Sole Survivor

by Holly Dunn

  I don’t remember seeing flashing lights or hearing sirens, but before long, a few police cruisers and an ambulance from Lexington Fire Department’s Emergency Care Unit pulled up.

  Three paramedics in dark blue pants and T-shirts were the first through the door. They began evaluating my wounds to ensure I was in stable condition. A police officer asked me my name and for details on what happened.

  “My friend, he’s still out there. Chris is still on the tracks.”

  When one of the paramedics heard this, he accompanied police officers outside to investigate. Another officer pulled Chad into the kitchen for questioning. Officers were urgently radioing details, and within a few more minutes, a dozen or more police cars had completely filled the length of Edison Drive.

  It didn’t take long for the paramedics to determine I had no mortal wounds. They put a cervical collar around my neck, eased me onto a stretcher, and loaded me into the ambulance. I couldn’t see the numerous officers hurrying up and down the tracks, flashlights slashing across the ground, searching for what I told them they would find. I didn’t notice the third paramedic return and whisper something terribly definitive to his colleagues before they piled back into the ambulance. I didn’t hear him confirm that the police had found Chris, or what state he was in. He isn’t viable to call for another ambulance, he’d said. By dawn, I would be asleep at the hospital when the coroner’s white van pulled up at the end of Edison Drive.

  Inside the ambulance, one of the paramedics—whose name I later learned was Wade Ashley—was administering oxygen, starting an IV, and readying me for transfer to the emergency department. Wade told me we were headed to the University of Kentucky Medical Center, which was the only Level One Trauma Center in the region and barely two miles from Chad’s house.

  I didn’t know yet that anyone had found Chris, and I felt fearful that no one knew my friend was out there, lying tied up in the grass.

  “Please, be sure someone goes to find my friend.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll be sure to send someone for him,” he said.

  His face was shrouded with concern. He could tell how badly I’d been beaten, and he knew I’d been raped. He also knew that my parents were several hours away, and he later admitted he worried that I might be alone for hours at the hospital.

  “Do you think we could stop and get a cheeseburger on the way to the ER?” I joked, hoping to ease the tension.

  Wade laughed out loud. I felt the heaviness of my ordeal lift for a brief moment, and then I drifted out of consciousness once again.

  CHAPTER 6.

  The Hospital

  Wade and his crew barely had time to call the emergency department to announce what they were hauling in before we arrived at the hospital.

  “EC5 en route to your location with a female, age twenty, multiple scalp lacerations, obvious facial trauma, puncture wound to the neck. Victim of sexual assault. Patient is immobilized on a longboard with a C-collar. IV established with normal saline. EKG and blood pressure are normal, pulse rate of 70. ETA less than five minutes.”

  Just inside the sliding glass doors a doctor and several nurses were waiting for us. The paramedics briefed the staff and then made their way toward a computer station to fill out reports. ER doctors tended to the numerous cuts and gashes in my face and bandaged the puncture wound in my neck. My left eye was swollen shut and I had three gaping wounds in my scalp that took sixteen staples to close.

  I drifted in and out of consciousness in those early morning hours. One minute I’m in the ambulance joking with Wade about getting fast food, and the next, I’m begging the ER doctor not to shave my head. Then, I’m lying behind a curtain while ER nurses are cutting off my clothes. I remember regretting they had to cut off my brand-new corduroy pants. I loved those pants. But my clothes were no longer my own—they were evidence in a growing police file, along with my Birkenstocks, my favorite shoes.

  The nurse examiner explained that she was going to conduct a sexual assault forensic exam, better known as a rape kit. She and the nurse who accompanied her were incredibly sweet. One of them asked for my parents’ phone number so they could notify them as quickly as possible.

  “Oh, don’t bother them, it’s so late,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about how late it is,” the nurse replied. “We need to call them.”

  But I couldn’t seem to think of my parents’ phone number. I was too groggy and disoriented, and my broken jaw was so skewed that I found it hard to talk.

