by Megyn Ward
I can’t make sense out of what happened between Zach and me. Logic tells me nothing is changed. Zach is still a snake, Jonas still won’t claim me, I still work at an island dive bar, and have no plan for the future.
But I feel changed. For the first time since Mom died, I don’t feel alone. There is no reason to believe in Zach. All I know is how I feel about him. From the moment I saw him, I felt drawn in. Admittedly, the first time we met, he hadn’t made the best impression. He’d been glassy-eyed drunk and hanging out with a group of entitled, rich kids who bailed on the check and left me having to pay their bar tab. Even then, there was something about him. Something more than the adorable dimples.
Thinking of those dimples and his sea-blue eyes makes me smile. Thinking about his smoking hot body and the masterful way he fucks makes me hot. I’ve had boyfriends before, but I never felt like this. I know I shouldn’t trust it. But, God help me, I do.
A car door slams outside and I assume Blake is coming home. I pop into the bathroom to give myself a once-over. I don’t want to look like a girl who’s been rolling around in bed with a guy and who very well could be three-quarters of her way to falling in love.
I run a brush through my hair and scrub the goofy grin off my face. I need to tell Blake about Zach eventually, just not tonight. When I step out of the bathroom, Blake hasn’t entered the house, yet. Maybe he’s catching some air on the covered cement pad that we call a front porch.
I wander over and push the screen open. No one on the porch. I look out on the front yard, barely lit by the light from the door. A lump of something lays at the edge of the scruffy grass, where the rough edges of blacktop break into a thin border of gravel. It looks like a full garbage bag and irritation rises. Who would drive by and dump their trash in our yard? It’s not like we have a Dumpster.
When the garbage twitches and a weak moan rises in the still night, a chill hopscotches up my spine. Should I run back for my phone and call the cops? I take a step toward the lump and it moves again. A hand stretches out and a sob breaks. “Kylie...”
Oh my god.
I spring toward her and fall to my knees. “Diana. Shit. Oh, man.” She lays curled onto her side, the sundress she bought two days ago barely covering her. One shoulder strap is pulled free and hanging loose and a rip from the hem to above her hips frays open. In the darkness, it isn’t hard to make out a swollen eye and split lip. Her hair, always a source of pride for her, falls from where she’d pinned it up, snarled and clotted with what I pray isn’t blood.
Tears leak from her eyes, the one hardly more than a slit between puckered and darken flesh. “Kylie. I’m so….” She trails off and then breaks down in a long stretch of sobs.
“It’s going to be okay. I’m here.” I keep my voice low and calm but I’m freaking out. Had she been hit by a car? Where is Don?
She pulls herself into a small ball and wraps her arms around her legs, as if trying to disappear.
I reach out and put a hand on her shoulder and she sucks in a pained breath. I pull my hand back and lean close. “I’m going to help you. I need to get you inside. Can you stand?”
She doesn’t appear to hear me, just keeps crying. I slide onto my side and put my face close to hers. At this distance, the blood caked along her lips is visible, as are the dark bruises along her cheekbone and collarbone. “Diana. We can’t stay here. Let me help you.”
She still doesn’t stop crying but she doesn’t protest when I wind my arm under her shoulder and help her sit up. Her dress drops below her breast and she cries out, frantic to cover herself and grips it in place with her arm. I know she’d worn a pink lacey bra and panties set, one she’d bought specially for this day with Don. Not only is the bra missing, her exposed breasts show bruises on her perfect, brown skin.
Everything inside me clamps down, my breath catches and I fight the rush of anger. Not a car wreck.
Fucking dirtbag asshole douchebag monster.
I manage to pull her to her bare feet and with slow progress, we limp across the grass, up the porch and into the house. I lower her to the couch. All the while she sobs and clutches at my shoulder.
When I finally let loose of her and step back, I nearly gasp at her appearance. Now I can see bruises along her thighs and upper arms. Scratches red and raised run the length from her knees to disappear under the hem of her torn dress. Her lips are split and blood smears and dries around her mouth in a clown grimace. Everywhere I look, I see blood and bruises. Scrapes and abrasions.
