Too many characters for a short story?

Hello there,

I am working on a short fiction piece (maybe 3,000 words or less) about an incompetent female security guard who experiences a robbery at the bank she is supposed to be protecting and then witnesses one of the robbers get nearly beaten to death by his other accomplices. (Although she is almost discovered by the other robbers they for the most part never catch her in her hiding place).

She develops a crush on the beaten robber as she feels she relates to him a little. Although she does call the police she knows she will eventually get fired by the bank/her security agency and then maybe out of a moment of despair/rebellion decides to rescue the nearly dead robber by taking him to her home and caring for him. They eventually bond and then leave town to avoid apprehension by the law.

The problem I have with this is that one of my former editors told me that too many characters/scenes and/or action in a short story short-changes the characterization as it doesn't really give the characters a chance to develop. However, I intend to make the lead male character's fellow robbers extremely minor without really describing them (she can't really see them from her hiding spot and is too scared to think about them like that anyway) and I get rid of them all in the first scene. Much of the story focuses on her and the robber she falls in love with and it takes place in her small apartment with both of them talking and interacting while he is bed-ridden from his injuries.

Bear in mind, I also know some parts of this seem silly and disjointed but I also intend for much of it to be darkly comedic, for that element of comic relief. The story focuses on the guard's low self-esteem resulting from past childhood abuse which affects her work performance and interactions with her workmates, overall social life etc. and this criminal, (also formerly a battered child), is ironically the only person in her life who makes her feel good about herself again.