  For the next hour, my body was a receptacle of forensic evidence to be scoured and cataloged. The exam was intrusive and uncomfortable and at times it hurt like hell. I gave brief, strained answers to the nurse examiner’s questions about my personal background and medical history, as she swabbed for fluids, collected samples, and combed for hairs and other traces of evidence. I shut out the pain and embarrassment by remembering that every ounce of DNA they found would bring us closer to identifying the rapist.

  “Oh, why do I have to do this to her!” said the examiner, as she plucked out a tuft of pubic hair.

  I winced and drew in a sharp breath.

  “Do you want to take emergency contraception?” the other nurse asked.

  “Yes, please.” There was no question. Anything they could do to help me get past this horror, I wanted them to do it.

  • • •

  Not long after I arrived at the emergency room, two plainclothes detectives from the Lexington Police Department stopped by to introduce themselves.

  One of them walked up next to my bed and said, “Hello, Holly. I’m Detective Craig Sorrell. I’ll be handling your case.”

  I turned to look at Detective Sorrell, noting his brown hair and kind face, and then in the same instant, I threw up all over him. Projectile vomit. I had no idea that was about to happen, and I certainly wouldn’t have done so if I could help it. (I threw up repeatedly for at least an entire day—from the shock, from the pain pills, from who knows what.) Detective Sorrell was incredibly understanding. I like to think it broke the ice.

  When the call came in around three in the morning, Detective Sorrell had been home in bed after an evening out with the homicide department to celebrate their sergeant’s retirement. Sorrell’s evening had paralleled mine, swinging from a party to a crime scene and ending in the ER. He and his colleague, Detective James Curless, kept our initial interview short and to the point. I was exhausted and in incredible pain—and obviously quite sick to my stomach—but I managed to tell them the basic details of what had happened, along with a general description of the perpetrator. An officer from forensics snapped photographs of my head and face, and we wrapped up the initial meeting.

  “We’ll let you rest now,” said Detective Sorrell. “We’ll be back later today to collect the rape kit and set up a longer interview. That okay?”

  I nodded, then asked, “Can you make sure someone calls my dad?”

  Somehow one of the nurses obtained my dad’s number and called to tell him what happened. It was a call no parent should ever have to receive.

  While my parents were en route from Evansville, my best friend Annie arrived at the ER. When she came around the curtain and saw my condition, she couldn’t hide the astonishment on her face.

  “Holly, how are you feeling?” Her voice was soft and tentative.

  I felt bad that she had to see me so battered. I wanted to diffuse the tension and defend against the heavy emotions flitting just below the surface.

  I screamed out, “I feel like shit!”

  She laughed with relief, and I smiled back as best I could with a jaw that jutted sideways. Annie came over and wrapped her arms around me.

  “The whole thing just feels like a bad dream,” I said.

  Annie told me how someone woke her up in her room at the Kappa house and said the police were downstairs asking about me. Two uniformed officers questioned her aggressively, because no one knew at that point who might have had a reason to hurt either Chris or m
e. In the end, they offered her a ride to the hospital in the back of their cruiser. Annie sat with me all day, watching over me while I slept and nurturing me by tickling and scratching my back.

  Mom and Dad were by my side within a couple of hours of getting the call. My father is an accomplished private pilot with his own twin-engine plane, so rather than the typical three hours it takes to drive from Evansville to Lexington, my parents were able to get there in a quarter of the time. When they walked into the emergency room, Detective Sorrell greeted them and briefed them on what he knew of the attack so far.

  “I have to warn you,” Detective Sorrell said, “she looks pretty bruised up, but she’s going to be okay.”

  My parents came up to me in a curtained cubicle where I’d been waiting since the ER staff took me for an MRI. Dad would later say that I looked like a mass of blood lying on a gurney, and he wouldn’t have recognized me had he not known already who I was.