But I focus on a spot at the back of her head. A lump rises through her hair and blood oozes from the gash, clotting and thickening in her raven glory.
“I’ve got to get you to the hospital,” I say and race to my room for my phone.
“No.” She calls after me. “Please.”
Holding my phone, poised to call, I say, “Your head is bashed in. You might have a concussion or... I don’t even know. I’m not a fucking doctor, but you need to get checked out.”
She swallows and closes her eyes in a painful way. “It’s okay. I’ll heal up. Just give me a minute or two to get myself together.”
I want to punch something. “That’s crazy. You can’t just act like you stubbed your toe.”
She sniffs and painfully adjusts herself on the couch. She pleads with me. “If I go to the hospital they’ll go after him. I know he’s sorry. He said he’s never done anything like this before.”
My skin flashes with fire and ice and my head feels like it could explode. “You’re talking about Don? You want to protect him?”
She closes her eyes. “He said he loves me. We’re going to live in a condo on the beach in California.” She starts to cry, big heaving sobs. “I can’t screw up my one chance.”
I sit next to her and put my arms around her, rocking her. Someone should find Don and beat the shit out of him. He should go to jail for this. Diana deserves justice. So many things I want to shout at her about self-esteem and safety and, damn, I don’t even know what. I sputter with rage I want to spew into the room.
But none of that will help Diana now. She quiets a little and leans into me. “I want to take a shower.”
I hate to say this but feel I needed to. “If Don….” I stop and start again. “If he raped you, you shouldn’t shower. We need to go to the cops and get a rape kit done.” I have no idea what a rape kit entails. Everything I know about legal proceedings comes from TV or novels.
She shakes her head and pushes against the couch to get to shaky feet. “I’m not going to press charges. I’m going to clean up, get some rest, and wait for Don to call. He’ll come back and be so sorry. This might hurt now, but in the long run, it’s the best thing. When I forgive him, he’ll love me even more.”
I stand up and with a firm voice tell her what I think. “That’s fucked up.”
She starts to laugh, winces and holds her fingers to her broken lips. “My life has been fucked up since I was born. This is the best kind of fucked up since then.”
She puts out a hand and clutches the door frame into the bathroom. “I’m tough, Kylie. I’ve been beat worse than this and I’ve survived. At least this time, I’ll get a condo for it.”
She props herself on the bathroom sink and swings the door closed with her foot. The shower starts.
I stomp out the front door and pace the front yard. I don’t know what to do. Diana has a plan and she seems determined. But her plan is so wrong. I look down at the phone I clutch in my fist. In no time I punch Blake’s number and it starts to ring.
I need just one person here to help me reason with Diana.
Zach.
No. He can’t be here.
She isn’t going to listen to me, but she’ll listen to a guy. Blake always holds more sway with her than I do. If he’ll tell her she should to go to the hospital or the cops, she might do it.
Blake’s phone rings. Two times. My impatience grows. How can Diana be so damned stupid? Three rings. That lump on the back of her head and all
that blood worries me. Four rings. Bruises and scrapes everywhere I can see. What about where I can’t see? Five rings and his voicemail picks up. “Call me, Diana needs help.” I hang up.
I wander into the living room and listen at the bathroom door. The shower still runs. How long will she need to stand there to wash away the horror she must have endured? Again, that boiling lava of rage rises up in me. This is so wrong.
This is Diana’s life and she’s free to make stupid choices if she wants. Except she’s my friend and I can’t do nothing while she puts herself in danger. I have to convince her to file charges against Don. She can’t see him again. Somehow I have to protect her from herself.
The shower. It’s been running for too long. We don’t have that big of a hot water tank. It’ll be cold, well, lukewarm because tap water is never cold here. I bang on the door. “Diana.”
No answer. I rattle the locked door knob. “Diana!”
