“I’m not trying to be difficult, CJ, but neither of us should have to be trying. It should just be natural. This shouldn’t be work.”
A hurt look eclipsed her beautiful face, “I’m work?”
“I didn’t mean it that way. Look, I had a great time tonight. I really did. Thank you for asking me. Thank you for a great dinner. And thank you for this.” He fingered the beautiful, classic silk bow tie which was now hanging untied around his collar.
“Can we call tonight a start?” She asked.
He smiled and nodded his head, “I can live with that.”
“Ok, me too,” she smiled.
He gave her a hug and a quick kiss on the lips. “You looked beautiful tonight.” And with that, he was off down the hall. He bounded down the steps of the dorm and turned onto the sidewalk of The Quad.
Hands in his suit pockets and head down, he started toward his dorm. He was glad he’d made it through the night, and fairly painlessly, until the end, and he wondered if tonight was actually “one step up and two steps back.”8 He knew that as much as he’d had to push himself, the socializing was good for him and he really had actually enjoyed it after months of self-imposed exile. He needed to rejoin the world. Tonight was a start at trying to have a life again — but was it also a step backwards, he wondered, thinking about his conversation with CJ. Was it a start or merely a restart?
Schooner knew he needed to learn from his mistakes and that falling back into old patterns would be anything but a new start. He also realized that he was no longer the same person he had been when school first started in the fall. He so desperately wanted to be happy again. It was as that thought crossed his consciousness that he saw her walking up ahead on the empty quad. The telltale mane of dark curls bouncing behind her.
“Mia,” he yelled. He hadn’t planned to. It was a gut reaction, as was taking off in a fast jog to catch up to her. “Mia. Mia stop,” she kept walking, quickening her pace (which was a moot point based on the difference in their leg lengths).
“Mia.” Schooner caught up to her and was walking beside her. “Mia talk to me,” she remained silent, walking as fast as she could, head down, “c’mon Mia.”
“Schooner. Leave. Me. Alone.”
“Sorry, but you are not getting that lucky tonight.” He was now a foot in front of her walking backwards and talking to the top of her head, because she wouldn’t look up at him. “Mia, I know I fucked up. I fucked up because I didn’t come and talk to you. What you assumed happened, didn’t happen. Actually, it’s never happened. But something did happen and I felt so awful and I just didn’t know how to come to you because I thought you’d just tell me to go fuck myself and I didn’t know what to do and clearly doing nothing was the worst thing I could’ve done. I am so, so sorry, Mia.”
“Schooner, go fuck yourself. Ok, you happy now? Self-fulfilling prophecy. Now leave me the fuck alone,” her voice was rising dangerously loud and high.
He stopped walking backwards and she either had to stop or bump into him. She stopped and he immediately put his hands on her shoulders.
Mia stepped back to get away from him, recoiling from his touch, which landed like a sharp blow to Schooner’s gut. She had actually cringed when he touched her and the devastation rushed over him in a wave, dragging him under. As she stepped back to avoid his touch, the light from the streetlamp captured her in its glow. It took Schooner a moment to process that something did not look quite right. Mia’s shirt was ripped open, exposing part of her right breast and it looked like there was blood on her shirt.
“Oh my God, Mia, what happened to you? Who did this to you?” Alarms were going off inside of him like a string of Roman Candles on July 4th.
She tried to sidestep him. “Schooner, get the fuck out of my way. Now.”
“Not a chance,” he blocked her with his body, “Mia, look at me.”
“Schooner, please let me go,” her voice cracked and he felt his own throat close up. The irony of those words were not lost on him.
He reached out and gently lifted her chin so that he could see her face. She winced and he realized that he was hurting her. He felt the bile rising in his throat as the streetlamp revealed her bruised jaw and bloody lip — which from the looks of it was still bleeding as fresh, wet blood glistened in the light over the already caked, dried blood.
He enveloped her in his arms, crushing her to him. She immediately stiffened like a steel rod. “Oh my God, Baby Girl.”
