Here's a short story that I've been wrestling with for ages, to the point where it has been completely rewritten five times. Any feedback, from anyone?

Low Desert

She had spent the last three days holed up at The Sunset Motel, a place that - she imagined - had begun to slowly disappear, to vanish by aching, unwitnessed degrees beneath decades of desert dust. It was straight out of the eighties and a shade off of condemned, but it suited her requirements.

Outside the Sunset, weeds flapped lazily in dirty spoutings. Birds hovered impossibly in dead air, circled and then swooped down to peck at the peeling siding. Red paint under blue. A beach ball skittered across the pool. 

She inhaled the cool, air conditioned room with its tang of chemical cleaning and she felt relief. She sighed, closed her eyes as the soft hum of the vents soothed, their cooling jets of recycled air transforming into invisible droplets on her forehead.

Somewhat reluctantly, she had lied to Minny, her sponsor, the day before. ‘I’m going to see my dad’, she had whispered as the two of them visited the coffee urn halfway through the meeting. Minny - 6 years without a drink - had been recommended to Anna the minute she had walked through the doors of AA the first time, the group convening in a church hall that hit you with the power of the everloving God as soon as you entered. Minny was older than Anna so it felt easier to explain the gory details.

‘Is he okay? What’s wrong?’, Minnie had asked.

‘He just needs me, that’s all. I’m going to help.’

That very first meeting would become a private joke between sponsor and sponsee in the months following. Anna had been - or had at least presented as - thrillingly confident, alive amongst the nearly dead, gleefully telling all the other alcoholics the grisly details. The lost weeks, the wet beds and the game of Russian roulette that driving had become for her. The near-death experiences that came with alcohol poisoning. The lies and the everyday deception that had become such a part of her alcoholic life that she had become truly comfortable with it. And besides, all recovering alcoholics feel better, more resilient, when they hear war stories.

Minny had seen through it all, of course. This is what endeared her to Anna, who had felt her eyes moisten up that night at the urn as she lied to the one person she wasn’t supposed to lie to. After Anna had told her she needed to escape, they had both cried a little.

‘Take all the time you need’, Minny smiled. They hugged. Minny a little gingerly, thought Anna.

‘I won't break’, sighed Anna.

Then, in her nondescript car, and armed with an air of breezy nonchalance that would fool even the most cynical police officer, she drank a glorious, gleaming bottle of Grey Goose as she made her way back west.

She knew that the first drink was the very best cure for depression ever, but the fall came quickly and after an hour of driving she was cold and dark inside, finding it hard to speak in imagined conversations, crying uncontrollably one minute and silent and sober the next. She felt herself shrink, come close to the vanishing she had craved since her teenage years.

The Sunset wasn’t even on the map. Just as she kissed the vodka goodbye she saw the lit sign up ahead. Vacancies.

The neon pink stuttered a little, but maintained a hypnotic pull even as she slowly made her way from the parking lot to the office. The sign was her anchor, and the last thing she remembered from that night.

That was Saturday night. He called on Monday morning, said he was coming. She cleaned up the room. She got rid of all the stuff. She called work and said she was on the mend, but she would need another day or two. 

He turned up just after nine o’clock. 

‘I ain’t got a world of time’, he said. 

Outside, the birds were circling again, readying for another attack.

About two miles from The Sunset, as buildings and signs shimmered and shook before melting away in the heat, he told her it was over. 

‘I know’, she replied. She fussed with the mechanism before managing to recline her seat. Now, she was a simple passenger. Now she was freight.

She dozed in safety on guardrails of Valium, a slow arc into sleep. And then a dream, of a kind. In this almost dream she was standing with him on a cliff. Screeching birds and the sea was raging and then, suddenly, dead calm. He was laughing at her, a pantomime villain. Suddenly angry, he tried to push her off the cliff but she was rooted to the ground. He tried and tried but she would not move. He could not push her away.

The crash woke her up. Once the car was stopped, they both ran back to see what they had hit. Still woozy from the dream and the meds, it took her a few seconds to realise what it was they had careened into.

A deer. You wouldn’t immediately think it  was injured but then she saw the legs. It kept heaving its head back, its eyes flashing in the headlights. ‘Don’t touch it’, he said. 

‘Why not?’ she replied. She bent down and cradled the head of the animal. At first it bucked and she let the head slip but eventually it calmed. She ran her hand across its white belly. ‘Poor thing’.

‘It’s going to die. There’s no point’, he said. He sat down on a nearby rock and lit a cigarette. A non-smoker, she had tried hard to reconcile, but it was just another thing on a growing list. She drank. He smoked. Some kind of balance. He looked at her for a few seconds as he dragged on his cigarette and then he stared at his feet. ‘I mean, it’s not going to live, is it?’.

