Cast a Pale Shadow(14)

*****



Trissa was not alone when she woke. The rustle of sheets and the creak of the bed next to her as it was readied for an arriving patient had roused her. She had watched in fuzzyheaded silence, trying to let her confusion dissipate with her wakening memory.

"Are you awake, Sweetie? Do you need some help getting up?"

"Yes, please," she said meekly as her efforts to sit up made her head buzz and spin.

"That's okay. Take it slow." The nurse's aid offered her amply padded arm and shoulder to lean on, guiding Trissa off the bed to the bathroom. "Now, don't be shocking yourself by looking in that mirror. It's all bruises; they'll fade. No stitches, no broken bones. From the looks of you, you came off lucky."

Despite the warning, Trissa could not keep her eyes from straying to the mirror when they passed it on their way back to bed. She gasped at the battered waif staring back at her. Her oversized hospital gown gapped at the neck revealing the clear outline of fingers there, her father's fingers. All the panic of last night flooded back, bringing tears and dizziness threatening to swamp her. She clutched tighter to the aid's arm and her knees turned to jelly.

"Whoopsie! I've got you." The capable woman reacted quickly to her unsteadiness and had her swiftly and gently tucked back into bed. "You just rest a bit, Honey. We'll get you some breakfast and take another look at you. We won't let you go until Dr. Edmonds says so. Don't worry. He's one of the best. And, of course, with Moira on duty," she smiled and patted her name tag, "You've got the best of the best looking out for you, too. Meantime, I'll see if I can find that hubby of yours. He was glued to your bedside all night. He's got to be around here someplace."

Her mind still swirling with memory, Trissa did not catch the meaning of her words until she had whirled out the door. "My hubby?" she puzzled after her. "Hubby?" She was mistaken. She must be thinking of another patient, another room. Yet the word brought back another memory from last night. The doctor shining his light in her eyes, then probing her with questions as he poked and pressed her body.

"Does that hurt?"

"No."

"How about here?"

"Oooh, yes."

"Mm-mmm. Do you feel dizzy or lightheaded?"

"A little."

"Are you married?"

The question was delivered with the same clinical brusqueness as the others, and before she had considered the oddity of its inclusion, she answered it. "No... Huh?"

A nurse had arrived then with a tray of instruments and pulled the curtain tightly around the examining table. The bright lights made her head swim and she closed her eyes against them. "Trissa, the nurse is going to help you get ready, I'll be back in a minute. We'll be finished soon and then you can rest."

She saw his kind smile when she squinted up at him. Yet it did not unpucker the frown on his brow. She moaned a little and slipped out of full consciousness when the nurse shifted her body on the table, draping her with sheets, and lifting her legs into stirrups. She remembered thinking hazily my back must be broken. They're putting me in traction. Her mind muddled over what that would mean to her so that when the doctor returned she mumbled to him, "What about midterms? How will I ride the bus?"

He gave her his half-faced smile-frown and said "Everything will be all right, Trissa. We'll take good care of you." He disappeared below the drapings but his calm, reassuring voice continued. "You may feel some discomfort. It will be better if you try to relax." She tensed when the cold steel touched her but she felt only brief, gentle pressure and he was finished. "Okay, Mrs. Horton, we're done here." Immediately the nurse set about removing her feet from the stirrups and Trissa sobbed with relief.

"There, there, it's all over now," said the doctor, pulling off his gloves and frowning at her.

"It's not broken then?" she whimpered.

A look of faint shock mingled with his smile-frown, "What?"

"My back? I thought my back was broken."

The doctor chuckled incongruously, "No! Oh, no. You have a concussion that we will have to keep an eye on. You lost consciousness for some time and are still feeling the effects." He never took his eyes off her as he scratched notes on his clipboard chart. "And you are heavily bruised, especially on the thighs, stomach, and lower back. Your face is bruised and scraped as are your arms." He clicked his pen closed and handed the chart to the departing nurse. "Trissa, I have a policeman waiting outside. Do you feel up to talking to him?"

"A policeman! Why? What have I done?" She thought of her father maybe bleeding to death after she had fled him, and her mother coming home to find him. "I'm sorry," she cried. "I didn't know what...."

The vehemence of her reaction obviously startled him. He placed his warm hand on her wrist, as if to take her pulse at first. Then he released his gentle pressure and stroked her arm as one might soothe a fretting child. "No, no, Trissa, you haven't done anything. It wasn't your fault. You were the victim. But we need your help. We have to get this man--"

"What man?"

"The man who attacked you. Even if there was no rape this time, he--"

"Rape? No! I fell! That's all. I just fell!"

"Trissa, we know that--"

"I fell, please, I fell. I've always been clumsy. It was dark. I wasn't careful." The words tumbled out of her in frantic bursts.

"Okay, all right, I'll send the policeman away. If you could just tell me your last name, we can call your parents."

"No. They wouldn't care. Don't bother them." She turned her head away from him, letting the tears roll down to the sheets. She suddenly hadn't the strength to wipe them away.

"All right, but your last name? We need--"

"No," she said softly.

"But--"

"No," she insisted, and she closed her eyes and pretended to sleep until the pretending had become real.

The breakfast tray came in and Trissa picked at it without enthusiasm, finishing only the juice and the toast. The aid's words taunted her, "We won't let you go until Dr. Edmonds says..."

But go where? Home? The railroad tracks seemed more welcoming. Still, she had to know how her father was. She had to say she was sorry again. The telephone seemed cold as stone in her hand and when the operator asked her for the number, Trissa's voice was a choked and ragged whisper.





Chapter Five





"Hello." It was her mother's telephone voice. It grated Trissa that no matter what screaming strife the ringing telephone interrupted, her mother always managed to compose her voice into melodious warmth before answering. Her tone conveyed nothing. Bob could be bleeding to death at her feet and it would sound the same. Trissa was too uncertain of her own voice to speak.

"Hello?" A slight trickle of irritation seeped into the second greeting. Trissa's finger trembled over the hang-up button. All her courage had drained from her. She had nothing to say to her mother, nothing that would explain or pardon what she had done. Nothing that she would believe. "Trissa, is that you? Don't hang up!"

Don't hang up. Did she mean to enkindle this bright flare of hope in her daughter, hope that she wanted to talk, to listen and understand? With reckless disregard for all the snuffed-out hopes of her past, Trissa sobbed, "Mom, help me. I'm sorry."

"Help you? Help you? Help you?" Each barked question was delivered with rising inflection until the last ended in a scream. "You need help all right. But it's more help than I can give you. Your father will be scarred for life. Who's to help him?"

"I'm sorry. He tried--"

"He told me what happened. I don't need to hear what your twisted mind has made out of it."

Perhaps it was best that way. If you pretended it didn't happen, maybe, in time it will seem as if it hadn't. "How -- how is Daddy?"

"How dare you ask that question? Is that why you called?"

"Yes. I just -- I have to know."

"Funny, you weren't so concerned when you ran out of here. Where did you spend the night? Where are you now?" By now her mother's voice had the cold, metallic ring of brass. All the honeyed, bell tones of her first "hello" were lost in its harshness.

"In the -- at a friend's house." Trissa had to hold her breath to keep another sob from escaping.

"Fine. Then you can just stay there. I'll put your clothes in the alley. You can pick them up there."

Trissa could not stop her startled gasp. "The alley? Please, Mommy, let me come home. Let me explain." She squeezed her eyes shut but that did not impede the stinging tears. The receiver seemed suddenly too heavy to hold up and her arm trembled with the effort. Her head throbbed and spun. She gripped the side rail of the bed tightly with her other hand to keep her balance.