Someone's In My Head (WATTYS AWARD WINNER 2015)

Chapter Nineteen (Pt. 2)

We were walking through another alleyway when Phil noticed it.

Slinking hastily but discreetly into a back alley, Phil and Tanya had managed to slip out of the three block perimeter the police had cordoned off just in time. The sirens gradually diminished as we ducked from alleyway to alleyway, trying to look as normal as two people who looked like they've just escaped from a burning building could possibly be.

We rounded another bend, and this time, Phil ordered Tanya to go on ahead while he followed from behind. And that's how he noticed Tanya's limp.

It looked agonizing. Tanya seemed to favour her right foot, as every time she took a step forward with her left foot, she would break in mid-stride and hop onto her right foot. Not to mention her constant wincing and tooth-gnashing.

"Stop," Phil muttered. He repeated with a louder voice when Tanya didn't respond. "STOP!"

Tanya halted. Turning around, she gave Phil the most exasperated look she could manage. "What?"

"You're hurt," Phil said accusingly. Bending down, he ignored Tanya's deliberate eye roll and peeled up her jeans.

Ugh. There was a hideously large purplish glob on her left ankle. Even the foot itself seemed to have deformed; it was bent abnormally to the ground, and in Phil's hands, the limp form looked exactly like a large rotten piece of potato.

Okay, I know, I'm terrible at similes.

Phil gave the swollen glob a tentative and gentle press. Tanya gasped involuntarily in pain and her foot twitched reflexively out of Phil's hands. She hobbled around on one foot for a good while, cussing wildly in pain, and trust me, if it wasn't for the tense circumstances, that would've seemed really comical indeed.

"We've got to get this fixed." Phil decided after Tanya had finished her twisted dance.

"No, no. I'm fine." Tanya shook her head indignantly. "Look, I can still walk."

"Listen, Tanny, we can carry on, and your sprain would worsen until the point that the pain in your ankle becomes so hard to bear you'll virtually be hopping on one foot. By then, this might seem trivial to you compared to the agony, but how do you think other people would react to a lady hopping down the street on one foot looking like a frigging coal miner? Phil reasoned.

Tanya bit her lip. I could see that Phil had hit a soft spot, but she did not reply just yet.

"You wouldn't want for that to happen, yes?" Phil pressed.

Reluctantly, Tanya shook her head, defeated. "No, I wouldn't."

"Smart girl." Phil beamed approvingly. Girl? "Now let's find a place to crash before someone sees us and decides to call the asylum."

Thanks to Phil's phenomenal sense of direction, we managed to navigate ourselves out of the myriad of secluded alleyways without attracting too much unwanted attention. If it was me, I would've been hopelessly stuck in the concrete maze, travelling mindlessly in circles. After the fast and furious (pun very much intended) car chase just now, I had basically lost all sense of direction due to the random and abrupt turns Lenny had made to shake our pursuers off our tail.

At the end, we arrived at a not-very-obvious-looking low budget motel (I suppose we weren't particularly rich at the moment). As we walked into the lobby, the receptionist stared at the both of us with an open-mouthed, what's-wrong-with-you-mate-this-is-not-the-hospital look.

Phil scooted over to the counter and flashed the lady with the most charming smile he could manage. "Had a little fight with our...Ford on the way here." He said apologetically. "Sonofabitch decided to break down in the middle of the street."