As she lay there, she tried to pull the blankets around her, but with one hand, she couldn’t even manage to untangle them, let alone drag them back onto the bed.
“I’ll get those,” Gabriel said, pulling the covers from the floor and draping them over her body.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Maybe we’d better call the nurse and see if she can look you over.” He reached over and pressed the nurse button on the control panel inside the bed’s railing. “That floor isn’t soft, and your IV might not be working.”
He thought about leaving but he couldn’t, not without somebody looking in on her.
She closed her eyes. “Who are you?” She finally managed to break the stillness.
“My name is Gabriel Martin.” He tapped one boot against the linoleum in rhythm with his heart. “I didn’t mean to scare you earlier. I just knew you couldn’t get back into bed by yourself.”
She thought about his name, trying to place it, but it sounded unfamiliar. “Why are you here?”
“I came to see you,” he said finally and held out the magazine. “I didn’t know if you’d like crossword puzzles, but I thought they might help distract you.”
Maddie took the magazine and set it on the table beside the bed. She took in his face, trying to place him, wondering how he knew her. Had he been a patient in the ER? “Do I know you?” she finally asked.
“Not exactly.” He folded his arms across his chest and frowned, wondering how to phrase his response. “I was driving home last night with my dog. He needed to go to the bathroom, and I…found you. I called 911.” He saw her shudder and look from him to the covers draping her body.
She inhaled sharply. “Where did you find me?”
The image of her on the ground came back to him, and he winced. “About fifteen miles from Lawton. You were incoherent and bleeding.”
“Can you read?” a portly nurse asked, glaring at Gabriel as she entered carrying a new bag of IV fluid. “The sign says ‘No Visitors.’”
“It’s all right, Becca,” Maddie said. “I fell out of bed, and he came to help.” She pushed a thick strand of hair behind her ear.
“Are you hurt?” Becca asked, ignoring Gabriel as she scooted past him.
“I don’t know. I can’t differentiate the pain. My whole body hurts.”
Gabriel pointed to the IV. “You might want to check her IV. It was about to pull loose when she was on the floor.”
Becca looked and found a small release of blood in the tubing. “We’re going to have to re-start it. You’ve got some backflow going on.” She patted her pockets and shook her head. “Let’s get the old one off.” She pulled at the tape and plucked out the cannula. She pulled out a package of gauze, ripped it open, and pushed the soft fibers against Maddie’s hand. “Hold this while I go get stuff.” She shuffled past Gabriel and paused at the door. “You want him to leave, Maddie?”
Maddie shook her head. “No, he’s fine.”
She glared at him. “I’ll leave the door open just in case.”
Gabriel waited until she was out of earshot and said, “In case of what?”
Maddie gingerly pulled back the gauze to check the bleeding. Yep, it still flowed. She pressed the gauze back in place. “She’s just being overprotective.”
“I guess that’s a good thing.” Gabriel shifted his weight from one foot the other. “I mean, she must care about her patients.”
“She’s not normally like that.”
“You spend a lot of time in the hospital?” Gabriel asked as he walked to the window and looked out. Snowflakes fell silently.
Maddie nodded. “Yeah, I work here.” She pulled back the gauze and waiting a moment until satisfied the bleeding had stopped.
“Are you a nurse?”
“No, I’m a doctor.”
That would explain a few things, Gabriel thought. “I guess I should get out of your hair before she comes back to re-start the IV.” He turned back and started for the door. “I hope you enjoy the crossword puzzles.”
“Gabriel?”
He turned slowly. “Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
“It’s just a magazine.”
“Not just for that. For last night.”
He pulled the keys from his jacket pocket. “I understand why you’re thanking me, Maddie, but you don’t have to–”
”Yes, I do,” she insisted, staring at her fingernails. The hand of her unbroken arm bore a nasty bruise. “I keep thinking about what would have happened if you hadn’t...found me.” Her voice thickened as tears pooled and glistened in her dark blue eyes.
