Free Animal People by Charlotte Wood

exasperated, and then swerved out from the gutter. Gone.
    Stephen pulled out into the traffic again. ‘We’ll be at the hospital in one minute,’ he called over the girl’s whimpering, praying this to be true, thinking of the broken bones, the blood that must be swamping through her.
    The girl slurred: ‘No.’ She was mad with pain, or worse. She closed her eyes again and sucked in breath through clenched teeth. Stephen accelerated, changed lanes. ‘You have to go to hospital. You hit your head on the road.’ I hit your head on the road. In a block he could turn left towards the hospital. Come on, come on, he whispered to the traffic. It crawled. Fucking come on. Her face was grey. Please don’t die. He imagined the blood inside her skull, trickling and seeping, curling through the frills and furrows of the brain. He slowed and lurched to a stop as the car in front refused to run the orange light. Jesus, Jesus Christ. He leant on the horn.
    The girl hissed with the car’s lurching. Her eyes opened, then shut tight against pain, and she said, with effort, ‘Me doctor’s just down here, jes’ take me there.’
    â€˜You have to go to hospital ,’ Stephen said. He jammed the horn again, began rolling down his window to wave at the driver in the next lane.
    But the girl convulsed in her seat. She cried out, ‘Just fucken STOP HERE .’
    Stunned into obedience, Stephen swung the Subaru into a no-stopping zone beside Blockbuster Video, the sudden stop making the girl roar even louder. She was burrowing at the door, trying to open the latch with her broken arm! Stephen leapt out into the bright air and tore once more around the car, looking about him for the doctor’s surgery.
    He wrenched her door open. For an instant, seeing the girl cornered here in his car, Savannah’s animal torture photographs returned to him: the grizzled narrow head, the thin face pocked and pierced and blotched, the panting mouth, eyes closed in pain and fear. He reached in and she let out a low, agonised howl as he dragged her out and stood her upright, grasping her round the waist, trying to support her weight without touching her injured side. Her head was on his shoulder; again he pictured the blood rushing and flooding through her skull. Maybe she would die here, in his arms. He stared into the city and had no idea what to do.
    But the girl lifted her broken head and fixed her blurred gaze on an anonymous brown shopfront across the road. She jolted, launching herself out into the traffic. Stephen bellowed and clutched at her, dragging her backwards as a large silver four-wheel-drive thundered past. ‘For fucksake! Stop doing that!’ he roared, and then he wanted to punch her, and there was a break in the traffic and he ran, dragging her without care across the road.
    When they reached the other side he shrieked at her: ‘What are you fucking trying to do!’ but she ignored him, steering toward the tinted door. He rushed to shove it open before she could use her damaged arm. The door closed behind them with a sucking thud, and they stood, clutching one another, sealed in the muggy silence of a tinted glass chamber. In front was another brown tinted glass door and beyond that, an empty waiting room. The girl cried out ‘Pam!’ and there was a loud buzz and they burst into the waiting room.
    There were chairs, magazines, but no people. Stephen was lost. He stared at the girl, and then heard a woman say, ‘G’day, Skye.’ He whirled to see a high counter like a bank teller’s, and more glass panels. Behind the counter an older woman gave him a brief, businesslike nod. Relief surged through him; here was someone older, someone medical and parental and sane.
    â€˜She needs a doctor!’
    In the silence of the room, his shouted panic sounded foolish. The girl had lifted her weight from his arm and was standing unsupported. She had stopped