old man behind the counter.

"How's it hanging, Barney?" he responds, looking up from the bonsai that lives next to his register.

"I heard about Samantha. Tough breaks, man."

"Eh," Lou shakes his shiny bald head. "She was a good bitch, and she deserves to rest in peace."

"When's the next one come in?"

"In two days. Until then, I'm lost." He tilts his head, and gets this really surprised look on his face. "Who's this?" he asks.

I want to indignantly tell him not to be so shocked. What, I can't have a woman living...? I mean, a woman helping me with...? Dammit. "Meera," I reply. "This is Lou. Lou, Meera."

"A pleasure," says Lou warmly. I eye him carefully as he sticks out a hand over the counter. He must have picked up on how shy you are, half-hiding behind me.

You stare at his hand with a look that is partway panicy, but force youself forward to take it all the same. Just like you've seen on TV. He pumps it once, and you tug away, edging back to my side. "A pleasure," you repeat the sentiment, but with an accent thickened by your discomfort.

Lou smiles, and I can tell he's being nice. He'd better watch it. When he turns to pick up the phone, which is ringing, the puckered tip of the burn scar on his back slips past his collar. Your eyes widen; you can tell it extends way past there. I happen to know it almost blankets his back, from ass to neck. Claymores are a bitch that way.

"Uh-huh," Lou says congenially to the caller, while waving us on towards the row of washers and dryers. "Yeah, what's the type of fabric...?"

I choose the washer farthest from the door and pop it open. "Stick in the first bag, I'll be right back." There's a machine that I feed a few dollars into, and it turns them into change. I walk back, and sure enough, you've stuck the entire bag of clothes in. Without removing the bag. "Like this, Meera."

"Ah," you say, like it should've been obvious to someone who's never used a washing machine before. "Who is Samantha?"

"Who?'

"Lou's, erm, bitch." You wince at the word, like it's got bad memories attached. "Was she his wife?"

I stare at you to see if you're kidding, then start to chuckle. "No. Samantha was his seeing-eye dog."

"Oh." You look over your shoulder at the Lou, who is still on the phone. "Lou is...blind?"

"Hides it well, huh?" I thumb in two quarters, punch the slide in, and chuck the detergent powder into the machine. You lean against the washer to watch me twist the dial, and water starts to fill it.

"But how does he run this store? How does he live?" You ask in disbelief.

"He's got it figured out. He works around his disabilities." As I close the lid, I realize we're not just talking about Lou.

You're fixated on the dusty, fake palm in the corner. "He works around it," you murmur to yourself, as though it's rolling around in your head.

I let you chew on it while I grab two newspapers from the front stand. You perch on the edge of the rumbling machine, and I hand you one of the papers. I try to lose myself in the doings of the mayor's zoo tour, but it's hard when you keep stealing my attention. You look so...normal. Well, my version of normal. Your face and torso are obscured by the paper, and the big boots into which the ends of your baggy BDUs tuck are crossed at the ankle and kicking absently.

Are you happy? We're three weeks into this, and it feels like a holding pattern rather than a trip. I want to ask so badly, but I'm afraid of the answer. Which is weird, because I have no fear. Are you pretending in these days we spend together, or are you genuinely enjoying my company? I'm not...the best person in the world. Socially speaking, I mean. I'm no silver-tongued Sinatra. Plus I kill people for a living. Are you faking acceptance of that? Is it all acting when you roll under the plane with me, or watch me clean guns, or ask questions about the service and the job? Am I just a protector and nurse and shoulder for you to cry on, or am I your friend? Barney to base, I need a status update here...

"Meera." Your name leaves my mouth without my bidding.

You fold down the paper quizzically. "Yes, Barney?"

I fumble the pass. Coward. "Let's pick up some things across the street at the drug store."

You cock your head like you know I meant to say something else, but acquiesce anyway. You're learning to read me, and that can be either good or bad.

"Hey, Lou, can you watch our shit?"

"Nice, Barney, real smooth," he cracks back good naturedly. "How about you 'watch' this?" And he shoots me the bird.

I laugh. You don't, though, and it comes to my attention that you are fine with the occassional smile, but have never laughed in my presence. That stabs. Three weeks, and not a giggle. You're bound up inside pretty tight if you can't even accidentally giggle.

The smell in the store is clinical and bleachy, like clean bathrooms. You are struck dumb and momentarily motionless by the amount of goods in the place. When I realize you're not by my side, I turn around and chuckle at your face. "You should see a Walmart."

You wander a couple of aisles over, leaving me reading a gun mag. I let you go, let you roam free, because I refuse to make the mistake of thinking you're my exclusive property. If you are feeling brave enough to lose sight of me, that's a good step. You're not a fucking Paris Hilton dog, kept in a purse under my arm all day, like shown on the cover of the gossip rags on the rack in front of me. You're a person, a soul: emotions and wants and needs and maybe, if I can get you through the hell that rules your nights, dreams.

