by P. S. Power
Blinking rapidly for a few seconds, swaying just a little bit, the other woman finally nodded.
“That seems like a well thought out plan. I don't believe we have anyone like that at our disposal at the Constabulary. Do you think your own artistic skills would be up to drawing a picture?” Westmorland let the question hang in the air while Gwen thought about her answer.
“I can try. My drawing ability's not that great. Now if I could get to a computer with Photoshop on it, I could do this no problem.” She looked at the other woman, who didn't react, except to request of the nurse that some paper and a pencil or other drawing tools be found. Before the nurse left, on a whim, Gwen asked if some food and perhaps tea could be arranged, as well as a chair for the detective. If this woman wasn't about to fall down, she was a lot tougher than she looked. For that matter, as nice as everyone had been to Gwen, no one even bothered to actually look at the detective in more than passing. She was strange, but you'd think in a hospital someone would notice her obvious distress.
They talked about the crime of the night before, but Gwen made herself not add anything that she didn't absolutely remember, even as she felt herself led to it a few times. She'd seen enough police procedural dramas on television to know that eye witness testimony tended to suck, and had read enough online to know that the better a person thought their memory of an event was, the worse it would probably turn out to be. People who thought they were perfect tended to be a lot worse than average across the board, regardless of what they were doing. If she could make sure she didn't let herself add more than what she'd seen, maybe that could be avoided. Probably not, but it was the best she could offer at the moment.
The nurse and two men in white outfits came in then, one man carrying two chairs, the other a single one. The nurse moved to set the tray she carried with more of those small sandwiches on it in front of Gwen.
“Oh, no, I'm fine. If you could give those to the detective please? The tea as well. Thanks. I could use that paper though, let's see if my artistic skills... remain at all. It's been a long time since high school art class.” When she said it, memories suddenly flooded back. How her pictures, as good as anyone's she'd thought, constantly got lower grades than average no matter what she did, until one day, testing a theory, she turned a picture in with Dan Gordon's name on it. Then it had gotten an A. She'd kind of stopped trying after that, in that class at least. Why try if her work wasn't going to be given a shot anyway?
Westmorland looked at the tray of food as the nurse poured a cup of tea. She left it sitting in place on the dark brown wooden serving tray, not touching the plain white cup of tea either as Gwen began to draw. Apparently pencils didn't come with erasers here, so she had to ask for one of those, or something like it. Doctor Grainger, Doctor Professor Grainger, she reminded herself, provided a small white blob, about the size of a Ping-Pong ball, that looked like clay, once he understood what she wanted. It looked strange and had a tacky, slightly sticky feeling in her fingers but worked to remove the lines on the thick, slightly gray paper well enough.
Halfway through the picture, Gwen looked up enough to see that the detective hadn't eaten anything, simply staring at her instead.
“Detective Westmorland... Why aren't you eating? You clearly need the food.” Gwen gestured for her to eat. “When was the last time you ate, anyway?” She wondered out loud, knowing that she had probably overstepped a half dozen social boundaries as soon as she'd said it, from the embarrassed reactions of the men in the room.
The woman looked up, and seeing no clock asked the time.
The large man, Grainger, pulled a shiny pocket watch out of his black vest pocket and told her it was twenty past seven.
“I last ate... three days and seven hours ago,” she said simply, then took a bite of her sandwich when Gwen urged her to. Both men blanched slightly.
Her doctor, Schmidt, stammered slightly as he spoke.
“But, but how? You're a Constabulary Detective, a Westmorland asset! Do you mean to tell me that no one thought to feed you or care for you in three days? This is outrageous! Who's your caretaker?” The man seemed truly concerned, as far as Gwen could tell. Indignant now that he realized the problem existed.
Gwen suggested that she keep eating and the sandwiches began to vanish efficiently, as did the tea.
“My last caretaker quit suddenly. There's a shortage of individuals willing to provide active twenty-four-hour-a-day care for someone like me, fewer women than men. The hours are irregular and the work can be tedious.” After getting this out, with more prompting from Gwen, she ate the rest of the sandwiches and drank the tea until they were gone.
Gwen went back to drawing, letting the doctors fuss over the detective for a while. The woman obviously needed them at the moment more than she did. If she needed someone to tell her to eat it was shocking that they let her go out alone at all. Her words were bright enough sounding, if flat, so some kind of autism or... Gwen didn't know enough to keep going, it could be anything really.
It was wrong of whoever was her boss not to see to her care though.
When she had the picture done as well as she could, she handed it to the other woman, being careful not to reach too far, since her chest still burned and throbbed where she'd been stabbed. Luckily the long blade had missed the heart, and the major veins and arteries, she'd been told. They expected her to need several more days of bed rest before she could leave. She'd had beatings from school boys that had taken longer to heal from.
