As the robber freed Helena’s hands and jerked her up from the floor, she was a very frightened woman. This was very scary, and there was every reason for it to be; she remembered all too well Mr. McCluskey saying, “Fools with tools are dangerous,” and the robber was obviously a fool. But from the moment that the initial threat to whip one of the women had been made, Helena knew that she would have to be the one – partly because she couldn’t let the frail old lady or the pregnant woman get hurt, out of good Christian charity – but partly because she knew several things that neither Andy nor anyone else in the room knew. Most importantly, she’d been whipped before, and she knew how bad it would be – bad, but not unknown bad, and that gave her a complacency that she wouldn’t have had otherwise. She knew that the robber had a horsewhip, but a big one, much larger than the one that had been used on her backside before – dangerous, but according to one of Mr. McCluskey’s lectures it would be hard to control, so it might not be as bad. And she knew where her subspace was, and she knew how to get to it now. In fact, ever since she’d realized she would have to be the one to be whipped, she’d been praying to Jesus to bring her into it quickly.

This wasn’t the same thing as before. She expected no enjoyment; this wouldn’t be fun, like the other time. But, she realized, if she survived it, she’d know that she’d done the right thing, rather than letting one of the other women take the beating. And if she didn’t – she’d still die knowing she’d done the right thing, and that she’d go to the arms of Jesus thinking, “Greater love has no man than he lay down his life for a friend.”

So as she allowed her wrists to be strapped around a pillar to a plant hanger on the far side, she wasn’t praying for relief. She was praying that the end – either subspace, or the real end – come quickly. She steeled herself – and then felt the force of a bolt of lightning explode across her shoulder blades with a CRACK! Oh, Dear God, that was worse than I thought, Dear God, take me in your arms, take me to subspace, take me, take me … CRACK!

Andy was praying too, praying for Helena, but amazed at the complacency with which she went to her fate. He would have thought that she would have been in hysterics – but while she was obviously nervous, she was amazingly stoic about the affair. He couldn’t have managed that. He was still not believing this was happening when the first whiplash exploded across Helena’s back. It was a hard hit, it ripped open her blouse, leaving a bloody streak across her back – and then his own mind exploded, but in rage. Frantically, he sawed at the wrist strap, pulled at it, braced himself and pulled again, as the whip crashed into her back, again and again. After the second blow, and the third, she was screaming in agony, but after the fourth blow, her screams changed into an incoherent blubbering, a babble of moans and screams.

Blow after blow landed, while he worked at the strap, pulled as hard as his maddened strength could produce – and the strap gave. Just a little. He changed the position of his hands, just a little, to try to pull against the grill work, shifted the strap a little, pulled again, with one hand. Pain shot across that hand, but he ignored it, since he was far gone in anger. But it was moving … he pulled harder, the pain became agony, and he realized he was leaving a big chunk of skin behind – but it was coming, and all of a sudden, his hands were free.

He didn’t waste a second. Dripping blood every inch of the way from his wounded hand, but burning a supercharged mixture of adrenaline and berserk rage, he sprang to his feet the best he could after having been stiff for so long, grabbed the stanchion he’d been eyeing for hours, got it in both hands, quickly took a few steps forward, and with every ounce of his strength started from way back with a swing that would have put a baseball into the cheap seats. Somehow, the robber saw him coming, swung his head around just a little bit, and wound up taking the hit on the side of the head.

Andy hit him hard. The robbers’ head wasn’t a baseball, but the stanchion caved his skull in a long way, from the eye socket back to above the ear. Andy would not discover until later that he’d bent the stanchion a good twenty degrees from the force of the blow. It was more than enough to send the man flying through the air a long way, crashing into a desk on the far side of the small room. Andy glanced at him, just long enough to satisfy himself that he wasn’t going to be moving anymore. As he noticed the door burst open, two cops with a paramedic close behind, he turned to rush to Helena. Her tattered bloody back shocked him, and all he could do was grab her in the armpits, trying to support her weight as it hung from the strap. The paramedic actually passed the two cops as he raced in, carrying a pair of bandage scissors; in an instant, he cut the strap holding her hands, and the two of them lowered her as gently as possible to the floor, face down.

Another paramedic was there now. “How’s she doing, Divebomber?” Andy heard him say.

“We got pulse, we got respiration,” the first paramedic said excitedly. “She’s alive, anyway.”

