Steve and Kayla exited Chicago in October of 1998 as they’d entered it; oblivious to their movement and desperate to go home. But their long conversation with Stephanie gave them both something to latch onto and focus on. So, when Kayla closed her eyes for the last time in the Chicago safehouse, she was feeling eager and hopeful to see her daughter and be her mom. When she opened them again, Stephanie was right there in front of her, but Kayla’s heart sank with the fact that actively being her mother right now would not be happening. Because she immediately knew exactly where she was.
“I’m sorry baby, I know you wanna hold her,” Steve said.
Kayla saw the brave face her husband was giving her through the thatched metal barrier separating him and Stephanie from her, even as the prison visiting room struggled to come into focus. “No …,” Kayla gurgled through the immense wave of nausea and sharp, crackling pain in her inner ear. She swallowed hard and leaned her head against the backs of her hands as they gripped the metal grate with the realization that she’d, once again, jumped in her sleep, and the place she’d jumped to was, in a word, terrible.
“Baby,” Steve reacted “Oh, baby, you know you’re gonna be out of here real soon. You know that.”
Not my Steve. “… no, no, no, this isn’t fair,” she whined. She heard the coos of her baby feeding on a bottle as she positively willed the dirty walls of the private visiting room to settle so she could engage. Kayla was still dizzy and her ear was killing her, but she opened her eyes, anyway. She was emotionally delicate from the last jump and, despite their final conversation before they fell asleep, she wasn’t sure that would ever change. Now she had to be this Kayla here in a prison cell, and once again with no warning, and she just wanted to cry. Focus, she told herself as she pawed at her ear. Focus on what you need to say to him so you can get out of here. She took a cleansing breath with Isabella’s culpability on the tip of her tongue and looked up into Steve’s eyes. But before she could say the words, her breath caught in her throat at the visual. Steve was leaned over Stephanie in her blue baby carrier, securely supporting their daughter’s bottle in his gentle fingers. They’d never jumped to this time. She’d never seen him this way. And it took her breath away.
This was only eight years before the Chicago jump, but he seemed so much younger; and it occurred to her that this is what those hard years being tortured, bought, sold, and brainwashed did to him. Here his face seemed fuller, his hair was blonder, his chest was broader, and his presence positively loomed with the authority and strength that she needed at this horrible time in her life both then and, frankly, right now. And her daughter? Stephanie was just a month old. And she was so beautiful. To this very day, Stephanie, her first born, was the most beautiful baby she’d ever seen. Kayla could smell her little baby smell right there through the grate even amidst the oppressive mustiness of the visiting room. The sense memory hit Kayla, and she was too affected by it to focus on the significant pain starting to wane in her ear, the fact that she was in prison, or the immediate need to tell Steve that Isabella killed Marina. Instead, she started in wonder at her daughter.
“Hey. You listen to me.” Steve’s voice pulled Kayla out of her reverie. His tone was insistent as he fixed his intense stare into Kayla’s eyes. “Now I believe we’re gonna find out who really killed her, and you’re gonna get out of here. It’s just taking a hell of alot longer than it should, that’s all.”
Kayla saw the devotion in Steve’s eye and couldn’t help but turn the corners of her mouth up sadly. It was the same devotion she saw in that eye just yesterday. He’d loved her fully and completely from the first day he’d met her, and no matter which Steve she got, she felt that. Every time. Then his tone turned, however.
“Kayla?! What’s wrong with your ear?!” Kayla reached up her hands up to her ears and immediately felt wetness from her left ear. “Baby, what happened to you?! Guard!” he yelled. This startled Stephanie, who jolted out of her contented feed.
“I … I don’t know …,” she trailed off, because she really had no idea what it was.
Steve stood up and sat down twice, desperately wanting to open the door and get the guard, Jodi’s, attention, but having a baby in front of him that he couldn’t let go of. “Dammit!”
“Steve, it’s ok,” Kayla said as she tried to wipe the trickle of blood from the side of her face. “I’m ok, it’s just an earache. Don’t get upset, please.”
“I’m past upset, Kayla, you’re sitting here in prison for something you didn’t do, and now you’re bleeding, and no one’s lifting a finger to help you!”
Finally, Steve stood up, took Stephanie in her carrier with him, and opened the door behind him. “Guard! Something’s wrong with my wife, she’s bleeding!”