“You have no right to call me that,” she hissed and it felt as if her body were shrinking in his arms, as if she were imploding upon herself, trying to become smaller and smaller so that she could actually disconnect totally from his touch and disappear. In that moment, he was glad she was as stiff as steel, because his knees were starting to buckle and although she didn’t realize it, she was holding him up. He could feel the pain and fear radiating off of her and intuitively he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this was not just a mugging.
His Baby Girl had been raped.
CHAPTER 26
Schooner stood there with his arms around Mia, swaying back and forth, for what seemed to be a long while, but he guessed that maybe it was only a few short moments. She let him hold her. And he needed to hold her. He needed to give her his strength, his protection and he tried so hard to transfer that energy to her by just holding her tight.
I’m going to kill the motherfucker who did this to her. Kill with my fucking bare hands. Calm down, need to protect, don’t scare her, keep a level head, I’m going to kill whoever did this, we need to go to the police, I need to get her to the ER, I should’ve been with her tonight. His thoughts were all over the place, as he fought to streamline them into a coherent plan of action. He needed to take care of her and he needed to do it now. He needed to take control. She needed him to think for them both.
He held her and kissed the top of her head, gently. “Mia, we need to go to the police.”
She panicked and began to thrash in his arms, “No. I can’t go to the police. I’ll get sent home. They’ll make me go home,” she was in full panic mode, her eyes wide with fear.
“Ok. Ok. Ok.” He held her tight, still rocking back and forth, gently stroking her hair in an attempt to calm her, or maybe to calm himself — he wasn’t really sure. “No police,” he understood what she was thinking. She was a minor. Her parents would come and pull her out of college. But it made him sick to think this animal would be out there. Would get away with this. Could do this to someone else. He consciously pushed his rising anger away. We’ll deal with that later, he thought. Take care of Mia now.
He slipped out of his suit jacket and draped it over her. He put his arm around her shoulders and turned her around and started walking her toward the entrance of campus. She went along willingly. Sobs racking her body every few minutes. “Shhh, it’s going to be ok, Baby Girl.” But he wasn’t really sure that it would ever be ok again.
They walked for several blocks in silence before she seemed to realize that they were no longer on campus. “Where are we going?” She asked, through her tears.
“To the ER,” he said softly. Then added, “Is that ok?”
She nodded and he pulled her closer into him and kissed the top of her head. I am never going to let her out of my sight again, he thought. Ever. As they walked through the silent streets of the city, he felt closer to the animal kingdom than he’d ever felt before (he would feel this way a few more times in his life, when each of his children were born). Animals protect and kill. He got it.
There was so much he wanted to say to her, to promise her. But it all was going to have to wait. What he wanted didn’t matter right now. The only thing that mattered was getting Mia immediate medical attention and then helping get her through the aftermath. If she’d let him.
The hospital was finally in view, just a few blocks more to go. “You doing ok?” He asked. She nodded her head.
“Good girl,” he rubbed her arm.
They entere
d the bright, unfriendly glare of the emergency room, eyes adjusting to coming in from the dark. There were only a few people in the waiting room. A Hispanic couple with a small infant, a guy who had his arm in ice and his friend who was with him and a middle aged couple. The large waiting room was nearly empty and there was plenty of room, so that they would not have to sit near anyone else.
“Sit here.” Schooner led her to a bank of chairs in a section where no one was seated. “I’ll go see about getting you checked in, ok.”
Schooner approached the reception desk. The nurse looked up and smiled, appreciatively. It was then he realized he was still in his white dress shirt and suit pants with his sky blue bow tie hanging open.
“Hi,” he began, “I’m here with a friend of mine and she’s been attacked tonight and I think she’s probably been raped.”
“You’re not sure if she’s been raped?”
Schooner shook his head, “No. But I think it’s highly likely.” She handed him a clipboard to fill out some basic information and he went back to where Mia was sitting.
