Chapter 23 Summary

It is winter, and Jess stands on the subway platform when three teenage boys, high on drugs and looking for a fight, enter the subway station. Jess turns the keys in her hand into a spiked weapon. She has had enough of powerlessness. If these boys attack her, she is going to do her damnedest to take them down with her. She manages to strike two of the boys before one of them hits her, breaking her jaw. Jess gets on the train, horrifying the other riders with her blood-saturated face and stops at St. Vincent's Hospital, inventing an identity as a man with insurance so she will be treated right away. A doctor sews Jess's broken jaw shut with wire, rendering her unable to speak. A nurse says that Jess should stay overnight for observation, and also that she needs to file...