Jodi ran right in. “What do you mean she’s bleeding?” Jodi asked concerned.
“I mean, someone did something to her, look at her!” he pointed.”
Kayla thought back but just didn’t remember any issues with her ears during this time. “I don’t remember anyone doing anything, it’s just, um, my ear is kind of hurting.”
Steve had let go of the bottle so he could open the door, and now the baby was fussing wanting her meal back. He was such a good father that he instinctively knew this to be the case and immediately set the carrier down, picked her up out of it, and held her close with the bottle repositioned. He did this in just seconds, all while pacing with serious anxiety. His wife was in physical trouble, and he couldn’t get in there and help her.
“Kayla, did someone hurt you in the yard?” Jodi asked stepping right up to the metal grate. “Let me see it.”
“No, I—don’t think so.”
“No one hurt you in there, Sweetness? You sure?!”
She was pretty sure, because she really didn’t run into problems with other inmates during her several months in prison. “Yes, I-I-I might just have an infection. But that’s not important, listen—”
“In your good ear?” Then to Jodi, “She had surgery on that ear a couple years ago, if somethin’s wrong with it now …” he said, clearly riddled with worry. “She can’t lose her hearing again in here on top of everything else!”
“Steve, no!” God, he was so upset.
“Hang on,” Jodi said, then disappeared through the door. This guard had truly been the reason Kayla’s tenure in this facility was tolerable. She was also the reason Kayla was able to escape and help Steve rescue their kidnapped daughter in Australia. She’d felt indebted to Roman for getting her brother out of false murder charges, and she passed on that gratitude to Kayla every moment she was there for her own false murder conviction.
Steve swayed gently with Stephanie so as not to upset her as she fed, but he was distraught. “God, baby, I just want to get in there.”
“It’s ok, look,” Kayla tried to assuage as she showed Steve the fingers of her left hand. The blood was already drying on her fingers, the pain in her inner ear was gone, and the blood flow had stopped. “It’s just a fluke, I’m sure of it.” But something gnawed at her. Why was there blood in this same spot on the last jump?
Just then Jodi came in from the other side with a first aid kit. “It’s not a fluke, Kayla,” Steve seethed.
“Let’s have a look,” Jodi said. She took out an antiseptic pad and started wiping down Kayla’s neck from where the track of the drip was. She took a look into Kayla’s ear, but Kayla shook her head out of Jodi’s grasp.
“I’m fine, really,” Kayla insisted. “Steve, I have to tell you about Isa—”
“Kayla, look,” Jodi interrupted softly, glancing meaningfully at the door, “protocol is that I take you right to the infirmary, but then this visit ends. You’ve only got a few more minutes left, and I know you want every single second of it, right?”
Steve clicked his tongue in frustration and resentment that he was still unable to get her out of here.
Kayla nodded. “Yes, but—”
“Then let me do this before they figure out what’s happening, here, ok?”
“Let her help you, baby, come on, now.”
Kayla threw up her hands. “Yes, ok, fine. Go ahead. But, Steve, I have to tell you something.”
As Jodi checked her over, Kayla saw how badly Steve wanted to be in there with her. Her mind went to two nights before when he had gently cared for her, cleaning the blood and tears from her neck; and her frustration softened in knowing that some things never change. Her husband always wanted to take care of her. In every timeline, in every version of him. Even the one in 1982 when she’d showed up out of nowhere and insisted he let her into his life, he’d wrapped her sprained wrist, fed her, and, despite himself, wanted to take care of her. And most of the time, she wanted him to, too. Today, right now, she just wanted to get the right words out before her emotional exhaustion got the better of her.
“Ok,” Jodi said, with a final wipe of dried blood from Kayla’s fingers then wadding everything up and throwing it into the garbage can against the wall. “I think we’re good here. You sure a doctor doesn’t need to check you over later?”
“Yes, baby, let the doctor check you over later,” Steve said.
In the last jump she refused Steve’s pleas for a doctor. She wasn’t sure what was happening with this pain in her inner ear, but she did know it didn’t happen the first time around and just couldn’t deny the worried look on her husband’s face. Had they not been entirely focused on what Ava had done, they’d have discussed the slipstream causing the pain in their heads; but Steve hadn’t gotten to it, and Kayla hadn’t put it together yet. She could see that Steve wanted to cry but was holding back, because he had to be strong for her. But he was upset, and Kayla’s heart was breaking for him.
