There was no one to hear.
"Ma'am, you can't be here. You can't sleep here."
Her eyes opened.
That was the moment Eli would remember for the rest of his life.
Not the cold.
Not the club colors.
Not what came after.
The moment her eyes opened and she looked at him.
Hazel eyes.
Unfocused at first.
Searching.
Then sharpening.
The eyes of a person who had been a long way away and was choosing, against great odds, to come back.
She looked at him for a long second.
Then she did something Eli was not prepared for.
She reached out a shaking gloved hand and touched his face.
"Honey," she said.
Her voice was a rasp, almost nothing, but the word was clear.
"Honey, your lips are blue."
Eli stared at her.
He had been ready for a lot of things.
He had been ready for her to grab him.
To threaten him.
To beg him.
He had not been ready for her to see him.
People did not see him.
People had not seen him in two years.
He was a thing that moved at the edges of their vision, a smear of dirty canvas they crossed the street to avoid.
And this woman, dying in the snow with an injury in her shoulder, had looked at him and seen a child who was cold.
Something broke open inside him.
"You're hurt," he said, his voice cracking. "You're hurt bad. I have to get you out of the wind."
She tried to smile.
It was a terrible smile, but it was still a smile.
"I'm a nurse," she whispered. "Listen to me. Listen close."
"The bullet is in my shoulder. It missed the artery. I'm bleeding, but I'm not bleeding out. The cold is what's going to kill me."
"The cold and the shock. Do you understand?"
He nodded.
He understood.
He had been listening to bodies for two years.
"Good boy," she said. "Good boy. What's your name?"
"Eli."
"Eli."
She closed her eyes for a moment, gathering herself.
"I'm Margaret. Maggie."
"Eli, I need you to help me move. There's an alcove. I saw it by the vent."
He looked.
She was right.
There was a small cut in the brick about ten feet deeper into the alley, where the basement of the auto-parts store pushed a thin breath of warmer air through a rusted grate.
It was the place Eli himself had been planning to use when the cold became unbearable.
"I can drag you," he said. "I'm stronger than I look."
She actually laughed.
A small, broken sound.
"I bet you are."
He got behind her and put his hands under her arms.
She was heavier than she looked, a woman of medium height carrying the dead weight of pain, blood loss, and the beginning of a dangerous sleep.
Eli had not eaten properly in three days.
His arms were the arms of a starving boy.
He pulled anyway.
It took him almost ten minutes to drag her those ten feet.
By the end of it, he was crying and did not know it.
The tears froze on his cheeks before they could fall.
She helped him when she could, pushing weakly with one leg.
They got her into the alcove and propped her against the wall, her injured shoulder positioned the way she instructed.
The thin breath of warm air from the vent touched the side of her face.
She closed her eyes for a moment.
Eli thought he saw the smallest amount of color return to her lips.
He sat back on his heels, panting.
The world was swimming.