Quiet moments passed, I remember, as we awaited the ambulance. There was nothing much to say. I continued to moan softly, still not aware of what had happened to me, only that I could neither see nor breathe. Officer Waters was whispering gently to keep me conscious … and alive. Finally the elevator bell chimed, and I learned with great relief that the ambulance staff were heading toward the open room.
“Okay, everyone, move out, we need to get her on the stretcher and need some room to work!” barked the lead man of the ambulance team. Waters told Leroy to stand up, then handcuffed and Mirandized him. That is when he noticed that Leroy too had blood on him, and looking closer found that he had some cuts on his lower left forearm. “Say, medic, this guy has a cut bleeding on his arm—I can take him in, though. The cut looks superficial.” The RN glanced over and nodded in agreement and turned back toward me.
Officer Waters stayed behind to take another look at what was now his crime scene. Leroy remained calm. Waters scanned the room visually. There was blood spatter everywhere: the carpet, the draperies, the bedspread, the upholstered chair, the wallpaper. He bent down to examine a small bit of something. “Hmm, human flesh. Man, this scene is rough.” As he and Leroy departed the scene for the hospital, Waters noted the blood spatter on the threshold of the door. He cringed inside. “Be sure to get this,” he ordered the police photographer.
A few short minutes later, the siren was turned off as the emergency vehicle turned into the hospital. I was rushed to the emergency room. I thought I saw some bright lights, but nothing like the light I had seen in my hotel room, and I sensed that I had arrived in a place of safety. But I could neither see nor smell. It just felt like a hospital. Urgent voices calling medical orders confirmed medical help was moments away.
9
DÉJÀ VU
An attractive strawberry blonde–headed nurse took charge of my intake as a new emergency room patient. She told me much later that she had been an ER nurse long enough to have seen just about everything there was to see. She liked her job, although there were times—like that night—she was bewildered by what people could do to themselves or others, provoked or not. She noted the expensive ivory silk shirt and matching suit skirt I was wearing and thought to herself that this was odd, even in this place of work. Most bloody victims, at this extreme anyway, came from the east side of town. It was right after midnight and her buddy running the ambulance told her he had gotten a call from the upscale hotel they both knew well. Then she put two and two together and realized I was the victim he had retrieved from downtown! Catherine brought me to the rear of the emergency area, called the “crash room.” There, hanging curtains surrounded each patient and it was somewhat quieter.
She began to cut off the silk ensemble, when I spoke! “Do you have to do that? I like this outfit.”
Somewhat startled, Catherine replied, “Yes, I have to do it.” But with calm assurance she promised to keep my jewelry in safekeeping. What she didn’t say to me then, but did to herself that night, is that if she was honest with herself, she doubted I would live to wear them again. She nearly wept, but her professional demeanor kept her on task. She thought it remarkable that I was still alert. My face so terribly disfigured …
“Oh my God, has someone contacted a plastic surgeon?” she called out, frantically.
“Already on his way,” came back the answer. She turned back to me and used the scissors to gently continue cutting my clothes from my body. Done with the front, she carefully turned me over on one side to cut from the back. She gasped at the wounds. And though she did not know me, Catherine really could feel my pain, as she herself had been assaulted just a year earlier. Again, heroically pushing her own fears aside, she focused on me.
She turned to the adjacent supply cabinet to grab a urine sample kit, but none was there. “Crap,” she muttered, “I need to get that sample tested quickly.” She flung the curtains aside, nearly bumping another patient bed in the open emergency ward.
That was when she saw the next emergency room patient, escorted by police, and felt her scissors leave her hands, clanging on the floor. Her blood drained from her face. “It couldn’t be …” she thought. “It’s just not possible … not here in Austin …” She literally could not breathe or speak. He was coming closer and closer to her. Just then he looked at her and she realized he recognized her immediately. He smirked and nodded her way with a haughty thrust of his chin. Catherine screamed and backed into my curtained-off area, recoiling.
I felt my bed slide sideways with the weight of the nurse’s body suddenly leaning against it. The entire emergency staff turned toward her, not understanding what had happened. Catherine could do nothing but try to catch her breath and hold on to the bed rail to regain her composure. Still, no words would come out.
The surgeon in charge appeared just beyond my bed, looked at Catherine, still trembling, and then looked at the patient in handcuffs. Knowing her history, he turned and asked Catherine, “Was this the man who tried to kill you last year?” Catherine slowly nodded her head as Leroy continued to shuffle past her. No more sinister smile on his angular face, as he kept his face down, staring at the floor tiles. The surgeon took command of his emergency room and declared to the police escorting Leroy, “Do not let this man out of your custody!” his dark eyes blazing. One of the officers turned to him and said, “We have to; we haven’t found a weapon of any kind. He’s here until we can get him stitched up and out of our hands.”
The surgeon looked directly at the lead officer and gravely told him about what had happened one short year earlier and pointed to Catherine. “You have got to be kidding me,” said the officer.