Was this heaven, some small part of Helena’s brain wondered. It must be … but she’d expected to see angels, pearly gates, to be safe in the arms of Jesus … but no, this was just a peaceful mountain meadow … utterly peaceful … there were sheep grazing in a pasture not far away, the air was warm, the sky was blue … she remembered some mosquito bites earlier … that settled it, this couldn’t be heaven, the good Lord wouldn’t allow mosquitoes in heaven, would he … well, they were God’s creatures, too … but it was so peaceful … but no, there were voices too. Andy’s. Acacia’s. Mr. McCluskey’s. Calling her, calling her to come back … but no, she didn’t want to go back … this was so peaceful …

“I don’t get it,” the ER doctor said. “EEG shows she’s conscious, or something like it, but she’s just totally catatonic.”

Divebomber got up from where he’d been whispering in Helena’s ear, telling her it was all right, telling her she could come home now, it was all over with … normally, he wouldn’t have been in the ER, but he had been set to go off shift anyway, and now he stayed with his young ward, worried like he’d never been worried about a patient before. “Can’t say as I blame her,” he said. “I mean, wouldn’t you be?”

“God, that had to have been painful,” the doctor said. “I mean, when I heard what happened, I expected hamburger. Her back’s chewed up pretty bad, but really, not as bad as it should. If she’s lucky, and has good treatment, she may not even have scars on her body. Now, on her mind …”

“She’s way deep in her mind, Fred. She found a hole for her sanity to retreat to, and she doesn’t believe it’s safe to come out yet.” Divebomber agreed, shaking his head. “I know this kid. She’s one of the bravest people I’ve ever met. Maybe the bravest.”

“She showed that,” the doctor agreed. “I saw that, and I couldn’t believe it.” In fact, it had been on a live TV feed, through a telephoto lens on a camera from outside the bank.

“Helena, it’s OK,” Andy pleaded, right down in front of her eyes, which were open, but glazed and staring far away. “You’re safe, you’re in the hospital, I’m with you, you’ll be fine.” He had stayed right at her side ever since he’d held her while Divebomber cut the wrist straps, dripping blood for a lot of it, until finally someone had put a compress on his own damaged hand. It was hurting now, hurting badly, and he was woozy – not from the blood loss, but from the letdown of the adrenaline that had carried him through his rampage.

“I don’t know what to think,” the doctor said. “Maybe the pain is still holding her in. I’m thinking maybe some morphine might drive down the pain, ease the stress.”

“No morphine, Doc,” Divebomber snapped. “None. Not now.”

“Divebomber, what do you know about this?” the doctor said.

“Look, trust me on this,” Divebomber said. “No morphine. At least not till you’ve run a blood test for endorphins. She may be one of those people who produce a lot of them. I’ll bet she’s off-scale high. If you dump morphine on top of that …”

“You’re right,” the doctor conceded. “That could kill her. Thanks, Divebomber, I should have thought of that.”

Andy was still down on his knees in front of Helena’s face, but the exchange drew his attention. Not taking his eyes away from her, he asked, “Sir, what are endorphins?”

“It’s one of the ways the body deals with pain,” Divebomber said gently. “It’s a natural opiate, produced by the brain, does the same job as morphine. Some people produce more than others, and I’m pretty sure she’s one of them. Women tend to produce more than men, it’s one of the ways their bodies deal with childbirth. I’ve heard of women who keep getting pregnant so they can experience the endorphin high from having babies.” He grinned inwardly, despite everything. He could think of much better examples, and two of them were right there with him, but it wasn’t something Andy needed to know …

“You mean she’s tripping?” Andy frowned.

“Yeah, her body took her on one to get her out of the pain. At least, that’s what I think,” Divebomber said. “It would account for her being catatonic. We just have to talk her down.”

“Let me try something,” Acacia said from the far side of the cart. She’d been there for hours, had frantically driven up after a cell phone call from Divebomber had confirmed that Helena was one of the hostages, and she’d watched the whipping outside the bank, half-hidden behind an ambulance, praying hard, even though prayer wasn’t something very familiar to her. “Andy, hold onto her upper arms. Divebomber, get her legs. She might get convulsive.”

“Convulsive would be good right now,” Divebomber agreed. “Go for it, Acacia.”

“Helena,” Acacia said in her ear, a little more loudly than she had before. “Helena! This is Acacia. Let it go, Helena! Let it go!”

It would be unfair to call what happened convulsions, but there was some definite twitches in her arms and legs, and her face formed something between a grin and a smile, Andy thought from a few inches away. He looked into her wide-open eyes again, and just that quickly, there was someone there. Barely there, but there. He heard Helena trying to speak. “Oh, hi, Andy,” he heard her mumble, in a voice so soft that he barely believed there were words in it.

“It’s all over, Helena. You’re fine, you’re in the hospital, you’re going to be fine.”

“Oh … Andy …” She was still clearly confused, but yes! she was there …

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