Dark Angels

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

Women’s Hospital was located in a lesser part of town but was in no way disrespected because of its location. The Hospital was actually three brick buildings that had started out their era of usefulness as a millinery factory. It had sat dormant for many years after hats went out of fashion, then renovated.

It was only three stories and the buildings were now connected by a network of enclosed catwalks. The brick exterior still remained dull and dated but inside, it housed a first-class medical facility and was home to an army of dedicated female doctors, interns, and nurses. You might find the odd male doctor visiting a female patient but the occasions were quite rare. Women’s Hospital was a God-given haven for women, especially those suffering from a s****l assault that left them dreading further male intervention into their bodies.

Lee stepped to the front desk and asked after Rosemary Keller, just admitted yesterday. “Building Three,” the receptionist said and then consulted her book. “But I’m afraid visiting is restricted to immediate family members. Are you related?”

“I’m her Godmother,” Lee said.

The receptionist tapped a pencil. “Sorry. Visitation is restricted. Only her mother is allowed in.”

“Oh dear. And I’ve come all this way,” Lee pulled a tissue from her purse and dabbed at the corner of an eye. “I would only take a moment; just long enough to say hello.”

The woman softened a little and consulted her book again. “From what it says here, I don’t think Rosemary is in any condition to greet you.”

Lee pushed the corner of the tissue into her eye and the tears welled up. “You don’t mean she’s going to...”

“Look. I’ll tell you what I can do. The girl’s mother is up there, on the third floor somewhere.”

“Yes?”

“Take the elevator, Building Three, and find her. Have her check with the attending physician. It will be the doctor’s decision whether or not to admit you. Go left along the hallway and when you are in Building Three, take the elevator to the top.”

Lee thanked the receptionist with all the enthusiasm she thought necessary and moved quickly around the corner before the woman could change her mind. She noted the receptionist had withheld the room number. It was a sly way to get her to conform to hospital rules but Lee could be just as sly, though she would have to be careful if the girl’s mother was about.

Lee spotted a young candy striper pushing her cart of magazines. She was only fifteen or sixteen and obviously a volunteer. And could easily be manipulated. “Hi. I’m Rosemary’s Godmother,” Lee said to the girl. “Apparently her mom is on the floor. You haven’t by any chance seen her?”

The candy striper looked confused, then smiled as she connected the dots. “Mrs. Keller has left the Hospital.” The girl consulted her wristwatch. “She’s gone for a bite of lunch but she’ll be back in an hour or so, if you care to wait.”

Lee felt a flush of relief. “That’s fine. I can do that. And where should I wait.”

“Rosemary is in three-seventeen; that way. There are chairs across from her door, in the hall. Would you care for some reading material to help pass the time?”

Lee eyed the stack of gossip magazines on the girl’s cart. “Don’t suppose you have a copy of Business Week in there?” The girl gawked. “I didn’t think so...” Lee said and pushed by the cart.

Making note of the room numbers as she passed, Lee walked toward the end of the building keeping a wary eye for over protective relatives and tyrannous hospital staff. Further down, one of life’s dramas was being played out by women dressed in green scrubs; their white sneakers squeaking as they pushed incessantly in and out of a swinging door. But they were too self-absorbed to notice an interloper dressed in an expensive business suit creeping along the hallway.

Lee found room three-seventeen, hesitated only a moment and then, with a last look over her shoulder, put her weight against the door. It slid back in breathless silence to reveal a shadowy room containing one bed. There was a hummock of rumpled sheets and the sound of steady breathing. Lee moved to the side of the bed and looked over the polished steel rails.

The girl was swaddled to the neck in a pale blue sheet and seemed to be comatose; heavily sedated, Lee reasoned. There was nothing about Rosemary’s features to suggest she had once been a pretty girl. Her face was so puffy she appeared misshapen. Both eyes were blackened; one swollen completely closed. And there was a line of sutures above an eyebrow. A section of the girl’s skull had been shaved and there was a second line of stitches. A metal brace had been taped across the bridge of her nose and the girl’s lips were cut and crinkled.

A slight quiver lifted the hairs at the back of Lee’s neck and she took a breath to steady herself. What the hell had he done to her? But it was immediately apparent that the girl was in no condition to answer Lee’s question. At least not today. Lee turned to go but realized, just then, that the girl didn’t seem to be wearing a hospital gown. Lee wondered if she had the nerve. She stood a moment, listening hard for any sounds from outside the door. There was nothing but the quiet hiss of the ventilation system. Lee reached for the sheet.

The reason the girl was naked beneath the bed-covers quickly became evident: Her left arm was encased in a plastic splint and taped across her stomach. There was no possibility of slipping Rosemary’s arm through a sleeve.