“Absolutely not. You get some men to go back to that hotel room and look for a weapon! I guarantee that you will find what weapon he used to stab this woman,” he nearly shouted, pointing to me. Both officers stared at me. This was the first they had seen of me and what Leroy, they thought, had done to me, but they had not yet seen it with their own eyes. The sight triggered a reaction from the police escorts, and they slammed Leroy up against the nearest wall, pinning both his arms.
Catherine advanced toward the prisoner. The escorts nodded to her in silent affirmation. “Why did you try to kill me? Why did you stab me? Give me an answer, please!?” she pleaded.
Leroy literally grunted at her face. “What that you do, what that you say? I do nuthin’!”
The lieutenant indicated to the sergeant to take Leroy on to the back of the emergency room and he stepped into the hall and clicked on his radio. Seems the police team had left the hotel moments before. No, they had not seen any weapon or anything that looked like one. “Go on back and look around, closely. This guy may have done this before and if that is the case we need evidence to keep him in custody.” The lieutenant signed off and waited.
I coughed then groaned with sheer pain. The emergency staff attentions were redirected back to me. Catherine picked up the scissors and turned me over again to resume cutting my clothes away. I was conscious enough to ask if anyone had called my home. Catherine did not know, but asked whom they should call.
“Call my mother, in Resaca … 512-631-2242.” Catherine wrote the number on the back of her left hand and motioned for the emergency room clerk to come over—quickly!
10
BLOCKED LINES
Scribbling the number down on a spare piece of paper, the ER clerk was glad to finally get a number to call the next of kin. The hotel did not have another number on hand, and the home phone number listed in the directory did not answer. She dialed the number. Busy. She dialed it again, still busy. That was strange, as it was nearing one in the morning. Still checking, still busy. She called over the surgeon and asked for advice. He knew Resaca was a smallish town, so suggested calling information to find out if there was anyone listed there with the same last name. Bingo. There was one other person listed. The surgeon placed the call himself, dreading what he had to say to the stranger on the other end of the phone.
> “Hello?” came the bleary answer.
“Is this Mark Garrett?”
“Yes, what is this about?”
“Are you related to or do you know Mirabelle Garrett?”
“Yes, she’s my sister,” my brother replied, now growing a bit anxious from the caller’s tone.
“I am afraid I have some very bad news. Your sister has suffered multiple stab wounds; we don’t know how many yet. Her face has been terribly disfigured, and … we don’t expect her to be alive when you get here.”
Mark’s adrenaline shot through him as he sat straight up and turned on the bedside lamp. “Will you repeat that, sir? Who are you and where are you and where is my sister?”
“I am Doctor Garza, head of the Breckenridge Hospital Emergency Room in Austin, Texas, and your sister is here. She has been brutally assaulted. We have very few details. I suggest you hurry.”
Mark hung up and turned to Lynne, his wife of a year, and told her the news. “Does your Mom know yet?”
“I … I don’t know, I forgot to ask.” He hit the single-button fast dial dedicated to our mom; it was busy. “How in the hell could it be busy this time of night?” he wondered aloud.
Lynne was already putting on her clothes and getting out of bed. “We have to go over to your mother’s. Maybe the phone is off the hook for some weird reason.”
Clambering to his senses, Mark slipped on his jeans and polo shirt. Lynne bundled up their baby daughter and grabbed the diaper bag and some clean clothes. She realized they were going to be gone a while. The family jumped into the old Mustang Mark had restored. A ’68 hardtop, it was in pretty good condition, and ran sweet. He made the muscle car run quickly that night to our mother’s home. He pounded loudly on her door. Over and over.
She woke up startled almost half to death. The pounding kept getting more insistent. She flicked on the hall light and peered out the peephole to see her son, clearly distressed. “What has happened?” Mark told her. She felt faint. She leaned on the hall wall. “Why didn’t you call me?” she asked.
“The line was busy,” Mark replied, shimmying by her in the hallway to his brother’s room.
“I was asleep, not on the phone … WARRRRRRRD!”—she yelled toward the rear of her home. Our youngest sibling, he opened the door to see what in the world was going on. He held the cordless phone in his hand. “Have you been on the phone all this time?”
“Well, sorta.” Feeling a little guilty but not yet knowing why he felt that way. “I’m talking to my girlfriend.”
“AT ONE IN THE MORNING??? Oh forget it. Your sister has been hurt. Mark talked to the hospital. We have to go to Austin right now. Get some clothes and your shaving kit. Move it!”
All of the family trundled into our mother’s Suburban, and Lynne dropped off the baby at her mom’s. Mom’s husband, Bob, took the wheel and tore out of town. They headed north, wanting, for once in their respective driving lives, to finally be pulled over by a cop for speeding so they could get a police escort for the six-hour trip. No such luck, but they did make it in just minutes over five hours.
11
OUTSIDE THE LAW
My father lived in California at the time, having retired from a base commander position in the Air Force. He was a successful military pilot during the Viet Nam era and had come out of it alive and educated in the ways of the world. He was not around much when I was growing up, and I realize, looking back, that that was by choice. Much better at siring children than he was at raising them, he was mostly a father who managed-by-exception. That is, until I got into some trouble, like veering on my motorcycle too fast on the military base streets or making too many B’s on my report card. Otherwise, not much real attention was given to me.