When she still doesn’t respond I hip-check the door. It shakes but doesn’t give. I step back and bash it with the heel of my foot. That doesn’t do much more than send shots of pain up my leg. Now desperate, I throw my weight against it, hitting with full force over and over. The door jamb splinters. A little at first, then with my renewed effort more and more until I pry the bolt from the frame.
“Diana!” She’s crumpled in a heap under the stream from the shower. I slam the water off and lean over the small, stained tub. The blood from her face and legs has been washed away but her face is swollen almost unrecognizably. A watery stream of blood makes a pink trail down the side of the tub behind her head, telling me that wound has nearly stopped bleeding.
But what makes my heart jump to my throat and makes my mouth go dry is her discolored and distended belly. Internal bleeding. It has to be. He hit her so hard he ruptured something inside.
“It’s okay.” I sort of squeak it out, as much for me as for her. I dash out to get my phone and dial 9-1-1. I know from Dive Love’s procedures this is the number for emergencies. I’m sure I answer their questions and give them the address, though I don’t remember doing it.
I climb into the tub and ease myself underneath Diana and rest her head on my thighs. The only thing I know to do is keep talking to her while I wait for the ambulance. Through tears I remind her of the fun times we’ve had at The Green Frog and here at the house. I don’t care if the stories run together or don’t make sense. I want her to hear me and know she isn’t alone. Her heart flutters like a panicked moth caught in a light shade.
Please hurry.
When the ambulance comes, I climb out of the tub and worm my way through the door of the tiny bathroom. With two emergency responders and Diana, there isn’t an inch to spare. A cop arrives in a separate car and asks me questions. Aside from her name and the scant information I have about her evening, I can’t say much. “His name is Don. He’s staying at The Blue Heron on Seven Mile Beach. I don’t know his last name. He’s got a friend named Trevor from Boston. Don is the third.” I swallow a burst of tears and my throat aches. “But I don’t know the third what.”
The cop speaks with a thick island accent. “You say she was beaten and raped. What time did this happen?”
The EMTs have Diana strapped onto the stretcher and wheel her out of the bathroom. I step back to let them roll her the few feet of living room to the front door. She looks pale and swollen, some slasher version of our beautiful Diana. Horror and fury battle, fueling my urge to fight.
I turn on the cop. “I don’t know... I heard a car stop out front about thirty minutes ago and found her in the yard.” I thought she was a bag of trash. I thought— “You have to find him.”
He closes the notebook and tucks it into his shirt pocket. “I will go to the Heron, of course. You say he’s got a shaved head and goatee, around twenty-five years. Probably 5’10 and 220 pounds. Ma’am, that describes t’ree t’ousand tourists on the island tonight.”
It won’t do any good to slam my fist into his face, but that’s exactly what I want to do. Instead, I leave him standing in my living room and trot after Diana.
The ambulance is backed up on our yard, the back opening toward the house. Red lights flash and flare, splashing against the other houses. Our neighbors stand in their doorways or yards watching the commotion.
They already have her loaded into the back of the ambulance. “What’s wrong with her? Is she going to be okay?”
The thin woman with ropey arms swings one side of the back door closed. “Blood pressure is very low and with her distended stomach, I t’ink her spleen is ruptured. But we won’t know until we get her to ER.”
I prepare to jump in beside her.
One EMT is in the back with Diana, leaning over her with instruments. The woman holds her hand out to stop me from scrambling inside. “You can’t ride wit’ her.”
“But I don’t have a car.”
She jumps into the back and leans out to pull the door closed behind her. “I am sorry. Dere is no room.”
She slams the doors and I stand with my arms at my sides, watching as they fire up the siren and drive their strobing red light away. A second later, the cop’s car door slams and he fires up the engine. Shit! I should have had him drive me to the hospital. But he takes off so quickly I don’t have time to flag him down.
Zach.
Feeling as if my phone is my lifeline, I punch recent calls and without hesitating, call him.