“Um, yeah, ok, he can check. After the visit, though, right?” Steve’s face softened considerably just with that one concession.
“Good call,” Jodi said, then left the room to give them the rest of their visit, brief as it was about to be.
“Thank you, Sweetness,” Steve said.
“It’s ok,” Kayla insisted, getting right down to business. Only she pulled back, because the look on Steve’s face just about crushed her. He was so lost. “Oh Steve. She slipped her fingers through the grate, reaching for him with a smile she hoped would help. “I’m ok.”
“You’re not ok, Kayla,” he replied softly. Steve lifted Stephanie up to his shoulder and held her there securely with tiny little taps of his two fingers of the hand holding her there to burp her while he met his wife’s fingers with the other. Kayla’s lips parted, and she couldn’t help but feel immense pride in him. This wasn’t her Steve with the experienced knowledge of parenting. This was a brand new father with a one-month-old infant, and he was parenting her with an innate instinct all by himself. Because Steve was an incredible father. Her eyes watered with emotion, she couldn’t help it.
Stephanie let out a soft burp. “That’s my good girl,” Steve cooed to his daughter,” then he transferred her back to her carrier and kissed her head before sitting back down in his original position leaning over the baby protectively to get as close to Kayla as he could.
“You’re such a good daddy,” Kayla said. “You’re so good with her.” Steve gave his wife a genuine smile, so proud to have made her happy. But then he saw her unshed tears and took that differently than it was intended. “I’m not her mama, Sweetness. She needs her mama so bad. I’m sorry you’re not with her and that it’s going so damn slow.”
“No,” she assured him as she gripped the grate. “I know you’re doing every single thing you can to help me.”
“I’m letting you down.” He looked away with shame.
“You are not letting me down. You and Stephanie were the only things keeping me going.” Then she quickly corrected herself, “Are the only things that are keeping me going. Every single day.” Kayla didn’t remember that this conversation was almost exactly the same as this visit’s first time around, it was detail that she didn’t retain. But it was almost identical. Because like so many other conversations and events through Time, some things are destined to happen one way or the other. And Kayla could not bear for her husband to think for one minute that he wasn’t good enough. Not now. Not then. Not ever.
Unfortunately, this line of thinking was a rabbit hole she should not have been indulging in, because every second that ticked by was now a wasted second. Back in Cleveland with their new version of the jump project, Kayla’s time in prison was all mapped out with what to do. This was already not going well, because she was immediately drawn into the emotions of where she was.
“I just want you home, Sweetness. I’d do anything to get you home. Stephanie needs her mama.”
And that’s when the reality of their situation finally made it to the forefront of Kayla’s mind. Sheila! “Steve, did you hire Sheila yet?!”
“Who’s Sheila?”
“The nanny, did you hire her?”
“Kelly? The one I just told you about, yes. You are worried about me being with her, aren’t you?”
“What? No. But Steve, you have to fire her! You can’t use her!”
Jodi popped her head in right then and said, “I’m sorry.”
Steve tore his confused look from Kayla to the guard. “Already time?”
She nodded her head. “I’m afraid so.”
“I-I-I need just a few more minutes! Please? Just a few? It’s urgent!”
“Baby, what is it? Your ear?”
“I wish I could, Kayla,” Jodi apologized genuinely, “Really. But …” she shook her head.
“Just let us say goodbye! Please!”
Jodi nodded quickly giving them a final few moments.
“Steve, listen! You’re not going to understand this, and I don’t know how long it’ll be without you, so please, listen! You have to—”
“Kayla, you’re scaring me. Tell me who’s hurting you!”
“Listen! Look at me!” She said this with a very strong voice that this Steve did not recognize out of her. It was the deeper, stronger 2009 voice that he didn’t know; her sweet breathiness that defined her anxiety during this entire time was gone. “Kelly’s real name is Sheila. She’s the woman who lost her baby the day we had Stephanie. Remember?”
“She’s – how do you know?”
“I just do. She’s not Kelly, she’s Sheila Salisbury. And she’s going to kidnap Stephanie.”
“What?!” he whispered a shout. Kayla watched as his entire body tensed up with overwhelming paternal protection.