“That's pretty close. I wouldn't try to use it like a photograph, but that's basically him. The hair's a mix of silver and white. I know I shaded it in gray, but it actually stood out a lot more than that, a stark contrast. I really noticed it. I couldn't capture it... but he looked almost fatherly, friendly even, until, you know, he stabbed me in the chest.” She went over the whole story again, telling them how she woke up and couldn't move, tried to observe everything in case she got out alive. She recounted the taste of the ball gag, what was said to the man when he removed it and what he said in return.
Westmorland returned to her state of highly concentrated focus, staring right at Gwen, her eyes unmoving, the last bite of tasteless little sandwich in her hand, “This group had you lying flat, unmoving, most likely a form of systemic paralysis, not ropes, and when you spoke you fought them as you could, resisted and insulted them instead of pleading for your life?” Her eyes, which had been cold, or at least non-responsive, grew slightly misty at this.
The doctors just seemed uneasy, as if shocked by her unladylike language. These people really had an almost Victorian vibe to them in some ways. The rest was mainly just strange. She was discussing being stabbed in the heart by a cult and the men were uneasy because she'd said “fuck” at the time? Would they have been happier if she'd used “darn” instead?
“Well, I don't think it can really be called resistance when you're pretty sure you're about to be killed like that, but it's what I said. He seemed, I don't know, almost happy that I didn't beg for my life or something. He didn't say why, but the way he said it made it seem like these people had done this before.” She continued with the story until she remembered blacking out.
The men looked uncomfortable again, maybe because she'd just described being stabbed in the chest, maybe something else. She didn't know these people well enough yet to know why they reacted a certain way.
This time Doctor Professor Grainger asked her about her last words, before she lost consciousness.
“I, uh, said “fuck you.” I don't know if he heard me, having been kind of stabbed at the time. Makes things a little hazy. That was what I tried to say at least.” She started to hold up a hand, then had to stop herself because of the pain.
“I know, not very original, I remember thinking that at the time, I just couldn't come up with anything clever on such short notice. Really though, if they want witty remarks at a time like that, they should have given me more time to come up with something. I'm sure I'll c
ome up with the perfect thing to have said, in a week or two, you all know how that goes, right? Anyway, then I heard something, but couldn't tell what exactly, since I went out about then.” Gwen smiled a little, just because her face would make the movement so easily.
It was so cool.
The other woman sitting by her side told her what happened then, how a group of twenty constables and four detectives stormed the place. How the field healer went to work almost instantly and held her to life long enough for her to stabilize. It had been very close.
Then she told them about how the perpetrators had managed, somehow, to vanish one by one.
“We don't know if they translocated, became invisible, or simply baffled minds, but they were there one instant and gone without a single trace the next, however they did it. The only victory we got there was that they didn't get their sacrifice this time. Hopefully we'll catch them before the next. You, or at least Katherine Vernor, were to have been number five in the last thirty days. The hope is that failing now will force them to restart, giving us time to catch them and break their pattern. This,” she held up the drawing Gwen had made, “is our best lead at the moment. I need to get it back to the district house and let the others see it. Would it be alright if myself or others visited you here, later, if there's need?” she asked politely, as if Gwen could or would say no.
Gwen smiled, not caring how it looked to anyone else, then realizing that with this new face it might even look... pretty. The idea didn't feel balanced to her at all, almost throwing her for a few seconds.
“Funny thing about that, since having been stabbed in the chest and almost killed, I suddenly have nothing, not one thing, in the whole world I'd rather do than to help take these assholes down.”
Nodding, as if this made perfect sense, the detective rose, walking to the door, where she stopped before leaving.
“Very good, Miss Farris. Since you're the only person to have seen any of these people and survive, I think you may be able to make great strides in helping to take them down as you said. We'll be in touch. Soon.”
Then she left, not saying anything more. It was abrupt enough that it left a void in the room for a second.
Doctor Schmidt stood, a formal thing, not stiff, but clearly done as if on some hidden signal that Gwen missed altogether. The blond man extending a hand to Grainger to shake before leaving the room himself, stating that he should check on his other patients.
Grainger looked at her with a mix of hunger and... embarrassment. Gwen could get the hunger at least. How often did you get to question a person from another world, an alternate reality most likely, and have them captive in a bed so they can't run away? The embarrassment didn't make sense though. Not at first. Luckily the stout man explained.
“I need to leave myself, since it wouldn't be proper for a man to be alone with a lady in your condition, lest she be taken advantage of. Please, when you feel up to it, contact me at the university? I think we may be able to track down what exactly took place that delivered you here, if we don't wait too long. Such things fade over the course of years, after all. Here's my card.” He set it on the table next to the mirror.
Then he left as well, turning to bid her a good night first, unlike the others. The doctor made sense, being he'd likely come back of course, but that Westmorland woman had just seemed... hyper focused as she removed herself. Still, Gwen felt like the woman would actually do what she said, which was a lot more than she usually got from the police back home. Half the time it seemed like they didn't even bother filing a report.
