by Lynn Ames
“She’s okay. I don’t think he accomplished his goal; she doesn’t appear to have been penetrated, but they should probably check just to be certain. She’s got significant bruising and scrapes and he tore most of 30
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her clothes off.” She was amazed at how calm her own voice sounded; in actuality, she was shaken to the core.
The officers noted the oversized sweatshirt that covered Jay’s upper body and pooled around her on the ground where she was half sitting.
Following their eyes, Kate added, “That’s mine. I just thought she should be covered up.”
“Okay,” said the male officer. “You need to come with me so that I can ask you some questions. Officer Dale will stay with her and question her.” Kate didn’t like his attitude, thinking him far less compassionate in his tone toward the young co-ed than she thought he should have been.
She sized up Officer Dale and addressed her instead. “I don’t think she’s in any shape to be questioned right now, you’ll only traumatize her further. I can tell you everything I saw and what happened.” Kate didn’t want Jay to have to relive the attack over again so soon. “She needs medical attention.”
“So do you,” Officer Dale stated flatly, nodding in the direction of her right arm, which was dripping blood.
“I’m fine. We need to take care of her.”
“Come with me, ma’am,” the male officer said, tugging on Kate’s good arm to get her going.
She reluctantly started to stand, but Jay grabbed her hand like a vise before she was halfway off the ground. “Don’t go,” she whispered.
“Please don’t leave me.”
“I won’t,” Kate said, dropping back down next to her and staring up at the officers defiantly. To them she said with finality, “I’ll answer your questions at the hospital after she’s been taken care of. Don’t worry, I’m not likely to forget anything I saw or did.”
“Ma’am,” the male officer started, “it’s important to get your recollections while they’re freshest. Hers too.” He jabbed his chin in Jay’s direction.
Kate just stared daggers at the man. “I assure you you’ll get everything you need. Now where the hell is the ambulance?” She was starting to get light-headed from the loss of blood and she was worried beyond words about Jay’s emotional state.
Fortuitously, two paramedics hustled up at that moment wheeling a stretcher. “Somebody rang for us?”
Kate looked up at the sound of the bright voice. “Jen, is that you?”
“Hey, beautiful. What’s a nice girl like you doing in a dump like this?”
Kate was never so glad to see a friendly face in her life. Jen was a fellow member of the ski patrol; she was also a volunteer EMT. “Jen, this is Jamison Parker. She needs your help.”
“So do you, from the looks of it, missy. Let me take a peek.”
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“Later, Jen, I promise. Jay first. Please?”
The EMT looked intently at Kate; what she saw there galvanized her into action. “Right.” Addressing the young co-ed, Jen said, “Hi, I’m Jen; I’m here to help you. Where does it hurt?”
Jay didn’t respond, but her grip on the hand she was holding tightened imperceptibly. Kate leaned over and cooed softly in her ear,
“It’s all right, Jay, Jen’s a friend of mine. You can trust her.”
After a moment’s inaction, the EMT looked at her friend’s eyes with a question; Kate nodded slightly. Jen squatted down in front of Jay and reached out slowly. “I’m just going to pull your sweatshirt up and have a little look see, okay?” This she said even as she already had her hands in the material and was tugging gently upward. She took the stethoscope from around her neck and the blood pressure cuff and began listening to her patient’s chest and taking her pulse and blood pressure readings.
To her friend, who was waiting expectantly, the EMT said, “Her heart rate’s a little elevated, which you’d expect, and her pressure’s up a bit, too. Her pupils are non-responsive, which is indicative of deep shock.
Do I need to use a kit?” She didn’t need to be more specific. The senior knew her friend was asking if the asshole had raped Jay and if they needed forensic evidence that a rape kit could yield.
Kate swallowed hard, willing back the tears that the very thought of that monster defiling the younger woman evoked. In a voice choked with emotion, she answered, “I don’t think so, but I’d prefer it if you went through the motions just in case. I want to make sure we nail the bastard good.”
Jen looked at Kate oddly; she had never seen her friend so rattled, or so fierce. Jen nodded her head, and Kate knew that she would take good care of the woman who inexplicably meant so much to her.
“Okay, we’re going to move you to a stretcher now so that we can take you to the hospital and check you over properly, all right? Can you stand?”
Jay didn’t move. Kate tugged on her hand gently, starting to stand herself and pulling the traumatized woman up along with her, never letting go of her hand. Jen moved in, guiding her to the stretcher, putting subtle pressure on her shoulder when the stretcher was maneuvered into position for her to sit. As the EMT laid her patient down, Jay’s eyes tracked fearfully around, panic etched clearly in her face. When pained sea green eyes found reassuring deep blue ones, she relaxed slightly.
“Don’t worry, Jay, I’m coming with you.” Kate swept disheveled blonde bangs off her forehead with gentle fingers and entwined their fingers once again as she walked alongside the stretcher.
As they moved to the ambulance, Jen caught her friend’s gaze.
“You’ve lost a lot of blood, girlfriend; we need to do something about 32
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that.” As Kate opened her mouth to protest, the EMT added, “And don’t you tell me it can wait. Frankly, your color sucks.”
