Devil's Island

by Jason Halstead

  Chapter 2

  Carly was scared. She didn't even know where she was. Sure, she was in a hospital, but there were hospitals everywhere. She didn't recognize anybody but most of the doctors and nurses were Mexican. She wasn't sure how, but she understood them when they switched to Spanish. How she understood Spanish and English were just two more things that made her head hurt.

  There was one thing Carly knew. Her name. It wasn't Carly. The best she could come up with was Tamara, but that wasn't quite right either. When she rolled the name around on her tongue and whispered it out loud it sounded right, but it didn't feel right. Was she spelling it wrong? Had her parents wanted to make her unique by giving her some goofy way of spelling her name? She had no idea, but she was beginning to accept that nothing made sense. Even her skin felt weird, like it was stretched too tight.

  She was skin and bones, she'd seen herself in the mirror. If she'd lost weight her skin should be loose, not stretched taught across her ribs so that it looked like she was struggling for breath when she inhaled. The only padding she had was in her chest and her butt, but even those looked like they belonged on a thirteen year old boy instead of a woman.

  She tilted her head and let her eyes flit about the room. Was she a woman? She felt like she'd been through a lot. Never mind that she couldn't remember any of it. But she looked like a kid. What she saw in the mirror was a stranger's face staring back at her. Who was she and why couldn't she remember? What happened to her?

  She’d heard whispered comments from the men checking over her. Comments about the needle marks in her arm and the bruises all over her body. They thought she was a runaway and a junkie. Maybe she was, she wasn’t sure of anything. Is that why she couldn’t remember her past? Had she overdosed and walked out into the ocean in some sort of doped up daze?

  “How are you feeling?”

  The words snapped her back to the present. The speaker was a Latina woman a few pounds and a few grey hairs past her prime. As she moved over to the side of the bed the glint of something under her smock caught Tamara's eye. Tamara tried to get a better look but it stayed hidden beneath the woman's scrubs.

  “When can I leave?” Tamara asked. She was tired of lying in bed. She felt like she should be doing something. What that something was escaped her, but anything was better than waiting on doctor's to tell her she was fine.

  “You're tests came back fine. As soon as we can find a guardian you can go,” the lady said with some sort of an attempt at a smile. “Do you remember anything, yet?”

  “Yeah,” she lied, hoping to get out., “I’m eighteen. My birthday is December 25th.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. "Christmas?"

  Tamara shrugged. The smile that made its way on her face was real, but she didn't know why it seemed funny to her. "Yeah, it always sucked.""

  The nurse frowned and looked at the marks on Tamara's arms. “Can you tell me how you got all those bruises? Or those marks on your arms?”

  “I’m not a junkie,” Tamara insisted. “You said your tests came back fine. You'd know if I was strung out.”

  The woman opened her mouth to say something more, but Tamara swung her legs off the bed, and stood up.

  “Look, I don’t want to be here, and you can’t keep me here.”

  “Can you prove your age?” the nurse refused to back down.

  The more Tamara lied, the easier she found the action becoming. “I keep my ID in my purse, but that never made here. So I've got a lot of phone calls to make when I get out of here to make sure nobody's pretending to be me and stealing my identity.”

  The nurse's brow furrowed. “You don't look old enough to have much of an identity to steal, but you don't sound like a little girl either." She sighed and flipped her hands up in defeat. "I can’t help you if you won't let me.”

  Tamara fought to keep the grin off her face until the nurse finished making her notes in the chart and left the room. As soon as she was gone Tamara rushed to where her folded clothes had been placed. They were dry but stiff from the ocean. Crusted salt and sand broke off and fell to the floor as she straightened them out and slipped them back on. Her clothes were uncomfortable but anything was better than the gown they’d forced her into after bringing her to the hospital.

  She poked her head out of the door and looked around. The ornery nurse was nowhere in sight. She started out, walking fast towards the sign marked with, "Exit," when she realized she didn't know where she was headed. Out of the hospital, sure, but beyond that she was clueless.

  She stopped at one of the information desks, and tried to put on the best smile she could. “Excuse me,” she said to the old man volunteering behind the desk, “but I had someone help me, earlier today. I wanted to thank him but I'm not sure where he lives or how to get a hold of him.”

  “I’m sorry, chica,” he replied, “but I can’t give out that kind of information.”

  “But he saved my life,” she pouted. The man looked up at her and met her eyes. She felt a strange sense of floating, almost as if she was dizzy or falling. She reached out to grab the counter to steady herself but before her hand touched it she felt everything snap back in place around her. She'd felt that way on the beach earlier too. Maybe the nurse was right, maybe she wasn't ready to be on her own yet? She pushed the thought aside and smiled again. “You don’t want him thinking I’m ungrateful, do you?”