  I felt a wave of relief to see them. My dad rarely shows his emotions but I could tell he was broken up seeing me like this. In my typical fashion, I wanted to break the tension.

  “Dad, this really sucks.”

  Through my one open eye, I could see him trying his best to smile.

  As I drifted in and out, my parents met with the doctor who told them the results of the MRI—my left eye socket was fractured and my jaw was broken, but overall I’d be okay.

  A nurse finally came over to us and said, “We’re going to move her up to a room now.”

  Hospital staff wheeled me to a private area where I would be under an assumed name and protective supervision. My hospital room was tiny and secluded, and I felt safe tucked away from the rest of the world. On one side next to the bed was a recliner, and against the windows was a love seat of sorts that could be unfolded into a makeshift bed. Annie and my parents remained close to me in that little room for the rest of the day. I felt comforted having them with me, but no one said much or asked me anything about what happened.

  At one point, Dad took my hand and gripped it tightly. I searched his face for a moment.

  “Chris is gone, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he’s gone.”

  I started to weep. I had seen Chris get assaulted. I had heard his last breaths. I had lain next to his still and quiet body. But there was such finality in those words. No one—none of the police or hospital staff—had mentioned him since I arrived. Now I knew the nightmare was real.

  When I finally calmed down, I looked at my dad again.

  “Dad, I know God must have another plan for me, because I’m not supposed to be here.”

  My dad looked baffled, and then his face relaxed into a smile. He squeezed my hand again.

  The anger and grief had not yet set in. All I felt was gratitude that I was somehow still alive.

  • • •

  All day Friday, Dad had trouble getting a hold of my older sister, Heather, who was living in Nashville, Tennessee, and going to graduate school at Vanderbilt University. After leaving countless messages on her answering machine, he finally reached her once she was home from work. Dad left to fly down and pick up Heather and her boyfriend, Fred, and bring them back to Lexington.

  When Heather arrived, the night was dark and I was doubled over in bed, throwing up into a bedpan my mother held steady. I glanced up as she walked in. Despite how rough I looked, Heather’s face softened and glowed with relief.

  “Oh, my God, Holly—I’m just so glad you’re alive,” she said.

  She rushed up and wrapped me in her arms, and I leaned into her. Heather and I were only eighteen months apart in age. We had been close most of our lives—playmates as kids and confidantes in college. She was my rock and my protector, and I knew I could count on her to take care of me.

  Unbeknownst to me at the time, a hospital counselor had told Annie and my parents to withhold effusive displays of emotion. In other words, this counselor told the family of a rape victim not to cry.

  “It will just upset her even more,” she told them, “and avoid asking her lots of questions about what happened—let her bring it up when she’s ready.”

  Aside from my earlier exchange with Dad—the attack, Chris’s murder, my rape—all of it hung heavily in the air between us and yet no one acknowledged it. It frustrated me to no end. I wanted to scream, “I was just raped and no one will talk about it!” It wouldn’t be until long after I left the hospital that I found out about that odd gag order. All we wanted to do was talk about it, but the counselor had made it weird for us. She may have intended to protect me, but what we needed most were ways to process what had happened.

  While we were busy not talking about the attack, the rest of the city was talking about it constantly. During my first afternoon in the hospital, the Lexington Police Department held its first of many news conferences regarding the homicide/rape on the Norfolk Southern tracks near UK’s campus. Given the nature of the crime and Lexington’s fairly low murder rate, the media attention to our case was intense. The police department wanted to dispel fears and assure the public that what had happened was a random, isolated incident. A spokesperson asked the community to call the precinct hotline with any possible information on the crime or the perpetrator. Chris’s parents had offered a $10,000 reward for information that led to the arrest and conviction of the person who killed their son. Anonymous donors sent in thousands more, so that within two months, the reward would be up to $20,000.