I shake my head and flip the page. Damn, I'm getting all philosophical. That won't do at all.

It takes you probably an hour to get your fill of the store. I page through anything that interests me and wait. When you reappear at my elbow like a shadow, I actually stifle an instinctive move to elbow your solar plexus.

"Can I get this?" you ask, oblivious. In your hand is a hairbrush.

A hairbrush. Out of every foreign and fantastic thing in this store, that's what you choose. "Sure."

At the register, I slap down the magazine, which has an interesting article on the evolution of the Browning Automatic Rifle, and the hairbrush. With some forethought, I add two protein bars and two candy bars to the pile from the impulse buy rack. You watch the exchange of money carefully.

Back in Lou's, we switch the loads and activate the dryer with two more quarters. You keep reading the newspaper, and I finish the gun mag as the dryer buzzes. The sudden sound nearly causes you to tip off the machine, but you catch yourself and put a hand over your heart as though keeping it intact.

I chuckle, and you imitate Lou's flipping of the bird, which makes me laugh harder. "Do you even know what that means?"

"Yes," you reply tartly, eyes flashing. "It means, up yours, Barney Ross."

I can't get over that one, and grin the whole time we fold clothes. You're trying to look indignant and not proud that you caught me off guard, but it comes out as looking smug. You must have had obscene gestures in Nepal, too.

The day passes amicably. The candy bar is your first experience with chocolate, and I catch you licking the wrapper. People come in with their laundry: a college-age girl, a punk rock man, a black grandma with grandkids in tow. They're a small hurricane, the kids, and although kids make me nervous, seeing you smirk at their antics is worth it.

"Gigi, why is his face like that?" One of the boy kids asks loudly.

"And why is her nose like that?" asks the youngest, a girl, indicating your taped nose.

Your cheeks darken a little, and you meet the grandma's eyes. She studies you for a moment before answering her son with wise confidence. "Because she's a fighter, baby." After an apologetic look she herds them out, her plastic basket on her hip.

Damn, I'd let the kid insult me all day if I can have the grandma hop on the recovery train with you. You stare after her with an open mouth, then swallow as the words sink in. "A fighter?" you mutter, touching your nose.

"Smart lady," I say. A complete stranger just told you what I've been trying to all along.

You flicker a smile my way that makes my heart swell.

As we fold the last load, you keep pausing to scratch at your neck, just under your ear.

"Barney," you say hesitantly. The thickness of your voice jerks me to attention. "Something is wrong. My face feels..."

Then I notice the pink blotches working their way up you neck. "What the hell?" I say in surprise. I sweep your hair aside to get a better look at the rash. "Looks like an allergic -" I stop, and fish the candy bar wrapper out of my pocket. No peanuts listed, but you've eaten peanut butter before. I'm at a loss, and you're starting to look very uncomfortable. "Uh, we gotta go. Now."

I bundle you into the truck because it's faster than an ambulance, berating myself angrily. I must have an undiagnosed mental problem. It's getting harder for you to breathe. You're wheezing in the seat next to me, rubbing your throat as it starts to swell.

"I'm hurrying," I say frustratedly, and lay on the horn with a string of profantities that make you blush.

Thank God the free clinic is only a mile away. I pound the back door, and this time, when the nurse answers, she doesn't waste my time. In seconds, you're getting a nice dose of Epinephrin in the arm while another one reads the candybar label I give to her. For a few minutes, there's three nurses standing by with a tracheotomy kit, making excuses for Gary's absence that I don't care to hear. Your grip on my hand is deathly tight. We wait, our breath baited even as you struggle to pull oxygen from the mask over your face.

By the time Gary moesies into the room your airways are opening back up. There's only one nurse left, the same one that helped you dress that first night. Her nametag reads Wanda. You're still laying down, looking pale but alive, shaking slightly from the drug and the fear. "Sorry for the wait," Gary says, gently touching your neck with a doctor's probing fingers. "Good thing Ross got you here so quick, or this might have been much worse."

I'm pissed at him for not getting to you sooner. Or maybe jealous he gets to touch you. "Backed up today?" I ask harshly.

"As a matter of fact, yes," he replies without missing a beat. Standing back and pulling his prescription pad out, he talks and writes at the same time. "You are badly allergic to cashews, Miss Meera. I suggest you steer clear if you want to breathe easy."

I can't take his shit today, so I stand up abruptly. This whole thing has put me in a foul-ass mood. "I need a smoke. You good, Meera?"

You look at little taken aback by my tone, but you nod anyway.

I step outside and bring the skull lighter to bear on a cigar. I have time to appreciate one puff of a thousand soothing scratches before Gary's there beside me.

"What is it?" I ask coldly.

"She's negative," he replies nonchalantly, lighting up with his own Bic and leaking smoke from his nose.