Her breasts had been battered and the right n****e was missing. Either torn by teeth or sliced away by the surgeon’s scalpel, Lee couldn’t tell, but the flesh was puckered by a line of stitches that ran up the middle of the soft mound so it resembled a toy football. The sutures roughly pricked her fingertips when Lee traced along the line of the incision. And below, the girl’s ribs were tightly bound in surgical tape but the purple bruising extended well beyond the bandages.

When the girl had fought for her virtue, her assailant had put the boots to her, breaking her ribs. And when Rosemary had raised a hand to defend herself, her arm had been broken as well. There was also bruising along Rosemary’s inner thighs and her v****a had been shaved so it resembled a gutted fish. More surgical stitching pinched the flesh and a catheter rudely snaked between the battered vaginal folds. Lee reached out with tentative fingers, touched the c*****e, explored the sticky creases and floated on the delightful tingling sensations before dropping the sheet back across the girl’s neck.

Later, at home, Lee went online and found a website that categorized adult movies. From the R-Rated listings, she downloaded, I Spit On Your Grave, and watched, then re-watched the three bothers raping and sodomizing the young female novelist who had sought out the solitude of a secluded cabin to finish writing her book.

Before turning down the bed-covers, Lee checked in with the s****l Assault Forum. She delighted in a new listing: A girl wrote to say that she and a girlfriend had been sexually assaulted while hiking in Washington State Park.

They had stumbled onto four men with rifles at a remote campsite. The hunters had been poaching mountain goats but were now suddenly faced with something much more interesting to stalk. The girls had been forced to pull their pants down and their bare bottoms had been held up to the campfire until they agreed to perform c*********s on one-another. (“It was either lick each other or have our bottoms slow-broiled. It was disgusting.”)

Once the show was over, the girl had been trussed up to a tree where she had an unobstructed view of her companion being forced to the ground. Her friend, a slim blonde, was the pretty one; at least until the men started in on her. Then she wasn’t so pretty anymore. (“They f****d her, two at a time, right there on the ground in front of me. I can still hear her screaming!”)

The girls had been tied up for the night but managed to slip their bonds and escape into the darkness. They hid in the forest and hiked out the next morning. When they got back to their car, they made a pact: Neither one of them would ever tell a soul about what had happened on their hike in the woods.

Like all women who contributed to the s****l Assault Forum, this girl was reaching out for support. She hoped that by sharing her story, she would rid herself of the venom that threatened her sanity. And that someone would write back with the magic words that would make things right again. This is too delicious, Lee thought. She re-read the post and then went to bed and, sipping whiskey, she conjured up the image of her niece, naked and on the floor. What would that be like, Lee wondered, having three faceless men taking turns between my legs?

Next morning, Lee dug out a dated linen suit from the back of her closet. The cut was out of style and the skirt made her look frumpy. She pulled on a white turtleneck and then did up the buttons of a black cotton shirt. She pulled on the gray suit jacket and zipped up the skirt before turning to the mirror. She looked like a dowdy old church-maid; sallow and dry. Perfect, she thought to herself, smoothing out the creases along the front of her thighs. She left home without putting on her makeup.

On the way to Women’s Hospital she called her office. “Luletta. Anything I should know about?”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” replied her manager, realizing that Lee was about to give the office a skip. “Except the ad agency called. They went ahead and booked advertising space in Sunday’s Sport’s Section and they want an approval on the ad copy for the new automotive products.”

Lee summoned the memory of her talented ad rep lying on the carpet and smiled. “Call ‘em back and set it up for this afternoon. I’ll be in the office after lunch.”

“Got it.”

“And my phone is turned on if there’s anything else.”

“Enjoy your morning,” Luletta said and disconnected.

At Women’s Hospital Lee managed to slip by the receptionist unnoticed when a delivery arrived at the front door. The woman would certainly have questioned her. On the third floor, Lee found the hallway was quiet and she went directly to room three-seventeen.

One blackened, sorrowful eye blinked open as Lee pushed through the door. The girl’s head turned and Lee’s spine stiffened. Rosemary was awake.

Lee took a step closer. “Oh my. What happened to you, child?”

Rosemary turned her face to the side and lifted a hand to hide her looks and blanket her shame. “Who are you?”

“Why, I’m Sister Leanne, dear,” Lee said, close enough now to place her hands on the bedside railing.

“Don’t look at me. It’s disgusting.”

Lee couldn’t help herself; she leaned closer. “I’ve seen much worse,” she lied.

“They sent you... Because, because I need counseling...? Is that what they think?”

“I don’t know who ‘they’ are, but no; I’m here because I walked through the wrong door.”

Rosemary laughed bitterly but dropped her hand and took a moment to study Lee’s face with her good eye.

“Whatever happened to you?” Lee repeated.