There was a ring of white fur around one of the deer’s eyes. She stared at this for a little while, tracing the circle with her index finger. She thought of horses. She looked at the eye and saw a bright spot in it, coming from the car’s lights. 

‘Get a blanket’, she said. He didn’t move from the rock. 

She screamed at him to get a blanket. He muttered something under his breath, then walked to the back of the car. He came back with a blanket. They wrapped the deer up. ‘Call an ambulance’, she said. 

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Call an ambulance.’

‘Why? For who?’

‘For the deer.’

‘Ambulances won’t come for an animal.’

‘I’ll call them’.

‘Be my guest. You’re crazy. You see, that’s what…’

‘What? What’s what?’

‘Nothing’. 

There was nothing they could do. Unfortunate accidents like these happened probably two, maybe three times a night? Best thing she could do was leave it. This was what they told her on the phone. She breathed, and then calmly told them they could go fuck themselves. 

‘We’ve got to save it’, she said. She told him to help her carry the deer over to the car, and they would put it in the back then drive somewhere where people would try and save things that were dying. 

He said they were nearly back at the apartment. They should get some sleep. It had been a long day. He understood how she felt and he was sad too, but these things do happen. Things die. 

‘I’m going to save it’, she said. 

‘Okay’, he said. They began to move the deer. It was difficult. The animal was losing blood quickly now. It left a shiny trail as they pulled it towards the car. Their hands were slick with it. Eventually they managed to lift the deer into the back seat.

‘Just drive’, she said.

They carried on for a while before she heard the deer. It was bleating weakly. She looked back and saw the deer working its head from side to side.

‘Hurry’, she said.

‘I don’t know where we’re going’, he said. ‘Look up the hospital. The nearest hospital. I need to know where I’m going.’

‘You don’t care, do you?’ she said.

‘Of course I care. I just think that, you know, it’s nature.’

‘This animal? Dying? Is it nature?’

‘Things die. It happens. This is meant to be.’

She looked back and could see that the blood had covered the back seats now. Some had sprayed onto the windows too. There were smears on the windows where the deer had thrashed about. She checked her phone.

‘Ten miles’, she said.

When they arrived at the hospital all the lights were off and there was a sign that said In an emergency, go to the High Desert Medical Center, Joshua Tree.

‘That’s too far’, he said. ‘We’re done’. 

‘Let’s try. Please’. 

‘We can’t save it.’

‘Please.’

She had been stroking the deer’s head since before they reached the hospital and when she briefly closed her eyes she imagined she was flying high above the car, looking down on them as they drove into the night with this deer that she wanted to save. 

About ten miles out of Joshua he stopped the car. ‘It’s dead’, he muttered. ‘Please, let’s just get rid of it’.

She began to cry.

They dragged it out into the desert. They found a thick rash of Fairy Duster and they placed the deer carefully inside it. They looked at each other and she asked if she could spend some time. He nodded and walked back to the car.

Alone, she stroked the belly and kissed the face of the deer. It was a little cold now, and there was a dead smell about it. With her fingers she traced the snow white circles around the eyes and then she kissed it again.

She had always adored animals. There hadn’t been a time in her life when she hadn’t owned one. Even as a little girl she had kept a goldfish. 

They were so pure, animals. You could tell them anything. You could feel anything with them. You could be yourself and it didn’t matter. You could even beat them if you wanted to. They would always come running back.

‘Come on. We have to go’, he shouted from the car. It sounded like he was a hundred miles away. She looked back and she could see him sitting on the hood of the car, his arms folded. 

‘Just a minute’, she said. She checked one more time, touching the belly, the head, and then she arranged the blanket so that it covered up the deer fully. 

‘It’s dead. It’s over’, he said. 

‘Give me a shovel. Get a shovel’. He heard this and winced.

‘You’re going to bury it?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Right’. He swore and kicked up the ground and then he went to the trunk and pulled out a shovel, gave it to her. ‘The ground is cold. You won’t do it’.

‘I will’. She watched him go back to his car and then she began to dig. The deer seemed to be looking at her and she smiled at it. ‘Won’t be long’, she whispered to the dead animal. 

She dug for about twenty minutes and then she called for him to come over and help her pick up the deer. He picked it up by himself and dropped it into the grave. Then he headed back for the car. 

She looked back and saw him get up, pace around the front of the car. He was cursing. He was acting like a baby. His shoulders were rounded.

‘It’s done now. It’s finished,’ he said, and they both stared at the ground.