“I know I sound crazy, but I’ve never been more serious. You have to immediately get her out of our house and do not let Stephanie out of your sight. I don’t care that it all resets, we can’t let this happen to Stephanie!” Kayla saw him react with confusion to that but kept going. “You make sure she doesn’t know how to get in through the broken living room windows, or our secret passages. Does she know them?”
“Why would I show ‘em to her?” Steve balked.
“Ok, then whatever you do, you make sure not to let her near Stephanie. Promise me.”
“Sweetness, I checked her references and everything.”
“No!” Kayla fairly shouted. “You promise me, Steve!” She was very insistent, and her eyes meant business. “Call John, tell him!”
“Who the hell is John, Kayla?”
“Roman! Dammit,” she chastised herself, “get a grip, Kayla, I mean call Roman! Please, if you ever trusted me, trust me now.”
Just then Jodi walked back in. “I’m sorry, this has to be it now.”
“Ok, Sweetness,” he said warily, “But how am I gonna work on your case? He was confused and reticent.
“No nannies! Just you.”
“But baby, I need help if I’m gonna work on getting you out of here.”
“Guys, really, we have to be done,” Jodi pleaded, “before the Warden notices this extra time!”
Yes, Kayla needed to be rescued, but the priority in Kayla’s head was rescuing the baby from Sheila Salisbury before the need for her own. “Please! Just do it!”
“Ok! I—Ok.”
“Promise me! Say it!”
“Ok, I promise.”
“And I have to tell you about Isabella!”
“Next time,” Jodi insisted as she took Steve by the elbow and started leading him out.
“Wait,” Steve begged, “we’ve been workin’ on this,” Steve said as he walked backwards to the door, “Say bye-bye to Mama.” He lifted his daughter’s little hand and made waving motions toward Kayla. “Say bye-bye.”
“I—”
“Now, Steve!” Jodi said.
Steve signed I love you with his free hand. What Kayla should say next was a mystery to her. Somehow that same sense memory took over, and she returned the sign to her husband who looked on her with aching, guilt-ridden regret. Then Steve walked out the door, which Jodi closed behind him.
Now, Kayla was alone. The culmination of the last jump, plus the isolation she was now in with this one, plus the absolute danger Stephanie was in was too much for her delicate emotional state. One sentence was all it would take to get her out of there quickly – Isabella killed Marina – butshe wasn’t ready for this jump, and she wasn’t thinking straight. “Steve, I can’t do this. I just can’t do this.”
Kayla laid her head down on her arms over the ledge and sobbed.
Moments later Jodi came back in to take Kayla to the infirmary. She leaned down and put her arm comfortingly around Kayla’s shoulders. “I’m sorry, Kayla, I tried to give you every minute I could.”
“Everything’s a mess,” Kayla cried. “It was all planned, and I just choked.” Jodi tried to console her before they walked the prison to the infirmary, but Kayla wasn’t in any kind of mood to be in this body. “You don’t understand,” she cried.
“I do understand,” Jodi replied. “And, if anyone has a right to feel sorry for themselves right now, it’s you.”
And she was. She knew she was doing everything wrong right now, and that included feeling very, very sorry for herself and for their family. Seeing the heartbreak on Steve at this time made her desperate to just reach out for him and hold him. And be held by him. And indulge in the fierce need to protect her baby. She knew just how much guilt Steve was feeling about her imprisonment. She knew it then, and she knew it even more now. They’d just talked about all the guilt he always felt just yesterday, so it was even fresher in her mind than it would have been.
Just yesterday. Kayla’s heart skipped a beat. A sudden and absolute understanding of what Time was doing came to her in no uncertain terms, and that knowledge finally started to cut through the fog. This jump made perfect sense. Completely unfair and cruel and exactly right as far as the arc she just knew in her gut that they were clearly on. For so many reasons. Was it an arc about their children? Stephanie? Another child they didn’t know was out there? Maybe it was about Steve’s bad choices in women or Steve’s guilt. Which of those were driving what Time was trying to tell her? Or was it all of them? She’d never know, but she was so sure that this was, indeed, an arc, that she felt that truth in the very pit of her stomach.
Kayla could feel clarity struggling against the current of what her emotional exhaustion was doing to her. She wanted to lie down and sleep. She wanted to just close her eyes and not wake up. Even as Jodi tried to get her up to get her to the infirmary she just wanted to put her head back down and stay there. But resolve to get herself out of that prison with the truth of Marina’s killer was beating a path to the surface, and within seconds she finally got it out.
