Rescue

Part 3: The Hotel

    We pull into the parking lot of a shabby, run-down hotel. I can barely see anything with how dark the night was. All that helps is the moonlight and the dim, flickering light coming from the front window of the building. I put on the gloves the stranger gave me and made sure all the blood on my hand was covered. I pull up my hood and the stranger next to me covers his face with a black face mask, then pulls his hood up. Just before I get out, he stops me with a question.

"What do we say our names are?"

That's right! We have to check in under our names. Or share a room with one of our names, at least.

"Let's use fake names. Mine can be Scarlett," I say. He nods and thinks for a moment.

"I can use the name Tanner."

I nod and hop out of his car. We make sure his license plate is out of the light and we go to the front doors. I'm slightly in front of him, reaching out my hand to the door handle. He jogs in front of me before I touch the handle and opens the door for me. Holding back a small smile, I mutter a thank you and walk inside.

A man sits at the front desk, a man in his 30s, I assume. He's smoking a cigarette with several burnt out ones laying on the table beside him. The stranger, or Tanner I should say, coughs lightly to alert the man of our presence. The man looks up and waves at us. Tanner moves forward to check us in while I look around. This place doesn't seem well taken care of. The wallpaper is peeling off a bit, and I can see a cockroach or two in the corner.

I swat a fly away from my face and walk to where Tanner is standing. When he successfully gets us a room without revealing any personal information, we start to walk to the second floor. Neither of us have our phones. Tanner just has car keys and a wad of cash while I have a few band-aids in my left pocket plus a tampon in my right pocket.

Tanner opens the door to our room we checked out and we walk in. The room itself isn't much. There's two twin-sized beds and two sinks next to each other in the back of the room. He explores the room and I go to check out the bathroom. It's just your typical hotel bathroom, a toilet and a shower in a room so tiny that I can touch the opposite walls with my hands easily. I leave and go back to the main room where the two beds are. I notice a wall-mounted TV with a remote sitting on the table below it. Tanner and I make eye contact and we both give each other a nod.

Ten minutes later, we're intensely watching a channel that showcases survival stories out in the wilderness. We haven't spoken a word to each other since we were in the car, but I'm honestly fine with that. I look over at Tanner and discover that he has taken his mask off. His whole face is visible and his hood is down.

I decide it's only fair to take off my hood and remove my gloves. Sh*t, there's still someone's blood all over my hand. I lift the covers up and hop out of the bed, going over to the sink. I use the hotel's soap and begin to scrub my hand. The blood stain wasn't coming off. I use more soap. Doesn't work. I use even more, and it still doesn't work. I groan in frustration and start scrubbing as hard as I can, ignoring the pain it causes. Stuck in my own world, I gasp when a hand grabs my wrist and holds my hand that was scrubbing in place.

"May I?" he asks while looking at me in the mirror. I look up at his reflection in the mirror and nod with a sigh.

He takes my bloody hand in his left hand as gently as he could and carefully washes it with soap. He moves my hand back under the water and I have to hold back a squeak from how cold the water was. He probably changed the temperature when I wasn't looking.

Around five minutes later he gets all the blood off and dries off my hand for me.

"Thank you," I say with a small smile. We go to our beds and he turns the TV off. We mumble a 'good night' to each other, turn off the lamps, and, even though we aren't even in the same bed, we face away from each other. Right there, each of us slept our first night of many away from home.