He answers on the first ring. “I’m really glad you didn’t listen to me about not calling. I had my phone in my hand to call you. No lie.”
While that thought might make my stomach flutter if I let it, I blow past it. “I need you.”
Something in my voice tells him I’m not flirting or playing games. He knows this is serious. “I’m ten minutes away.”
Not alone.
I’m standing by the road when Zach zooms up in his Mercedes and I jump in before his wheels quit turning. “The hospital. Hurry.”
He doesn’t immediately drive but searches me as if looking for injury. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
I nod. “I’m fine, but—.”
He doesn’t wait, just grabs me and hugs me tight. “Thank god. I thought something happened to you.”
I push him, loving his concern but needing him to drive. “It’s Diana. She’s been beaten up and I think raped.”
His mouth drops open. “Shit.”
Fifteen
Kylie
I fill Zach in on what I know and by the time we get to the hospital, Diana is so far into the bowels of the building and system I can’t find her. I send Blake a couple of texts and voicemails telling him what I know and where we’re going.
The first thing that strikes me is the smell. Disinfectant, acidic medicine odors, maybe cafeteria food, all wrapped up in a basket of fear and pain. I tumble back to all of those days with Mom. The waiting, witnessing her decline and the agony of the monster growing within her, stealing her life cell by cell. I grip Zach’s hand.
Thank you.
Alone, I wouldn’t be able to face another hospital, another fight where I stand helplessly on the sidelines.
The young man at the ER check-in desk can only tell me she’d been admitted and whisked away immediately. He sits in a glassed office with a door opening into the hidden reaches of the hospital. A double door off the right of where he sits remains closed. The waiting room is full of people holding bloody clothes to various places, coughing children, listless older people. Basically, walking wounded waiting for anyone to care.
I fly out the emergency room doors and find the main entrance. Zach stays with me, only asking once where we’re going. My plan is to ask for information at the front desk. If they can’t tell me anything, I’ll find a way to sneak down the corridors and find Diana.
That doesn’t work because the front desk is closed and we’re escorted out the front by two large security guards.
Back in the ER, Zach stands next to me as I badger the guy behind the c
ounter for the hundredth time in the last hour. “Diana Lincoln.” I say her name slowly and with all the tension I feel. “She’s in here somewhere. Can’t you tell me anything?”
He eyes me with irritation and stands up. “Let me go see if I can find out.”
Zach takes my hand as I fidget by the desk. “You’re a good friend.”
I can barely speak through the fear, rage, and frustration. “If I was such a good friend, I would have stopped her from being with Don. I didn’t like him from the beginning. There was something creepy about him and I felt it.”
“You can’t protect people from themselves,” he says.
The guy saunters from where he’d disappeared behind the office he guards. He plops down in his chair as if he’s just returned from scaling Mt. Fuji. “Okay. Diana Lincoln is in surgery. Take a seat and the surgeon will find you when it’s over.”
“Surgery? For what? How bad is it? I need to talk to someone.” I lean over the counter and pound my hand on the surface.
The guy scowls at me.
Zach pulls me across the waiting room to outside. The heat of the tropical night slaps me and I take a deep breath of the humid air. I pace several steps, spin and pace back. I keep that up for a while until some pent-up frustration works its way out. “I want to find Don and beat the crap out of him. He should be in here instead of Diana.” I start to shake. “All she wanted was for someone to love her and take care of her.”
Before the tears fall, Zach holds me and I cling to him. “She didn’t deserve this.”
“What if she’s not okay?” Memories of those last moments with Mom swamp me. There was a moment, three days before she died, when the blinders fell from my eyes. Until then, I had hope. I believed she’d get better and we’d go on as before. That we were only working through a tough time. It wasn’t even a big, pivotal event that made it clear to me. I’m simply returned from lunch and bopped into her room, eager to tell her a funny story about two women I’d seen outside. I started talking before I looked at the bed. When I did, everything in me stopped. Like a wind-up toy whose key quits spinning.