“Jodi, Isabella Toscano killed Marina!”
“What?”
“It wasn’t me, it was Isabella. I have to tell Steve. We have to get him back!”
“I know it wasn’t you, but how do you suddenly know who it was?”
“How—how long has it been since he left? A few minutes? Can you go after him?”
“Kayla, I really can’t.” Jodi started tugging on Kayla to get her out of the visiting room.
“Please! Please Jodi, I’m begging you, please go get him back!”
“Kayla, I—”
“Please,” she didn’t have to try too hard to continue crying. “Please!”
Jodi sighed heavily as she eyed the visitor side door. “He might be gone already.”
”Then ruuuuun!”
Jodi made a break for it, and Kayla was suddenly a lot more present than she’d been since she’d jumped in not more than ten minutes ago. She was also all by herself in the private visiting room with no guard attending her. She didn’t want to draw any attention to herself, but she didn’t know where to go, either. She could feel it in her bones that if she sat back down she was going to fall back into the depression that wanted to consume her. So instead she paced and let herself feel present in this body. Which was not, actually, completely different from the last one.
Kayla had only given birth a month prior, and she could feel the effects of recent childbirth within her. Her body didn’t ache, and there were no painful cramps; but she could feel that she still had post-partum bleeding and bloating. Her breasts were tender with the process of involuntarily weening Stephanie from breastfeeding. And her hormones were a little all over the place, though not like the super-dose of Clomid. The similarities to the previous jump were clearly not random.
“This is so on purpose, isn’t it?” she asked Time out loud. “It’s so damned cruel.” Or was it? The thought occurred to her that maybe this was Time’s idea of helping.
“Baby?!”
Kayla whirled around to see Steve panting in the doorway. Relief like she had no idea she needed flooded through her. She practically leapt the two steps to the divider and threw herself against it. “Where’s Stephanie?!”
“She’s with Jodi right out there.” He ran to his side of the grate and threaded his fingers through the tiny squares to join hers. “What is it, baby, you’re scaring me half to death!”
“Isabella! Steve it was Isabella that killed Marina!”
“What?!”
“There’s a tape!”
“Yeah, the one that landed you in here.”
“No, there’s more on the tape. It proves she was alive when I left there, and then later Isabella comes into her hotel room, they fight, and she falls and hits her head. It was an accident, but it was Isabella!”
“How the hell do you know this all of the sudden?”
“I just do. Victor has the tape.”
“Kiriakis?!”
“Yes! Please, you’ve got to go tell John—Roman. Go tell Roman. Actually, he knows by now,” she said mainly to herself as she recalled these details that they went over back in Cleveland. “I’m nearly sure he knows by now, he’s trying to protect her, but it’s going to take months more for this to happen. I don’t wanna wait that long.”
Steve was looking back and forth nervously, then adjusted his patch. “You’re just tellin’ me this now?!”
“I-I-I didn’t know before just now.”
“It just came to you in the last five minutes?! Kayla, I wanna know how you know this, and I wanna know right now!”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes!”
“No, only the truth matters, and that’s the truth!”
“A guard?” Steve pursed his lips and began gnashing his teeth. “A guard knows somethin’? They’re on the take?”
He had to listen to her. She could wait for the next visit, or wait for her Steve to arrive, or she could summon Roman – which was starting to look like her next step – but it meant Stephanie remained in danger from Sheila. Because, even if Steve fired her this moment, the woman might already be bonded enough to take Stephanie, anyway.
“You’re wasting time, Goddammit!” Kayla shouted as tears continued to pour down her face. Steve was taken aback. “It doesn’t matter how I know! All you have to do is tell Roman you know this, and it’ll all unravel, and I’ll be out! Please, why can’t you just trust me?!”
The look on Kayla’s face grabbed this Steve by the heart and squeezed.
“You’re not going to understand, but you have to believe me, I know. We have to get me home right away, before Sheila gets any more attached to our baby. I need to be there for her. You’re both counting on me!”
“Kayla, I—I do trust you.”
Kayla wanted to scream at him, but that would hurt him. She wanted to kiss him with love and passion to bring him in line with her, but she couldn’t do it through the grate. So, she squeezed his fingers with hers as best she could with the crisscrossed metal. “Look in my eyes,” she said in that same strong voice this Steve didn’t know. “Listen to me. I love you, and I trust you. You are my hero, Steve. You’re my hero. And I know you’d do anything for me. You don’t have to say it, I already know it.”