He was born of a poor parentage, his father a plumber who was a recovering alcoholic, and his mother a God-fearing industrious woman who was a telephone operator in the era when calls really had to be connected and a caller could still ask her for “Mr. Conley, please,” and she would plug in the line to his law office receptionist. Dad joined the military as a way out of his south Texas town via an ROTC stint in the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, later Texas A&M. He was well liked and successful as a cadet and quite happy, all in all. He had moved his new pretty wife to campus housing. His daughter was born while he was a freshman cadet. That appointment got him off campus, along with a stipend. The early family years were the best, in retrospect.
Tough love was what he learned both at home and as a cadet. Be self-controlled. Take responsibility for your actions. Work hard and work smart. If you bend the rules, do not—repeat, do not—get caught. (Several college pranks, for example, were never solved by the administration.)
Sometimes, a person can never tell when a “life lesson” is going to leave an indelible print on their soul. Tough love was a lesson I learned one day riding a bus on the base with my father. I was but six or seven and waiting side by side with my dad for the bus that would take us to see a jet “fly-by” exhibition on the base. I was excited to go somewhere special, just with Dad, the sniveling kid brothers left behind. When the bus whooshed up, I was frightened by the sheer size of the machine and the noise and diesel smell, its tailpipes low to the ground. The door clanged open, and my father motioned for me to step up and climb on board. I hesitated; the stairs seemed awfully tall, and this was a new and disconcerting experience. I turned, “Dad, can you hold me and take my hand?”
“No, daughter, you have to do this yourself. Go on now.”
I did not understand. I wanted my father to help me, to be there for me, to help me up the stairs. But he refused! I sat down on the curbside and started to cry. He did not comfort me, and the bus driver was getting impatient and revved the engine. My father pulled me up off the curb and toward the folding door. So I reached way up high for the interior railing and pulled myself up and onto the big black footstep covered with black rubber parallel ridges. I reached again and again, and after what seemed an eternity, I reached the top of the stairs and took a deep breath.
“Now go on, get a seat,” my dad said, moving in behind me. When I reached an open space, I sat down on the blue vinyl seat, Dad sliding in toward me. But my little heart had been broken. I felt like my dad did not love me and that is why he would not help me. I didn’t deserve help. He was not proud of me because I was a scaredy-cat.
I have never really forgiven my father for being so unloving that day. It would take three decades for me to even bring it up to him; it was so wrenching and heartfelt. Later, I understood that this was simply the first elementary step toward learning the eternal lesson of forgiveness my spirit had brought me on the planet for learning, through incremental experiences. I was too young to see it for what it was, tough love. My dad thought he was doing a good thing, making me go up by myself so I could do it next time, and the time after that, on my own. He wanted to build my self-confidence. He wanted to teach me responsibility. He wanted to teach me self-control. Even in desperate situations.
And indeed I did learn those lessons over the years. In fact, it was largely due to those lessons ingrained in my psyche that gave me the strength to not pass out on that brutal night. To keep my wits about me. To tell the first medic I could find that I was not able to draw in air, so oxygen was quickly brought to my lips in the hotel room. Honestly, it was the fresh flow of oxygen that offered me my first hope, my first glimpse that I might make it out alive.
My dad had yet to be called and notified by my family careening toward the capital city. It was in the early hours of the dark morning when he finally picked up the receiver and his son, who was calmer than his ex, told him the facts as Mark knew them. Which wasn’t much. When they hung up, my father placed one other call. That call was to someone who could take the guy out if and only if the system did not work to catch his daughter’s assailant. The price was cheap, twenty-five hundred cash. He returned the phone to its cradle and walked out into the night to catch an eastbound plane. He had a quiet though
t about his own mortality after settling in his seat. He hadn’t ever contemplated his children’s demise. Frankly, he had thought a lot about his own death over the orange gas–clouded skies of war. But not his own kids’. “Que será, será,” he mused with his patent aloofness. God was not in his thoughts, nor prayer to anyone or anything. “Mere mortals are we,” he thought, as the first of a few winks came to him on the plane.
12
NOSE BLEED
Five hours earlier, Catherine had recovered sufficiently to undress and redress me in a hospital gown and prepare me for surgery. “Have you found a plastic surgeon?” I heard her ask the clerk. As if on cue, Dr. Roberts smoothly strode into the ER, asking for instructions. It had been a very long while since Dr. Roberts had even been to this or any hospital. Alert, good-looking and very intent, he strode into the open area I was in.
I was later to learn that Dr. Roberts was a veteran of twenty years, with his own established practice in the capital city. Doctor to the very wealthy, he was either a current or past president of every significant medical board governing plastic surgery. So he was a bit out of his posh element in this public hospital. But what a smile and what a sincere energy he radiated toward all who were around him.
Blood on the Threshold Page 4