He stepped back to the bed and touched her hand. “I didn’t do anything exceptional. Any decent person would have taken care of you.” He lightly patted her hand. “Besides, I didn’t find you. My dog, Donner, did. If you want to thank him, buy him a jumbo box of Milk Bones. He can never get enough of them.” He saw her lips twist into a half-smile.
“How did we know you’d be here?” a male voice asked from the doorway.
Gabriel turned to find Steve and David standing there in uniform. “Lucky guess.”
The two officers from last night sauntered into the room. “Luck had nothing to do with it, and you know it.” David walked past Gabriel and stopped at the foot of the bed. “Dr. Gilcrest, we’d like to ask you a few questions about last night. I know this isn’t probably the best time, but the sooner we talk about this, the sooner we can catch the guy who did this and lock him up.”
Gabriel watched all traces of the smile disappear as Maddie clenched the blanket and drew it even higher on her body. He thumbed at the door. “I should go,” he said.
Maddie nodded and said, “Okay.”
As Gabriel exited, he almost ran into Becca. She was so surprised she started to drop the packets of tubing, but Gabriel caught them.
“I didn’t know you were the one who found Maddie,” she said as Gabriel handed her the packets. “Thank you for taking care of her. She’s a good friend.”
Gabriel smiled. “You don’t have to thank me any more than Maddie did. I’m glad I could help. How badly was she hurt?”
“Two bones broken in her arm, three fractured ribs, a concussion, a small knife wound, and lots of bruises.” Becca chewed her bottom lip while shaking her head, nodding toward Maddie’s room where the cops were. “I hope they get him and lock him up for the rest of his life.” Tears pricked her eyes, and Gabriel watched her trembling hand wipe them away. “I should go take care of her.”
Becca bustled into the room. As she opened the door, Gabriel peered inside to see the two officers questioning Maddie. Although she spoke with them, she gazed at the portion of blanket in her hand and avoided their gaze. Gabriel’s shoulders tensed, and he understood why she couldn’t face them. In the few moments he’d been in that room, he’d looked into the depths of her eyes and saw the wound she couldn’t hide, and last night, after the ambulance had brought her here, he’d tried to sleep, but every time he’d started to drift, he’d thought he’d heard that same keening sound, the one reminding him of an animal caught in a trap. The sound came from a place most people never visited–a place he’d known well since his sister’s murder ten years ago at the hands of a man who’d raped her and squeezed the last breath from her body.
A shudder caught Gabriel off-guard and he tried to hide it by striding down the hall toward the elevator. Gritting his teeth, he punched the button. Still, his mind lingered with Maddie as he wondered what the hell had transpired last night before he’d found her. He raked his fingers through his hair and remembered what she’d looked like on the ground. Maybe he was better off not knowing. As it was, he doubted he could ever forget her face in the moonlight and her wail as it filled the night.
The elevator opened, and a doctor carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and his keys in the other stepped past Gabriel. Hesitating for just a moment, Gabriel finally stepped inside and leaned against the wall, waiting for the doors to close. They’d started
sliding together when a nurse scooted between them at the last second and they immediately drew apart. “Sorry about that,” she said in a breathy voice. “I don’t mean to hold things up for you.”
Even though Gabriel had heard her speak, his mind was still with Maddie. Why was no one with her? Shouldn’t her family be here?
Did she have a family?
The doors closed, and the nurse punched the button for the second floor. Turning, she faced him and asked, “What floor?”
“Ground,” he said, watching her finger the button. “Thanks.”
The elevator slowly dropped from the third floor to the second, and it took just a moment for the doors to open, allowing the nurse to leave. The car paused, waiting for any other occupants, but the doors shut and the car began to descend again. The “G” lit up, and the doors opened. He stepped toward the lobby, intending to get off, but something stopped him, something he couldn’t name or understand but felt just the same.
He leaned over and pushed the “Close Doors” button, followed by the large “3" that would take him back to Maddie and back to the cops who were his friends and might have more answers than he had.