“Thanks for the compliment. As soon as we’re on the road, I promise.”
Once in the ambulance, Jen moved over to her friend and peeled back the tattered sleeve of her t-shirt. She sucked in a sharp breath at the depth of the wound. “Jesus. That’s gonna need a couple of layers of stitches and a tetanus shot, to be sure, if you haven’t had one lately.”
The EMT cleaned the wound and applied a pressure bandage as a stopgap measure until her friend could get stitched. Kate’s gaze never wavered from Jay’s face, her thumb making gentle circles on the back of her hand. She felt so helpless to do anything for her it made her sick to her stomach. If only she had happened down the path a few moments earlier! At the moment, all she could do was be there and try to help her to feel safe.
Once at the hospital Jay was wheeled into a private area of the emergency room where a rape counselor was waiting along with an all-female medical team. Kate filled the clinicians in as best she could as to the events of the evening, having gone with Jay only because every time she tried to let go of her hand, she panicked.
After examining the patient briefly, the doctor told Kate, “I’m going to give her a sedative to help her relax a bit, and then we’ll take samples for the lab.”
Kate looked to the rape counselor beseechingly.
“She’ll be all right.” The counselor smiled kindly at her. “It’s going to take time and a good support network.” Kate wondered if the young sophomore had one, thinking back to the accident on the ski slope and her reaction to having her parents contacted. Then a name popped into her head: Sarah. She had mentioned a friend named Sarah. Kate asked Jay what dorm she lived in, but got no answer.
When the sedative had begun to take effect and her eyes began to slide shut, Kate tried a different tack on a hunch.
“Jay, what’s your roommate’s name?”
“Sarah Alexander,” she slurred.
The older woman waited for her young charge to fall asleep, reluctantly disentangling her hand. She went in search of a college directory, looked up Sarah Alexander and headed for the phone.
Half an hour later Ka
te’s wound had been properly taken care of, closed with a dozen stitches to the underlayers of skin and another dozen sutures in the top layer. She sported a stark white bandage wrapped around her shoulder, which was bare thanks to the fashion-ignorant doctor who had unceremoniously cut off her sleeve.
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She saw a harried-looking young woman come running in through the emergency room door and approached her. “Are you Sarah Alexander?”
“Yes, yes I am.”
“Jay’s in there.” She nodded her head in the direction of the room just down the hall to the right. “She’s asleep right now but she could sure use a friend.” Irrationally, Kate was envious, wishing it could be her. “The counselor will fill you in, she’s in the room with her.”
Sarah ran off in the direction of the room, looking back over her shoulder and calling, “Thanks.”
Kate continued out into the emergency room waiting area, where the three cops from the incident were sitting. She proceeded to tell them everything she knew, getting a ride back to campus from them when they were done. She had thought about checking back in on Jay, but decided that the traumatized woman didn’t need her; she was in good hands with Sarah, who no doubt knew her friend well enough to know how to comfort her. For some reason, that thought both heartened and saddened her. Goodbye, Jay. Godspeed.
The footsteps stopped just in front of where she sat facing the remains of the capitol. Kate opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. My God, she thought, it’s been five years and you are even more beautiful than I remember, Jay.
“Hi,” Jay said shyly as she was captured by the intensity of that regard. It was just like the first time they had made eye contact, when she stopped to see what all the fuss was about as a crowd gathered on the hill near the tennis courts that autumn day five and a half years ago.
She had moved higher in order to be able to see over the heads of the throng. Leaning toward the guy standing closest to her, she asked what was going on. He explained that these were the top two players in the division and that the winner of the match would decide the final standings for the year. It was a four-year-old rivalry, he added, and there was little love lost between the two. “It’s 5-3 in Red’s favor in the second set,” the young man pointed at the redhead, “and she smells blood.”
Jay was transfixed, unable to take her eyes off the lanky woman, who, she thought, moved with the grace and speed of a panther. She was so agile, so strong and so very determined. She found herself holding her breath unconsciously, willing the mystery woman to make the next shot, and the next, and the next. Jay knew she was going to be very late to her weekly editorial meeting for the school newspaper, but she just couldn’t tear herself away. And then, when it had come down to the very end and those blue eyes had looked up directly at her... Wow.
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Kate motioned her to sit down. “Hello, Jay,” she said warmly. “You cut off your hair.”
Well, she remembers me, anyway. “You don’t like it?” she half questioned self-consciously, aware of the absurdity of having a discussion about her hairstyle with a woman who had just been through what the anchorwoman had.
Kate, her resistance weakened, reacted without restraint, reaching out and running her long fingers through the locks in question. “No, it’s gorgeous,” she said sincerely. “It suits you.” Her palm briefly brushed Jay’s cheek.
Jay felt the gentle touch all the way to her toes, but as much as she enjoyed the simple contact, she was aware of something else, too. She grasped the hand that had caressed her face in her own soft hands and turned it over to examine the palm. She gasped when she saw that it was raw and bleeding. Then she got a closer look at the rest of the anchorwoman.
“You need to go to the hospital, Katherine. You’re hurt.” She began to pull on the statuesque woman’s good hand to get her to stand.