Tears suddenly appeared, briefly hung in the corners of Rosemary’s eyes before rolling down to moisten the pillow. “I was raped.” Her voice was low, almost a whisper.

Lee reached out to stoke the girl’s hair but Rosemary cowered like a bullied dog before a raised stick.

“He beat me when I refused to take my clothes off.” The words abruptly spilled like an overflow. “He punched my face and when I went down he started kicking me. I shouted at him, ‘Okay ...it’s okay. I’ll let you, just don’t kill me.’ But he kept kicking me. I couldn’t get him to stop. I kinda blacked out and when I came to, I realized I didn’t have anything on and he was on top of me, pushing, and asking me for a name.”

“A name, dear? Your name?” Lee was confused.

Oh sweet Jesus...” Rosemary convulsed. “And before he finished, he turned me over. I can still feel him back there, moving inside me. It’s like he’s still in there.”

Lee’s insides were tumbling and her hair and neck felt damp. “He did you anally?” Lee hissed, blindly reaching for the sheet. And then asked again, more pointedly this time...

It was wild. Crazy. What had possessed her to come right out and ask the girl such an absurd question? But by Christ it had felt good to feel the words in her mouth:

“He did you in the ass?”

Lee squeezed her legs closed on a shimmering orgasm as the sheet came down and the girl’s tortured breast rolled into her hands.

Rosemary made a grab for the bedclothes. “No! What are you doing? Who are you?” And even with the substantial bruising about her face, Rosemary’s color changed; the blood draining from her cheeks. Rosemary’s chest expanded under Lee’s hands. “Mommy!”

Lee recoiled at the sound. She pulled her hands away and took a step back. “Please. There’s no need. I’m going now... please, I’m going.”

“Mommy!” Rosemary shrieked again.

Lee turned quickly and scrambled for the door. If the girl saw her retreating maybe she would shut the f**k up. Lee gripped the handle, swung the door open and stumbled out into the hall. She just managed to avoid a collision with the tall woman who had been turning toward the sound of the girl’s voice. Their eyes met.

The woman calmly studied Lee’s face. She was pleasant-looking, older than Lee by several years and had a thick mane of coppery hair. She didn’t say a word but there was a look of recognition glistening in her green eyes and she took note of the guilt reflected in Lee’s face. The two women assessed one another. It was only a moment but something rose up between them: A sense of empathy. An understanding. And then the woman with the fiery-red hair abruptly tossed her head and turned. As Lee watched, the woman hurried away.

A nervous twinge made the hair on Lee’s arms lift. She took a breath. At least the girl had stopped screaming. Lee felt chilled and turning in the opposite direction from the retreating redhead, she slunk away to find a private exit.

A police car turned into the U-drive of the hospital. Lee watched in her mirror, half expecting the cop to make a screeching turn and come after her with his lights wildly flashing. But he took a parking spot and strolled without concern, toward the front doors. Lee wheeled away, her hands still shaking. She had come so close to being caught. If the woman with the red hair had made a fuss, Lee would be sitting in the back of that police cruiser right now, taking an uninvited ride downtown. She had to learn to be more careful.

Lee returned to her office shortly after the lunch-hour but not before stopping off at Sheldon Park. This time of morning she pretty much had the place to herself. There was a dog-walker with four customers at the leash and two moms with strollers. Lee wheeled the Porsche into a space next to the restrooms and plucked her duffle from the passenger seat.

Standing in front of the mirror, Lee applied makeup, brushed out her hair and quickly changed into her woolen business suit.

She checked out her eyes and lips in the mirror. God, she had come so close.

Thinking of her niece, Lee realized that Mindy had uncovered a whole new side to her character; one that Lee wasn’t sure she was comfortable with. It consumed her and, like an insistent child, demanded attention. In the beginning, the online rape forum had provided an outlet for her frustrations but now she craved more. More substance. More reality. The visit to the hospital had been foolhardy; Lee realized that. She had come so close to getting caught and the experience had been unnerving, but unbelievably, she found herself wondering if she dared a return visit.

It was frustrating to have come so close to gaining the girl’s trust; to having her open up, and then lose the opportunity to her own foolhardiness. But even so, Lee had run a finger along the stitches in the girl’s forehead. Had almost leaned in and kissed them; no... tasted them. Lee had thrilled to the weight of Rosemary’s ravaged breast in her hand; had felt the deep lacerations, seen the yellow and purplish bruising. Had enjoyed the girl squirming when she touched the puckered flesh that once supported a n****e.

At her office, Lee saw a lavender-blue coaster bicycle pulled up onto the sidewalk. It would have been at home on the back streets of Key West and there was a pair of kid-sized Nikki’s tied to the handlebars; her ad rep was waiting.