He walked down the hall toward Maddie’s room and saw that the door was still closed. He’d expected as much, he mused while shoving his hands deep into his jeans pockets and pacing a short length of the linoleum floor, waiting. As he stood, at least three nurses brushed past while heading to their station across from Maddie’s room. More than once, one of them looked at him. Averting his gaze time after time, he simply focused on the closed door, waiting. He toyed with his keys, tracing the rough edges with his forefinger.
Thirty minutes later, the door opened, and the two cops walked out. David carried a closed notepad he’d thrust under one arm, and Steve fished deep into his pockets for his keys.
“Any luck?” Gabriel asked, nodding toward the doorway.
David shrugged. “Not much. She doesn’t remember many details, but in this case, I tend to think her memory is protecting her from the SOB who did this.”
“And if she can’t remember him, she can’t remember what happened,” Gabriel added, his shoulders stiffening.
“You got it.” David flipped open the notepad and perused the data. “He’s blond, he’s tall, and he drives a primer-spotted white truck she accidentally hit while going home last night.”
“How is she holding up?” Gabriel asked, pulling the keys from his own pocket as the three of them headed toward the elevator.
Closing the notepad, David looked back toward Maddie’s room. “I’m no expert, but I think she’s bottling it up, and when it comes out, it’s going to have a whopping interest charge attached.”
The image of Maddie trying to pull away from him flashed into Gabriel’s mind, and he nodded, remembering the initial raw emotion in her eyes she’d buried seconds later.
“I think you’re right.”
Chapter Three
Sleet pecked the hospital window as the police officers finally left Maddie alone under the harsh fluorescent lights. She pushed herself deeper beneath the blankets and tried to forget the hell her life had become.
One moment, she’d been driving home; the next, she was here, trying to answer questions about a man who had...raped…and almost killed her. A sob caught in the back of her throat. She thought she’d go mad trying to contain. Although her vision had blurred, she kept blinking until at last it cleared. Her fists clenched at the blankets, which she drew even higher upon her body with her “good” hand. Yeah, she thought. What’s good about it? It hurts just like everything else.
Closing her eyes, she tried not to think about the conversation she’d just had with those two cops. You lied to them. Her heart raced, and she gritted her teeth. She had told them she couldn’t remember much about last night, but she could. God help her, she could. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw his face, the blazing blue eyes that shone in the moonlight, blond hair shimmering like a crown of gold. His hands had been like clamp, pinching and hitting, bruising her body as he raged over her. He’d called her a goddamned whore, a slut, a piece of trash.
She shivered.
Handcuffed in his truck, she’d screamed until he’d plugged her mouth with a foul-smelling rag that seemed to go half-way down her throat, the fabric scratching her skin. The dirty, oily taste had gagged her, and when she’d started to vomit, he’d smiled coldly. “Go right ahead, Bitch. It has nowhere to go. It’ll save me from slitting your throat.”
The muffled whimpers had died. She forced herself not to think about the rag, but she couldn’t ignore the growing panic of seeing the knife in his hand he’d lowered to her chest.
She’d tried to move away but couldn’t, not between the handcuffs and one of his gigantic hands holding her in place. The blade had slipped closer, inching toward the front of her shirt. Please, no.
He’d grabbed the shirt and jerked the knife vertically across the front, ripping the fabric into two uneven pieces. Then he’d grabbed her bra and cut it as well. As the silken fabric gave, exposing her breasts, she’d began shrieking, but it had come out as a muted wail. Digging her heels into the seat, she’d arched her back and bucked.
“Be still,” he’d snarled and punched her in the face.
Her head had jerked from the blow. Pain had exploded in her brain and a searing light had flashed inside. Then blackness.
Maddie shivered as tears spilled down her face in thick streams. “Oh, God, Oh, God, Oh, God,” she whispered like a mantra, over and over as she kept seeing his face, his eyes glowing with rapture at her pain. She heard his raucous laughter ripping at the night.
The door slowly opened, and Maddie jerked her hand to her face, trying to brush away the tears as Gabriel re-entered. As he saw her face, his steps faltered, and he stopped at the foot of her bed. He toyed with something unseen in one hand, and a frown creased his forehead.
