“Wait, what?” Hannah said. “You’re serious?” The thought of staying in a roadside motel, in a bed that other people had slept in, was just... Well, she couldn’t. “Can’t we just get coffee and keep going?” She could hear the rise of panic in her voice.
“I mean, we can,” Maya said. “I’m just afraid I’ll drive us into a ditch. Or to Alaska. You do realize we drove four hours already just to get to you.”
“It looks like there’s a motel a few minutes up the road,” Blue said. “Another about twenty miles farther.”
“Which place seems nicer?” Maya asked.
“Why?” Blue said. “You paying?”
“I don’t mind paying,” Maya said, which everyone in the car knew was technically true but also irrelevant since Maya never had any money.
They reached the first motel. A neon sign blinked Vacancy, luring travelers with a lobster buffet at the attached gas station– restaurant for $9.99. Hannah was pretty sure she recognized the place from an episode of Cops. “No,” she said. “Keep driving.”
“This is fine,” Maya said. “It’s just a place to crash for five or six hours. The other could be worse.” She pulled in to the dimly lit semicircle parking lot, where the only two cars looked like incisors on an otherwise toothless and demented grin.
Bile rose in Hannah’s throat. She hated being this way, hated it so much. She used to love motels when she was a kid, the cheap little soaps and upside-down plastic-wrapped cups in the bathrooms, the vending machines with candy bars and sodas, the dinky swimming pools with bottoms stained with mold—every motel so comfortingly the same. Now all she could see were the germs and filth. She remembered asking Dr. Maloney if the contamination fears had started because of all the blood. It had been all over her, on her hands and in her hair, Henry’s blood. But he’d said that interpretation was too literal, that it was something far more poisonous that had gotten in. He’d sat back then, folded his hands across his lap and gazed at her in that penetrating way, waiting for her to figure it out. She’d stared back blankly until he announced her time was up. Whatever it was, she was certain she could not survive it. Whatever it was, her whole life was designed to avoid it. She thought again of the Xanax in her bag.
“I’ll check in,” Maya said.
“Wait!” Hannah said. “Can’t we talk about this?”
Blue flipped Maya her credit card, got out of the car and wandered off for another smoke. Hannah saw the small red glow of a cigarette in the distance.
She tucked her knees to her chest and attempted some deep breathing exercises. Already she wanted a scalding hot shower, maybe a precautionary antibiotic. And they hadn’t even gone in yet. Which reminded her—who would be checking to make sure Henry’s room was sterile without her to supervise the nurses when Vivian wasn’t there?
She checked her phone, her mind lurching toward disaster. But there was nothing from Vivian. Nothing from the care facility. Just a bunch of Dear Miss Know-It-All emails, which made her feel heavy with answers she didn’t have about questions she hadn’t even read. Maybe by the time she got back—if she actually survived this trip—she’d feel less like a fraud offering other people wisdom.
A large truck rumbled up behind her, its square face glaring down with blinding yellow eyes. Hannah looked for Blue but could no longer find her. She inched lower in the seat, heard the sound of her own whimper. Breathe, breathe, breathe. She did this for as long as she could. When she finally opened her eyes, the truck was gone.
There was a sudden knock on the window. Hannah jumped, screamed.
Maya laughed as she held a key card up to the glass. “The key to paradise, baby,” she said, spreading her arms wide across the parking lot, nearly knocking Blue, who had come up behind her, in the face. “I requested a room without a meth lab. But those were all booked up. I’m kidding.”
“This place is seriously not safe!” Hannah said. “This creepy trucker pulled in right after you left. Scared the hell out of me.”
“Your whole life scares the hell out of you,” Maya said.
“If you saw the Dateline segment on roadside motels, you’d get it. They don’t even clean the rooms!”
“Well, I haven’t showered, so...it’s a match,” Maya said.
“And sometimes they don’t even change the key codes, so anyone can get in.”
“So it’s a good thing you’re staying with me,” Maya said. “If anyone gets kidnapped, it’ll be Blue. She’s the low-hanging fruit.”
“It’s true,” Blue said.
“I’m sleeping in the car,” Hannah said.
“Please stop being ridiculous,” Maya said.
Blue opened the car door, peered in. “You’re definitely not safer alone in a car in the parking lot,” Blue said gently. “Maybe the rooms are nicer than you think.”
Hannah grabbed at Blue’s compassion as if it were a parachute rip cord. She took another deep breath, clinging to the last-standing soldier of reason in her brain trying to fight back the stampede of irrational terror. One quick look at the room. If it wasn’t okay, she would insist that they leave.
They wheeled their luggage toward the rusty metal staircase, past a vending machine with a ripped sign taped to it—“Out of Ordor”—the words Eat me scrawled below it. Even Blue looked a little uneasy.
“Here we are,” Maya said, sticking the key into the slot.
Hannah peered over Blue’s shoulder as Maya opened the door, causing an exhale of mildew and uncirculated air. Maya flipped the light switch to reveal two twin beds with bedspreads the color of vomit, a neat fold of white top sheet disguising all the human ick that had slept within.
Hannah froze at the door. “I can’t,” she said. “There has to be something else.”
Maya dumped her luggage onto the floor. “There isn’t.” She kicked off her flip-flops, marched across the stained carpet and launched herself onto the bed.
“Oh my God,” Hannah said. Her heart was hurtling. Her insides fizzing like a shaken can. Brain jumping from one terror to another. “Those comforters probably haven’t been washed since the sixties.” She could hear the hysteria in her voice, an onslaught of adrenaline and flight signals trampling over her capacity for reason. “Now you know why I always say no to everything. This is what yes looks like.”
“This,” Maya said, gesturing around her, “is what life looks like! Embrace it! Roll around in the shit of it!” She turned over and buried her face in the bedspread. “I love germs!”
Hannah screamed.