“God, Sweetness.”
“I trust you with my life, do you understand me? My life. So, I trust you with this truth. Isabella killed her sister. I don’t know if she really remembers it well or not, but she’s not trying to hurt me, she’s just in her own pain. But it was her. That is the truth. The tape is in Victor’s house. In the attic, I think. Roman knows it’s true, or at least suspects it. So, I know you’re going to take this information and get me home. I know it. “Ok?” She bent her lips to Steve’s finger and kissed it. Then she brushed her cheek against it and kissed it again. “Ok?”
Steve nodded. “Ok, baby. I’ll go tell Roman.”
“Right now.”
“Yeah. Right now. I will.”
“Ok,” she said in the breathier voice Steve knew. “It’s gonna work. You’ll see.” Steve was still gripping the grate. “You have to go now. I love you. Come back tomorrow.”
Steve nodded, unshed tears rimming his eye. “I love you.”
“I love you.”
For the second time in a very short set of minutes, Steve left the visiting room, and a new guard Kayla didn’t remember entered on her side. “What are you still doing here, Brady?” she barked at Kayla.
She saw the heads of Steve and Jodi rush away through the glass in the door and knew that she wouldn’t be seeing either of them again that day. “I was just waiting to go back to my cell, Jodi was called away, I think.”
“Ok, well let’s get you back, then. Come on, let’s go.”
Kayla didn’t mention that she was supposed to go to the infirmary, and she didn’t veer from whatever she was told from here on out this day. She was brought back to her cell; it was the first time she’d seen it since she’d escaped with Jodi’s help all those years ago. She remembered she had a picture of Stephanie framed for the tiny desk beside her bunk, but it wasn’t there, so Steve must not have given it to her yet. It was literally devoid of warmth or anything nurturing at all. That was a bad thing for her, because she knew she was depressed and having a hard time adjusting through her emotions. She tried to find something to hang her hat on – something to focus on that she could sort through so that she had a purpose. Instead she ordered her thoughts through reciting the anatomy of the human heart out loud.
“Superior vena cava. Pulmonary vein. Right atrium. Pulmonary valve. Tricuspid valve. Inferior vena cava …” Inferior vena cava … Her mind wandered to the two years ago that she didn’t have but that Steve did when he nearly bled out after an inmate stabbed him. She played at her left ring finger, but there was no ring there to fidget with. “Right ventricle. Aorta. Pulmonary artery. Left atrium. Mitral valve. Aortic valve. Left ventricle.”
Kayla realized with a mixture of sadness and irony that the heart might have been the wrong piece of anatomy to focus on. She fell on her back against her bunk with her arms resting over her head. “I’m depressed,” she said out loud, then pursed her lips with a nod of acceptance to herself. She’d taken all the angst and pain and trauma from the previous jump and all the ones before that with her into this one. And she was going to keep doing it, too. They both were. And if this was forever, if it was really truly forever, then she was going to have to find a way to live with it. Like they said they were going to do. Because more jumps were coming, even if they snapped back and this ended, this wasn’t going to be her last jump. And at the first test of getting here and immediately breaking the slipstream instead of living the timeline, she’d failed. She let her emotions and the pull of the present derail her. “I get it,” she continued to the emptiness of her cell, “I know. I can’t go on this way. I’ve got to snap out of this.” She moved on to the bones of the vertebrae before finally feeling a sense of rational clarity.
Kayla did everything she was supposed to do for the rest of the day. Yard time, she went. Dinner time, she ate. Lights out, she changed and laid down in her bunk. No one came to take her to the infirmary, and that made her really evaluate what that pain was all about. She knew for a fact that there were no incidents or issues with her ear while she was here. Same ear as last jump, same pain as last jump, though she hadn’t given it much of a thought amidst the much worse pain everywhere else. Her gut told her this was related to the severe amplification that caused their intense hypertension. And the moment she thought it, she just knew it was true.
The prison was quiet and dark, but Kayla’s brain was up and about. She sat up, grabbed the felt-tipped pen and legal pad they let inmates there have, sat against the wall on her bunk, and started doing the one thing she could to ground herself. She wrote down what she knew so she could debrief with Steve when he got there. Which she hoped to God would be soon.