“You hanging in there?” He asked, she looked like a little kid playing in her parent’s closet in his suit jacket. He was glad that she was wrapped up in it and the telltale evidence of her ripped shirt out of view.
“Barely.”
“You’re doing great,” he smiled at her, “help me with this, ok.” He wanted to distract her and motioned to the clipboard.
“Birthday?” He realized he didn’t even know when her birthday was.
“July 12th.”
“Ahhh, a summer baby. You never had to be in school for your birthday,” he commented, as he wrote down her birth day, pausing at the year, before writing down the year of his birth, instead of hers. She was right, the fact that she was still a minor would cause a whole host of issues. He wanted to spare her anything she didn’t think she could deal with or need to deal with.
Mia saw what Schooner wrote and whispered, “Thank you.” He looked at her and winked, conspiratorially. She smiled for the first time and he could see how much it hurt her lip to smile.
“Insurance?” He asked.
“I’m covered under my parent’s plan, but I don’t want… “ He could see the tears welling up and the panic grabbing her like a riptide, and immediately, he cut her off.
“No worries.” He pulled out his wallet and filled in his credit card information on the form.
She started to cry.
“Hey,” he said to her, pointedly.
“Sorry,” she sniffed and he smiled at her.
Schooner brought the completed form back to reception and waited with Mia until they called her in to Triage.
He walked her to the door. “I’ll be waiting out here. If you want me with you at any point, send someone out to get me, ok,” she nodded, a sob escaping. He hugged her tightly once more and kissed the top of her head. “I’ll be right here.” And she disappeared behind the door.
Schooner went and sat back down. He wanted to be there on the other side of the door with her. This has got to be so scary for her, he thought. Or was it? Compared to what she’d already endured that evening. He was on overload, just muddling through and could not even begin to imagine what Mia was going through.
“Mr. Moore?” A hand on his shoulder drew him out of his reverie. How long had he been sitting there?
“Is she ok? Is everything alright?” He asked the young emergency room doctor. He was glad for Mia’s sake that the doctor was a woman.
“She’s doing ok, considering the circumstances.” She paused, “Do you know much of what happened to her tonight?”
“No,” he shook his head. “I saw her walking. It didn’t take long to realize there was a problem and I got her to come here.”
The doctor smiled and put a hand on Schooner’s forearm. “You’re a good friend.” Not quite, he thought. The doctor continued, “She told me that it was alright to fill you in on some of the details. Sometimes it’s easier to have a third party deliver the information.” She paused again, “Mia was raped by two men tonight.”
Sound began to fade away, he could see the doctor’s lips were still moving for a brief moment before he felt the room start spinning. Schooner hurtled head first, tumbling down a tunnel. He heard his voice say, from somewhere, “bathroom” and the Dr. lead him by the arm to a bathroom luckily only a few feet away. He made it as far as the sink before vomiting. He couldn’t stop. Waves and waves wrenched his gut muscles. Two men, oh my God. One must’ve held her, while the other… and the retching began again.
When the dry heaves finally ended, the doctor was waiting with a cup of water. She led him out to the chairs again and they sat down. “Are you ok?” She asked and he nodded.
“Mia doesn’t want to bring in the authorities.”
“I know. I wanted her to go to the police, but she refused.”
“Do you think you can change her mind? I wouldn’t pressure her about it tonight, but maybe over the next few days. These animals need to be off the street.”
“I agree, Doctor.” He felt his anger rising again and consciously told himself to check it.
“She’s got some pretty significant bruising, but x-rays didn’t show any fractures. I’m going to be giving her some high dosage hormones that we typically use in rape cases. They basically make the uterus an inhospitable environment for egg implantation and we can help mitigate the odds of pregnancy.”
Schooner felt the warm rush of tears coursing down his cheeks. This was a fucking nightmare.
The doctor continued, “The biggest side effect we see with this type of treatment is nausea and vomiting, so don’t be alarmed if that happens. If it appears she’s dehydrating, I want you to call me. I’m also going to prescribe pain killers and some anti-anxiety medication that will help her sleep.” She handed Schooner her card. “I’m going to sew up her lip now and she asked if you’d come back and be with her while I do it.”