  A couple minutes later, she had a name, phone number, and an address. She wondered again about the dizziness that came over her when she'd been talking to the clerk but forgot all about it as soon as she stepped out into the late afternoon sun. The tropical sun felt wonderful! She turned as she walked, holding her arms out and basking in the heat.

  Her skin tingled and a small sigh of joy slip through her lips. She was free at last! Nobody watching her and confining her. Nobody telling her what to do. She could do what she wanted, at long last. She frowned and opened her eyes. She didn't know what it was she wanted to do. Well, other than find the man that had helped her. Sam.

  How was she going to get to where Sam was? She frowned and studied the piece of paper. A chill ran down her back, forcing her to look up. She'd walked beneath a palm tree and stepped into its shadow. She was about to move back into the sun when she noticed a couple standing a few feet ahead of her talking.

  “Man, I can’t believe how much she drank!” the man said to the girl beside him.

  “I’m just glad we got her here in time,” she responded. She looked down the street for a cab and then turned to see Tamara standing behind them. “I—Can I help you?”

  “I need to get to this address,” Tamara told the woman. Their eyes met and Tamara sucked in a quick breath of air to fight the sudden weakness in her knees. It passed quicker than before, proving to her that she was getting better the more active she was. She refocused on the half-naked woman in front of her and noticed for the first time her almond shaped brown eyes. She didn't look Asian but her eyes gave her an exotic and sensual appeal.

  “So call a cab,” the woman suggested before she turned back to her friend.

  “Wow! Way to be harsh, Subie,” the man said, coming to stand next to his companion. “She's just a kid, damn.” He looked Tamara over once, but didn’t quite meet her eyes. “Lemme see that address.”

  Before she had a chance to respond, the man snatched the slip of paper from her hands, and looked at it.

  “You’re not fooling anyone, Brock,” Subie said, crossing her arms under her chest. Her modest breasts were lifted and pushed out by her arms, straining against the skimpy bikini top she wore. She shook her head and said, “You’re only being nice to the girl because you think she’s cute.”

  “And you’re only being rude, because you’re not the center of attention,” he shot back.

  Tamara looked the man over first. He was a big guy with bulges in all the right places to suggest he worked out regularly. The way the two acted made her think they should get a room. She wondered if they'd
let her watch.

  “Besides," Brock said, "this address is near our hotel.”

  “No way!” Subie said, her slim eyes growing wide. Grabbing the paper from Brock, she scanned it, and then looked back at Tamara through narrowed eyes. “Is this some kind of joke?” she demanded.

  “Jeez, Subie,” Brock stated, pulling the Eurasian looking woman back. “Look at her.” Subie’s eyes return to their normal size. “Her clothes are stiff, and her hair’s a mess. She doesn’t hold a candle to you.” Brock turned his large blue eyes on Tamara, and from the sparkle in them, she knew he was just pandering to his friend. “You're what, sixteen? What happened, you lose your parents or something?”

  "Something," Tamara responded. She didn't know how old she was. As for her parents, she had no idea. She didn't think they were nearby, it didn't feel right. "I'm eighteen," she said, repeating what she'd told the nurse. "Just give me back my paper and I'll walk."

  “Now hold on,” he smiled down at her. Tamara had to admit that his smile had an effect on her, but she still tried to get the paper back as a cab pulled up in front of them. “We’ve got room in our cab since our friend Erin drank herself silly. At least catch a ride to the hotel. Don't worry about Subie, she's not as mean as she wants you to think she is.”

  “Yes I am,” Subie harrumphed.

  Tamara stopped trying to get the paper back, and the large man graciously handed it over. “No funny business?” She asked, only now thinking about how dangerous it could be to get into a vehicle with a stranger. Having Subie there calmed those fears, even if the slender woman didn't like her.

  “Scout’s honor,” he said, holding up three fingers. Tamara didn't have a clue what that meant, but knew it was supposed to calm her, somehow.

  “Ugh, fine,” Subie groaned. “But just for the record, if she’s a runaway, I want no part in this.”

  Brock winked at Tamara as though sharing some secret before he lowered his voice and said, “Subie’s one fine piece of ass, and she’s more than happy to let you know it, but under all that she has a heart of gold.”

  Subie glared at his pathetic attempt at secrecy. “And Brock has all the muscles of a wrestler, but his cock paid the price to get them,” Subie shot back.

  “Hey, that’s bullshit!" Brock howled. "That stuff doesn't do that! You ought to know, you were begging for it last night” Brock exclaimed while holding open the door to the cab.

  Subie gasped and protested, "I was fucked up! You could have convinced me a fly was big enough to carry me away!"

  Tamara couldn’t help but smile at their vulgarity. She had a feeling she had just found some new friends.