Born of sunshine

~Part 3 Answered Hopes

Asa shuffles down her street, the buildings are high and tightly built together. The road is pot hole ridden and the side walk has cracks so big to the point where you could trip in them.

There were a few scraggily trees desperately trying to stand upright in various corners, and flickering street lamps overhead, rusty cars, broken cars, junk cars, lined both edges of the street, either stripped or waiting to be. People were poor here, unheard of people. They're hiding and squeezing together for survival at the least.

But this county wouldn't understand that. The poor and the weak, sick, and helpless are criminals here. So they hide in hopes for a better life someday - but really... how could life get better if you're constantly afraid if you'll be able to keep yours for much longer?

Asa coughs against the thick fumes of exhaust as she rounds a dark corner and makes her way around garbage strewn alleyway to climb a rusted fire escape. A siren wails somewhere; she hears a gun shot. Typical night around here. She climbs with deft limbs, despite the aches in her side, to the third floor. She pushes open the window and slides into the cold threadbare room.

The wall paint is peeling, the door is tilted off one hinge and the floorboards creak dangerously. It's not much, it's not anything really, and the air's condition was horrendous. But it was what they could manage.

"Grandpa? Grandpa you ok?" She calls, voice raspy from the dust as she walks into a tiny storage closet where her grandfather sleeps. His bed a cot on the floor, tucked against the cleanest, least moldy wall she could put him near.

He's laying still and for a horrible moment Asa's terrified he's died while she was working.

Then he lets out a soft wheeze and open his eyes, his scraggily beard doing little to hide his pale sweating face. It's a bad day then.

"Oh Grandpa - why didn't you tell me you were feeling badly." She sighs, fear prickling her heart as she leans down and pulls out a bowl of soup and medicine she managed to buy for her grandfather. Those three hundred dollars had gone to these few items.

"Drink." She holds two pills, helps sit him up and gives him the medicine with a glass of water.

He gulps it down forcefully, then coughs hard. His thin wiry body, shaking with the effort and Asa bites her lip to keep tears away as she tries to settle her grandfather in a relatively comfortable position so he can breathe easier and eat his soup.

"Where did you go today?" Grandpa asks, after he catches his breath, voice creaky and shaking.

"Working. A nice man - uh - he hired me to babysit his daughters. It pays well." She lies. She always lies, she doesn't want her grandfather to know about the shady undertakings she does to afford to care for him.

"That's nice." He says and sips his soup.

Asa helps him clean up before settling him to sleep. "Good night Grandpa."

"Night sweetheart."

Asa waits until he falls asleep. The medicine works decently enough. But she fears him becoming immune. They don't know what's wrong with him, they can't afford the hospitals. But a cheap consultation said he had feeble lungs.

Whatever that means.

Then he prescribed she steal this type of medicine. She got angry at the insinuation and forced the jerk out. Then did something almost as bad as stealing.

Putting herself for hire on the black market.

She sighs and crawls to her corner of the room, she peels off her tee shirt and looks in the cracked mirror they had, a nice old lady that died recently gave it to them. Her torso looked disgusting as always. The thick wide scars that crisscrossed her side and around her ribs where hideous.