Be Not Far from Me

As the man calls 911, the woman walks Ashley back to the service truck, and Ashley notices the license plate is from Georgia. She learns from that woman that she is in Georgia and realizes she walked there from Tennessee. The woman introduces herself as Tammy and gives Ashley food and water. Ashley cries as multiple emotions hit her at once: the joy of being safe, confusion about who she’s become, and the thought of seeing her friends and family again. As Tammy and the man, Paul, drive Ashley to where the service road hits the state route, Ashley is overwhelmed by how quickly the trees rush by, unused to the speed of a car after moving so slowly on foot. Tammy shows her a news clip on her phone of Ashley’s dad begging “someone, please, to bring his little girl back to him” (190). Paramedics meet them at the state route and start to assess Ashley’s wounds, including her partially amputated foot. Ashley struggles to explain what happened to the paramedics, only managing to say that she was lost and that “[t]he world is not tame” (215).

Once at the hospital, Ashley sets aside her pride and lets the nurses take care of her.