He followed the doctor back into the authorized area passed small curtain partitioned rooms, until they got to Mia’s.
“Hey you…” he smiled at her. He knew he had to keep it together for her and had collected himself quickly walking through the ER to her room. “So, you want me back here for the gory stuff, huh.”
“Stitches seemed like a guy thing,” he was so happy to see her bantering.
The doctor was loading a syringe of Lidocaine to numb the area. “I think I can do this in about 4 stitches, Mia and I’m going to make them as small as I can so that you won’t have any significant scarring.” Maybe not of her lip, Schooner thought and was hoping Mia was not thinking the same thing.
“Ok, I’m going to numb the area and we’ll let it sit for a few minutes to take full effect.” Mia grabbed Schooner’s hand tightly as the doctor injected the numbing agent around her mouth. He rubbed her knuckles with his thumb to calm her down.
“You’re doing great, Baby Girl,” he encouraged, squeezing her hand.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” the doctor left Mia’s room to attend to one of the other patients.
Schooner sat on the side of the bed facing Mia, still holding her hand. “You are so brave,” he whispered, “I have always been in awe of you.”
Two fat tears rolled slowly down her cheeks. “I wanted you to be my first,” her voice was choked.
He felt hot tears splashing down his face and leaned his forehead against hers. “I will be, Baby Girl. When you are ready, I will be the first guy to make love to you. I’ll be your first.” Schooner didn’t know if his face was wet from his tears or hers, but cheek to cheek they sat and cried together. Cried for the loss of a dream that had been savagely ripped from them.
Your first and your last, Baby Girl, Schooner vowed to himself. Your first and your last.
CHAPTER 27
Mia fell asleep laying in the back seat of the cab with her head in Schooner’s lap.
“Baby Girl, we’re here.” Gently waking her as they pulled up in front of th
e dorm, he paid the cab driver and they walked up the front steps. Schooner took Mia’s keys from her and opened the door. He felt the little dangling silver camera and smiled. It was past 4 A.M. and the lobby was dark and empty. They walked down the hall and up the staircase, Schooner with his arm around Mia who was still wearing his suit jacket.
He unlocked the door to her room and flipped the light on. Thankfully her roommate Caroline was staying at the Sheraton in Pasadena with her boyfriend, Dennis. He tossed the keys onto Mia’s desk and turned to her.
She looked up at him and sighed, “What a fucking night.”
He cocked his head to the side and with a sad look just held out his open arms to her. She went to him, wrapping her arms around his waist and he held her tight.
“You got really skinny,” she observed, looking up at him with a wry smile.
He wanted to tell her that it was called “The Misery Diet,” but he didn’t want to say anything that would make her feel bad or upset her.
“Let’s get you in bed, Mia. You need to rest.” He opened their mini-fridge and pulled out a bottle of water and poured her a cup. Taking the prescription bottles out of his suit pants pocket, he got Mia the pills she needed. She had changed into an oversized tee-shirt while his back was turned and he suspected there were probably some bruises she didn’t want him to see. She sat down cross-legged in the center of her bed and he sat on the edge and handed her the water and medication.
“You’ll tell Rosie and Henry?” She asked, eyes filling with tears again. Schooner nodded and reached out to stroke her cheek. She leaned her face into his hand, closing her eyes.
“Ok, under the covers, Baby Girl.” She slid underneath her bedspread and he tucked her in, smiling down at her.
Mia reached for Schooner’s hand and brought it up to her lips, kissing his palm and then held his hand in both of hers. “Thank you for everything tonight.”
“Shhhh,” he stroked her hair gently. After a few minutes, she drifted off to sleep, a combination of exhaustion, pain meds and anti-anxiety pills taking effect. He waited a few minutes to make sure she was in a deep sleep, leaned down and softly kissed her forehead.
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