The Break-Up Retreat(83)

“No ?” Martina repeats, incredulously. “What do you mean, no ?”

“I mean we can’t just go.” I stare up at her. “We can’t just leave the others here.”

Martina throws her hands down in frustration.

“Are you fucking kidding me? This is what you’ve been asking for this whole time! Don’t you see what this is? This friend of yours”—she gestures toward Armin without looking at him, her eyes locked on my face—“is our knight in shining fucking armor!”

“You want to just leave the others here? With whoever did that to—to Sandra?” My voice only hitches a little on her name.

She would have been proud of me. Sandra always said I got too caught up in my emotions. Never focused enough on the practicalities of the situation.

I bite back the grief that threatens to overwhelm me and get to my feet.

“We can’t do anything right now,” Martina says. “We need to get help.”

“Yeah,” I agree. “And we’re taking the others with us. We’re not just leaving them here.”

I turn to Armin.

“How many people can you fit in your car?” I ask him.

“Five,” he responds. “Maybe seven, eight, if it’s an emergency. And . . . I mean, yeah. This is definitely an emergency.”

“We get the others.” I declare to Martina.

“We don’t have time.” Martina grits her teeth. “We need to leave.”

I look at her, refusing to waver.

“Those women are your patients , Martina. You have a goddamned responsibility to them.”

“Not like this!” Martina shrieks. “Are you insane? I have a responsibility to give them therapy! I have a responsibility not to fuck them and to give them treatment! I don’t have a responsibility to stick around and get murdered for them!”

She’s panting, drenched and terrified, arms thrown wide and pupils wide and dark. Every trace of Doctor Martina Hastings wiped away.

I wonder how it is I was ever frightened of her. How it was I ever felt she had any power over me.

“Fine,” I say. “You might not think you have any responsibility to them. But I do.”

I look to Armin.

“We have to go get them,” I tell him, quietly, in the private voice I use only with him.

Armin locks eyes with me, and then he nods.

Martina looks back and forth between us.

“You can’t be serious.” Her voice is flat.

“I’m not leaving without Isobel,” Armin points out. “And I don’t think she’s leaving without the other patients.”

“Or staff,” I add. “Belinda and Anna, too.”

“Fuck,” Martina groans into her hands.

Then she grows still. Her shoulders slump.

And she nods.

“Okay. Let’s go then, before some psychopath with an axe breaks down the door.”





Chapter 47


There’s nothing to arm ourselves with in the main building; no convenient knives, or baseball bats, or mallets.

We move the couch, and then I describe the impromptu plan to Armin: “They should all be in the cabins. The cabins are on the left. We have to run, and get them one by one.”

Martina interjects:

“And if someone is standing outside, waiting for us to come out so they can beat us to death?”

There’s a thin layer of dry sarcasm, bitter bravado to hide the quaking underneath. It almost works, and I kind of respect her for it.

I’ve done the same thing myself.

“I don’t know, Martina,” I say. “Then I guess we run, and whoever gets to the car takes off.”

I hear her muttering something; I don’t care to hear what it is.

I look at Armin, and he nods. His face is set in a grim mask, his shoulders tense.

“I’m really sorry about this.” I don’t have the words to apologize for what I’ve gotten both of us into.

I’m sorry.

You were right.

Thank you.

None of it seems enough. There aren’t enough words, or enough time.

I just hope we’ll have more.

He manages a tense smile.

“Just like you, Isobel, to get me pulled into some kind of messed-up horror movie.” He tries for a joke. I appreciate the effort.

“Okay.” I breathe in deep. “Let’s go.”

I pull the door open.

The storm is still brutalizing the landscape. I’m too scared to feel the cold; I see no one, and so I take off running, again, my muscles aching and my feet screaming at me. I hear the others behind me, and I see the cabins as vague, unformed shapes, with dark windows and blurry edges.

I don’t allow myself to think that we might be too late.

I can’t let myself imagine that we might find them all in there, just like we found Sandra.

I just focus on the cabins, and on the people inside them. The women who didn’t deserve this.

Pernilla, and Katarina, and Clara, and Leyla.

I might not like all of them. They might not like me. But I owe this to them. I owe it to try.

When I get closer, I hear, from a distance, a voice, hoarse and shrill: “. . . anyone hear me? Hello! Hello! Come on! COME ON, I KNOW ONE OF YOU FUCKERS MUST BE ABLE TO HEAR ME, JUST COME AND—”