“Okay, okay. Where’s your phone, sweetie?”
I started shaking violently and I wasn’t sure if I was dying or what, but it felt like the heat had been zapped from my body and I was soaking in a tub of ice cubes. “You’re going into shock.” He shifted again, but kept talking. “I’m just walking over to get the blanket off the couch, okay. I need a phone … never mind I see one.” His footsteps ran back toward me, and I felt the weight of the blanket on my body. There was a beeping of my phone and then he was talking to someone, answering questions about me.
I heard him dialing again. “Matt. Yeah it’s Neville … yeah from next door. You need to get here—now. It’s Kat.” There was muffled shout echoing from the phone. “Yeah, real bad.”
Neville held my hand while he talked to me, making me open my eyes every so often and then ordering me to squeeze his hand. My mind was all fuzzy and trying to comprehend everything he said was agonizing. I lay on the floor and shivered. My only comfort was that I wasn’t going to die alone.
“They’re coming. An ambulance is on its way. You have to stay awake for me though, okay. You have a nasty cut on your head. Do you know where you are?”
“Condo.”
“And your name?”
“Kat, but … you call me … baby girl and I … hate it.”
Neville chuckled. “Okay, your noggin’ can’t have been hurt that badly if you remember that.”
“My … face.”
His hand flinched in mine and I knew it was bad.
“A few lacerations, nothing the doctors can’t fix.” His hand tightened. “Did he … were you raped, Kat?”
No. But I still felt violated and my stomach churned when I thought about his hands on me. “No.”
“Okay, hon. Just try to stay awake for me.”
It became hard to distinguish his words, and I think I passed out for a while because next I felt him shaking me and calling my name over and over again. I could hear sirens and I moaned as the pain hit me again. I wanted to sink back into the darkness, but then Neville was shouting. “Who the hell are you?”
“Baby.”
Oh God. Ream. The relief was so overwhelming that I wanted to cry, to finally let the tears escape their prison and sob in his arms. But they were trapped, and the key no longer fit the lock to open the door.
His hand came beneath my head and when I opened my eyes, he was leaning over me. “Jesus, baby. Talk to me. Who did this?”
I shook my head. “Ream. How did you …” Was all I managed to get out.
But he seemed to know what I was asking. “Saw Matt running like hell out of the bar. I jumped in his car as he was pulling out. Only something to do with you could make him look that fuckin’ scared.”
That must have pissed Matt off.
Then suddenly my brother was holding my other hand and talking to me. Everything else happened in a blur as I was lifted onto a stretcher and taken away.
I knew Ream never left me. I didn’t have to open my eyes to know it was him holding my hand and him talking to me in the ambulance.
I woke briefly to a white room with a loud beeping sound. I saw a shadow of a man standing by the window, his shoulders stiff, arms crossed. I was still groggy and my vision blurry, but I knew who it was. I’d recognize Ream through a dense fog.
My throat was all scratchy as I spoke, “Don’t you dare leave me this time, asshole.” And then I fell back into obscurity.
***
It hurts. Please, no more.
It was a silent plea. They always liked it when I pleaded for them to stop. It made it worse.
Friday night. It was him. Always him. I hated him.
He pressed harder then groaned.
I screamed louder, but there was never any sound.
A silent scream for help that never came.
My eyes flashed open as I woke from the worst nightmare. But as the pain registered, I realized it hadn’t been a nightmare. It had been real. The intruder. The pain. The violation of my body. I wiggled my fingers, feeling the weight of a hand in the cradle of my palm. But it wasn’t the hand I wanted it to be.
“Sis. Hey.” Matt stood and kissed me on the top of my head. “How are you feeling?”
“Like a bull hoofed me in the stomach then raked his horns across my face.” Matt winced. “He left me alive and didn’t …” I couldn’t say the word, “so I’m happy dancing inside … quietly … without moving, ’cause to move sucks. I’d still like to gut the bastard though. Did they catch him?”
Matt shifted and his face tightened. “The police want to talk to you. When you’re up for it.”
I was so disappointed in Ream. I … God what was wrong with me? I knew he’d run. He’d told me he couldn’t deal with hospitals after his sister was in and out of them all the time. I was fooling myself to believe he’d suddenly get over it.
For me, it was vital to have a guy who’d stick by me and be there when I need him. And Ream obviously wasn’t capable of that.
Maybe I was jumping the gun here. He could be getting something to eat. Maybe he was in the washroom or went home for a shower. Shit, it was selfish of me to want him here when I woke up. Fuck, I was just being girlie-stupid over a guy. I was never girlie-stupid … gah, this sucked. But the truth was I wanted Ream, I just didn’t know if I could trust him to stay.
“Did you recognize the guy?”
I shook my head then winced. My head felt like an axe had cracked open my skull and someone was slowly chipping away at the bones with a chisel and hammer. And that was only my head. The throbbing in my ribs and abdomen produced a wave of nausea with every breath. Damn, men and their steel-toed shoes.