Gwen sat for a while, the device next to her causing the air to thrum, she could feel it in her chest cavity, not just her bones, now that nothing else distracted her. She wondered what its purpose would turn out to be. Nothing had been attached, no leads, IVs, or catheters, so it didn't have anything to do with a pump of any kind, as far as she could tell. It surprised her that they didn't have an IV in at least. Hospitals loved to have people hooked up to a drip, in her experience. Hydration and all that being important. No catheter either.
Taking up the pencil and paper, she began to draw again, trying to capture the look of the robes with their thick black canvas-like material. The ceiling – wood beams and painted slats – as she remembered it, white paint? The design she thought might be on the handle of the knife. It didn't make her feel any better, but maybe there would be something in one of the drawings that would help later, or let her remember something she'd forgotten.
The nurse, a new one, since Rogers had gone home for the night, brought her food at about nine. This seemed late to her, but maybe it was just dinner time here? New world, new rules. She had to get that as fast as possible, she knew. Trying to insist that everything be the way she expected it was a losing game. Each food item got delivered on a separate tiny plate and the silverware seemed little, about half the size she was used to. Like something made for small children. It was cute and like everything here, finely made, but odd for all that. Made strange because of it, if only to her.
The food, like all hospital food, lacked enough salt and flavor to make it interesting and curiously, there didn't seem to be any Jell-o. They did give her ice cream, a small serving of vanilla that was pretty decent. It still hurt to lift her hand to her mouth, but she managed, if slowly, eating about half before tiring of trying.
Then the nurse came in to give her a shot and get her ready for bed.
She set up a strange looking bed pan, allowing Gwen to go to the bathroom as the other woman stood there waiting for her to finish. It didn't take her too long, having gotten over being shy about such things as a small girl going in for regular surgeries to try and make her look better.
Finally the nurse gave her that shot, heroin she told Gwen, just after she pushed the plunger on the metal syringe home.
It didn't make the pain go away instantly, but over the course of an hour or so, she lost track of the discomfort and couldn't find it anymore. She drifted off to sleep, fitful, but better than just sitting in the dark would have been. This place didn't seem to have televisions in the rooms or possibly, a thought that made her a little uneasy, television at all. If not, what did they do for entertainment? Talk to each other or something? Well, Grainger had mentioned books, so maybe that was it.
When she woke up the next day she didn't hurt that much and figured that it had all been a dream until she opened her eyes finding the same room she'd gone to sleep in. It took her a few seconds to focus, but when she did the whole thing hit hard. Right, this new place was... new and she wasn't her anymore. Smiling Gwen wanted to cheer. She wasn't her anymore. Was it worth being stabbed in the heart?
Fucking yeah it was!
Confusing and scary, off-putting and with a million new rules, but totally and completely worth it.
After a while her new friend, Nurse Rogers, came in, her smile a little more genuine today it seemed, even touching her eyes at times. She opened the window using a stick with a hook on the end that caught the copper colored latch plate perfectly, letting in a fresh breeze that wasn't too cool, and brought her a small basket of toiletries, which she helped her use. Surprisingly Gwen found that she could brush her own teeth. It didn't feel good across the chest, but it didn't hurt nearly as much as moving had the day before. The tooth brush had a wooden handle, and the paste tasted of orange and salt, but did leave her mouth feeling fresh.
The nurse carefully brushed her hair and put it up, using six small pins, kind of like bobby pins, but not as complicated it looked like to her, lacking some of the little bumps and humps the ones back home had. Before, since having long hair didn't help her looks in any way, she'd always just cut it short, almost a buzz cut most of the time. Out of the way and less to pull in a fight. Now she had more hair suddenly than ever before and no real clue what to do with it. Brush it and tie it up somehow? She'd learn. Most people did their own hair, so she could do it too, with practice.
Breakfast came, a light meal consisting of a roll about the siz
e of a silver dollar, a small glass of juice, and about enough oatmeal to fill a small coffee cup. It already had a light sprinkling of brown sugar on top and to her surprise, a small pat of real butter. It tasted strange to her, with the butter, but she ate it all. It seemed to Gwen that this world must have skipped the trend of super-sizing everything as far as food went. She did find that this amount of food felt like enough, once she'd finished it. She'd had to take tiny bites and sips to not put strain on her chest, making the whole meal take a lot longer than normal so she felt full, or at least not hungry, by the time the nurse came to take the dishes away.
She drew some more and tried to write out a description of everything from the attack, going over it in her mind. She even tried to describe what she'd smelled at the time, just to keep the memory fresh. A musky scent that seemed familiar, like black licorice and something smokier. It was hard to really capture a scent in writing it turned out, but hopefully just thinking about it would make a difference. If not, it was still better than sitting and staring at the wall.
The nurse checked in on her several times, making small talk, but not staying long, having others to see too, Gwen knew, even though she hadn't seen or heard any of them since she'd gotten there. Hospitals weren't normally noisy places, but this one had to be the quietest she'd ever been in. Did they insulate the walls or was everyone just that polite all the time, even when in pain?