“No, Jay, the hospitals all have their hands full with the seriously wounded. I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not, you’re bleeding, you’re cut, and you need to be seen,” the blonde prodded stubbornly.
Trying to change the subject, the tattered woman said, “My friends call me Kate.”
“Oh, are you including me in that number?”
“Sure.”
“Boy, you’re easy.”
“Don’t let it get around,” Kate replied, smiling tiredly at the repeat of their very first conversation.
“Your secret’s safe with me,” Jay winked. “And now that we’ve got that settled, let’s get you to the hospital.”
Seeing that she was going to have to do something to placate Jay, Kate decided to take a different approach. “I don’t want to spend hours sitting in an emergency room; my doctor can handle my injuries.”
“At this hour?” Jay questioned skeptically.
“She’s a friend of mine,” Kate answered reasonably.
“Okay, then call her, because I’m taking you there right now.”
“That’s really not necessary.”
“Let’s go find a pay phone,” Jay said determinedly.
“All right, all right already, I know when I’ve been outmaneuvered.”
Kate sighed and led her companion over to the nearby convention center, where a pay phone sat outside the entrance.
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Now Jay was feeling a little sheepish. “Um, I took a cab here. You do have a car, right?”
The anchorwoman laughed for the first time in many hours. “C’mon, one of my co-workers dropped my car off nearby hours ago.” She led the way across the plaza to the opposite side away from the capitol.
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CHAPTER THREE
lthough she put up token resistance, Kate secretly was glad that AJay wanted to drive her. She didn’t think she could keep her eyes open long enough to watch the road, and the blonde seemed only too happy to slip behind the wheel of her sporty little BMW convertible anyway.
She sank into the leather of the passenger seat with relief and, after listening delightedly to the vertically challenged woman mutter under her breath for a few minutes about how far up she had to move the driver’s seat in order to reach the pedals, Kate directed her through the city and out into the suburbs beyond.
The tired woman had just about drifted off when a thought occurred to her. “Jay?”
“Hmm?”
“What in the world are you doing here in Albany and how did you find me?”
Jay laughed at the last part of the question. “Well the ‘how did I find you’ was simple; anyone with access to a television set could have found you, Kate. As for what I’m doing here, I’m doing an in-depth profile on the governor for Time magazine. I’m based in New York City and I was hoping to interview him there, but the only way they could fit me into his schedule was to do it up here. It’s going to be next week’s cover story; they consider him a real future contender for the presidency.”
“Mmm, they’re right about that. Wow, that’s fantastic, congratulations.”
“Thanks. I was supposed to meet with him this aftern—I mean yesterday afternoon now, I guess, but the disaster changed all that.”
“What time was your meeting set for?”
“Four o’clock. I was just getting showered and changed when I saw you on CNN and then someone from the governor’s office called to postpone.”
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“Mmm, I’m glad you hadn’t left yet.” Kate couldn’t imagine what her reaction would have been to finding out that the cute blonde had been caught in that explosion.
They were both quiet then, each woman alone with her own thoughts.
At 12:15 a.m. they pulled up to a brick office building where they were greeted by a wiry, bespectacled woman in her mid-40s. “Kate, come on inside and let’s get you looked at.” Even as she appeared to be focused entirely on her patient, the woman’s sharp eyes took note of her co
mpanion and the way the injured woman looked at her. While most people wouldn’t have noticed anything at all there, she knew her tall friend well, and she knew she had never seen her look at anyone that way before.
“Dr. Barbara Jones, please meet Ms. Jamison Parker. Jay, this is Dr.
Jones.”
“Barbara, please. It’s nice to meet you,” the doctor said as she reached out bony fingers to grasp the blonde’s hand in a firm handshake.
“Likewise,” Jay answered.
Once inside, the doctor led the way back to one of the examination rooms. “Feel free to come along for the ride, Jay, our Kate here could use a distraction.” The writer hesitated, wanting to give her companion her privacy.
Sensing her unease, Kate said, “It’s fine, Jay, a heck of a lot more entertaining than waiting outside in Barbara’s waiting room; there isn’t a magazine out there that’s less than a year old.”
Barbara poked the injured woman in the side and rolled her eyes.
Jay blushed, clearly embarrassed by the doctor’s assumption that Kate would welcome her presence. She looked over at the dark-haired woman, who appeared to be taking it all in stride, and decided to shove aside her discomfort.
Which was fine until Kate started disrobing. Suddenly Jay found the diplomas on the wall fascinating. The anchorwoman smiled behind her back.
When Barbara returned, she had gathered several suture kits, some fresh bandages, and cleansing solution. “Geez, Kate, you look like hell.”
“Thanks for the compliment, I feel better already.”
From her vantage point in the corner Jay smiled at the easy camaraderie between the two women.
With an efficiency born of years of practice, Barbara examined her friend from head to foot, stitched two major gashes on her hand and forearm, and applied burn ointment to her hands and salve to the cuts on her face and arms.
“Do try to stay out of trouble now, will you?”
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“You know that it’s the trouble that always finds me, Barbara,” Kate joked hoarsely. “Not the other way around.”