"For what?"

"Everything. No STDs. We got the results back this morning."

My frown deepens, and this time, the smoke whistles from between my teeth with the force of expulsion.

Gary sighs and taps ash off. "It's not your fault, Ross. Shit happens."

"Thanks for the tip," I snark.

Gary's quiet for a minute, giving me some verbal space, before continuing in that calm doctor's voice again, "It's a lot to adjust to, being responsible for another person."

I laugh darkly in response, stabbing the cigar back into my mouth and folding my arms.

"You're doing your best. Physically, she's healing. How's she really doing?"

I suddenly feel ten, no, twenty years older. My mind goes to the night before, when you choked out that you are afraid you'll carry that jungle with you forever. It makes me want to burn it down, every leaf, with a flamethrower. Ash falls from the tip of my cigar. "Sometimes I think she's getting there," I say to the cloud of our mixed smoke. "Other times it's bad enough to make me doubt if she ever will."

Gary nods, but he knows that he's given me all the advice I'll hear. The air seems clearer, somehow, despite our smog rising to the sky. I realize that that doubt has been weighing on me for days, and voicing it opens the cage for it to fly off. Good riddance.

"She can take the nose cast off in two more weeks," says Gary in that clinical way. "The bruises are fading, but she'll still feel them for another month. And her stitches are done dissolving."

Then I feel like shit all over again, because I haven't even noticed they are gone from your head and wrists. Gary hands me the prescription he'd been writing, and I see it's for an EpiPen. "They make us write scripts for the damn things now," he mutters, stomping out his smoke. "Call me if anything changes."

Heavy in the boots and heavier in the heart, I trudge back to your exam room to see you listening to nurse Wanda prattle on about how much she likes the wave in your hair. "It really frames your face," she says enthusiastically.

You blush behind the clear mask. "I like the color of yours. It is pretty."

Well, whaddaya know, I think as the nurse smiles. You can return a compliment and it sound natural. Those hours of TV must be paying off.

"If you think you're breathing better now, you can take off the mask, sweetie." She sticks a stethescope against your ribs, urging you to breathe deep.

I lean against the doorframe and watch you interact with her. I swear, you seem to like her more than Gary.

You grin at something she says, and the clouds in my chest part a little.

The cigar helped. The cigar and talking to Gary.

But mostly the cigar.

You cry harder tonight, shaken by the day's event that had started to good, and ended so bad. Shit, I think this is the worst I've seen you. I've assumed the position honed by nearly four weeks of practice, with my chin resting on your head as you snot another shirt into submission. I realize you're speaking Nepali through your sobs. That's new.

I can barely make out what you're saying because you're almost hysterical. When I finally figure it out, for the first time, I want to cry with you. The tears are tied up somewhere in my chest because of the acid eating away at my insides as I digest your broken words. For the first time in so many nights of crying, you let out the words.

You tell me between bed-shaking sobs how many men raped you. You aren't entirely sure, because you closed your eyes after the first half dozen and maybe some were repeat customers. Bile rises in my throat at the number. You spare no detail, not one sickening bit. It makes me loathe my own dick. It makes me hate being a man, in a very visceral way. Every ounce of pain and shame and disgust, you pour it out in rivers of words and tears. It's all I can do not to let the tightness in my body transmit to my arms around you.

I'm so choked with rage and sorrow and the overwhelming urge to blow the living shit out of something, anything, that I don't realize I'm stroking your hair. I have to take a huge damn emotional step back, or I'm going to combust. Who will hold you then? I go into survival mode, a zone where I'm there, but hovering just under the ceiling of my own internal capacity to cope. I'm literally sweating with the force of your feelings.

This goes on for hours. You're raising the bar with every fresh cry, getting closer and closer to something I'm absolutely terrified of. You are every soul burning in hell, every Napalm-covered rebel blazing to death, every mother and wife laid over their soldier's coffin, then enitre suffering and sin-stricken world begging and screaming. It culminates in an ungodly, unearthly, ear-piercing shriek that literally shakes your small frame and leaves my ears ringing.

And then you stop.

I feel like I've taken a grenade and don't know I'm dead yet. Like I'm waiting for my fried nerve endings to transmit the message: 'Hey, asshole, you're in two different pieces.' You're still in my arms, faceplanted in my sternum and utterly still, and that scares me. "Meera," I murmur, jostling you slightly. "Meera?"

There's a gust of breath from your mouth that feels like a cold holy wind, blowing through my ribcage, knocking cinders and ash off my smoldering heart. You slowly raise your head and meet my eyes. Something's different.

"Barney." Your voice is cracked, completely wrecked. "I don't want to cry anymore."

I don't know what to say, because this has to be a hallucination.

Then I realize that now you're embracing me. I numbly recognize the change. There's wetness on my cheeks.

You did it. You finally shattered.

Now you can start to put yourself back together.