“I don’t mean to disturb you,” he said softly. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m glad you’re okay.” He looked at whatever he held in his hand and offered it to her. “The officers said you were having a rough time remembering, so I wrote down my name and number for you, in case you’d like to go over what happened. I mean, maybe if we talk about it, it might jar your memory—or even if you just wanted to talk. I know you don’t really know me, and...I’m a guy,” he frowned and shrugged, “but if there’s no one else you feel you can talk to about this, I’d like to think because I was there with you, you’d think you could trust me.”
“I appreciate your offer,” she whispered. Her lips ached with dryness and she ran her tongue over them. “The police seemed to think given time, my memory will return.” Maddie reached out and took the card with a trembling hand.
“Perhaps it will,” Gabriel agreed in a neutral voice, nodding. He silently stepped back. “Anyhow, it’s just an offer. Don’t feel compelled just because I’m stumbling over my tongue like an idiot.” He fished the keys from his pocket and grinned wryly. “I guess I am an idiot.” He turned and pulled it open.
“Gabriel?” she whispered, wincing from the harsh lighting. Her injured eye throbbed with pain. “Would you turn off the lights”
“Sure.” He walked over to the switch behind her bed and turned off the lamps just above her head. “Is that better?”
Relieved not to have to squint anymore, she nodded. “Much, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He started toward the door again, and although Maddie half closed her eyes, she saw him hesitate for just a moment to peer at her with a saddened expression, the corners of his mouth tugged into a frown, and then he left, quietly closing the door behind him.
She repeatedly ran her fingers around the edge of the card and over the front of it, as though she thought the card might have been embossed. No, she realized, as she stared at it, holding it up under the faint light leaking around the blinds. The name Gabriel Martin had been handwritten, along with his phone number.
“Why are you doing this?
” she whispered, remembering his face as he slowly departed. “Why should you care what happens to me or what I remember?” That face. She winced and wrapped her arms around her chest, hugging herself tightly to forget she was alone in a hospital room where she usually healed others, not lay in bed, wounded, humiliated. Why should he care? she wondered.
She swallowed hard, tasting the salt of her tears as they spilled down her face and crossed her open mouth. Why didn’t matter. She clutched the card and rolled onto her side, hoping if she closed her eyes the pain would leave her to her dreams.
Or, more likely, her nightmares.
The hours ticked past slowly as Maddie watched the patterns of sunlight grow and diminish as morning shifted to afternoon and finally evening. The glass darkened and frosted over with night. Maddie had once enjoyed the isolation of darkness; now she hated it. Even though she could hide in it, she knew other things hid there as well.
As time passed, nurses came and went, checking her vitals, asking her questions, gauging her pain. And in the end, she found herself alone and waiting. The question was, waiting for what? To go home? For nightmares? Drugs? Such appealing options.
Folding her arms across her chest, she brushed her good hand up and down her arm, trying to wipe away the goosebumps rising on her flesh. Although she felt cold, it had nothing to do with temperature. The chill started in the pit of her stomach and radiated outward, consuming her entire being. I wish I’d stayed here longer last night. I wish I’d left much earlier. I wish I’d never come to work at all that day.
In the end, Maddie wished simply that it had never happened, but, as her mother had used to say, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” She drew the covers higher upon her body and focused on the warmth. Closing her eyes, she tried to relax.
Five minutes later, the door creaked open, and Maddie jerked upright in bed. Tensing, she clutched the blanket apprehensively, but her fingers relaxed their death grip as she spotted Yolanda’s worried fact. “Maddie?” She stepped into the room, still wearing her lavender scrubs. A stethoscope dangled about her neck, and, as usual, her long, salt-and-pepper hair was drawn tightly back into a thick bun. “How are you?” Crossing the room, she sat in the chair beside the bed and lightly patted Maddie’s hand. She leaned toward her, waiting anxiously for Maddie to say something–anything.
Silent Scream Page 2