  By Saturday, what had happened to Chris and me was front-page news in the Lexington Herald-Leader newspaper. (My name was, of course, withheld for my privacy and safety, and my family also refused to release my condition to the media.) Because my family couldn’t ask me much about it—per the hospital counselor—they were piecing the story together through news stories and rumors. My family didn’t know the exact details, and I’m sure they couldn’t have imagined the horror if they tried.

  Various details from unknown sources were already circulating on campus. One of my sorority sisters who came to visit me in the hospital whispered to Heather, “There’s a rumor Chris and Holly were tied up.”

  “No! Really? How?” Heather asked.

  “I don’t know. That’s just what people are saying.”

  When Heather asked our dad about it, he said, “No, no way. If she’d been tied up she would have marks on her hands and wrists. That couldn’t have happened.”

  Not only could my dad not believe I’d been tied up, he also couldn’t fathom I’d been beaten badly enough to soak my hair with blood. My hair was so matted and drenched in blood from the gashes in my scalp that not a single strand of blonde was left.

  “When did Holly dye her hair red?” he asked my sister.

  “Dad, she didn’t. That’s blood,” Heather said.

  “There’s no way that’s all blood. She had to have dyed her hair.”

  “No, Dad—that’s just how much she bled out.”

  My family was also confounded by how few scrapes or cuts I had on my feet, despite having walked barefoot across gravel, rocks, and broken glass. Even I had to marvel that my feet showed so little evidence of my trek across the tracks to Chad’s house.

  “She couldn’t have walked to that house,” Dad said. “The ambulance must have come and picked her up.”

  Looking back, I understand that his disbelief was simply part of the shock he and my mom must have been feeling.

  My family’s confusion was finally cleared up on Saturday night. That evening, I woke up to see Heather sitting in the recliner next to my bed. The room was dark except for the glow from a small lamp nearby.

  “Is anyone here?” I asked.

  “No, it’s just you and me. Mom and Dad went to dinner.”

  Heather leaned over and put her head on my pillow, her face close to mine. She and I had been in the habit of talking on the phone nearly every day, and we visited each other in Nashville and Lexington. She knew just how much I had adored Chris, but she hadn’t yet asked me anything about the a
ttack.

  I couldn’t take the silence any longer.

  “Heather, I have to tell you what happened.”

  As I described our evening, how we went to the tracks, the way that man came out of nowhere, how he tied us up, what he did to Chris, what he did to me—her face morphed from interested to alarmed to horrified. We both wept throughout the story, our cheeks glistening with tears in the faint light.

  “I felt so bad that I couldn’t get Chris untied. But every time I tried, the guy just came back. He kept saying he was looking for his friend.”

  As I spoke, she gently stroked the hair around my face.

  “Holly, why didn’t you try to fight him off you?”

  “I did! I fought him hard as I could, but then he stabbed me in the neck. I just begged him after that not to kill me, and he promised he wouldn’t—he promised. So it couldn’t have been him who beat me. There had to have been another person. It must have been his friend.”

  At the time, I was almost convinced my rapist wasn’t the same one who beat me. He had been so responsive to my other requests; I wanted to believe I had convinced him not to kill me. I couldn’t get my mind around the idea that he would have gone against his word. It seems silly to me now, of course—why should someone who is vile enough to murder and rape be bothered to keep a promise? It was unfathomable what I was trying to comprehend at the time. That’s simply what my brain wanted to believe, to try and make sense of things.

  “You’re probably right, sweetie,” said Heather. “Perhaps it was his friend.”

  Heather huddled next to me as I fell back asleep. I didn’t hear my parents return from dinner. I later learned that when they saw Heather sitting in the recliner sobbing, they asked her what had happened. While I was still asleep, she relayed to them the gruesome story. The rumors and speculation had been confirmed. The most horrible details they couldn’t believe were true were, in fact, the reality. Heather said my mother looked stricken and collapsed into a chair. Tears streamed down my father’s face. My family was overcome with horror at what I had witnessed and endured—that their daughter and sister had had to beg for her very life.