“I feel like I’m losing my damn mind,” I say to the room. There are just three of us - one cop, one doctor, and one almost dead girl - and I can’t stop this horrible feeling inside me. “I feel like I’m falling and falling and nothing ever stops me. Am I going to feel like this forever?”
The doctor swallows with difficulty. I can tell I’ve struck a nerve with her. I wonder how many raped and beaten girls she’s had pass through these halls. I wonder how many of them felt like this.
“You won’t feel like this forever,” she says haltingly.
I clutch my stomach, dizzy and cold. “I can’t stop falling.”
The cop beside me - Elliot, that’s his name - places a hand on the bed beside me, palm up. “Here,” he says, “if you need something to grab onto. I won’t let you fall.”
I seize his hand immediately, turning to look at him. “Thank you,” I whisper. He nods, his kind smile at odds with the concerned frown furrowing his brow.
“One day you’ll find a way to compartmentalize what you’ve been through,” he says. “You’ll come to a day when you can take all of this, put it in a box, and put it up on a shelf. Sometimes there might be an earthquake, and the box will fall and hit you out of nowhere. Sometimes you’ll choose to get the box down and open it and look through every piece of pain, every drop of blood, every waking nightmare that you’ve stored inside the box. But one day, you’ll get to the evening and realize that you’ve gone a whole day without thinking about it. And you’ll feel bad at first. You’ll feel so terribly guilty. You’ll feel like by letting it stay up on the shelf, you’re betraying yourself. Eventually, though, it will get easier to keep on the shelf.” He puts his other hand on top of mine, so both of his hands are warming my skin. It really does feel like he’s tethering me to the earth, making sure I don’t drift away into oblivion. I want to believe him. I do.
“How do you know that?” I ask through my tears.
Something dark passes over his eyes before he blinks it away. He smiles encouragingly at me, a smile marked by sadness and knowingness. “I knew a girl once,” he says. “She was a beautiful girl. Fifteen years old. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and something terrible happened to her. A man - a horrible, evil, despicable man - punished her to get back at her father. He raped her. Six other men raped her. They beat her so badly, she couldn’t be identified at the hospital. She died in the emergency room as they were trying to stabilize her.”
I blink. “That doesn’t sound like a story with a happy ending.”
“Ah, but that’s not the ending. See, the doctors did manage to bring her back. Some young cop broke the rules and smuggled her out of the hospital before the men who almost killed her returned to finish the job. The cop got her out of town, out of the state, far away.”
“Did the police ever catch the men?” I ask. Say yes, I plead. Fucking lie to me if you have to. It’s the only way I’ll ever be able to sleep again.
“No,” Elliot says. “She came back, six years later. New name. New identity. She killed all seven of those men. All by herself. But first, she made sure they suffered.”
The doctor stiffens as he delivers that last line, but Elliot doesn’t pay her any attention. Right now, his entire attention is on me. He acts as if I am the only person in the universe, and somehow, his magical story works on me. Perhaps he can tell I’m the kind of person who would value retribution over forgiveness. An eye for an eye sounds much more appealing to me than forgive those who trespass against us.
“Sounds like a bad daytime movie,” I say, but my small smile betrays how impressed I am.
Elliot laughs. “Come on. HBO, at the very least.”
The doctor clears her throat, and suddenly we’re back in reality. Reality sucks.
Elliot squeezes my hand. “Do you want me to ask your boyfriend to come back in?” he asks, all traces of a smile gone now. “Will?”
I shake my head, taking my hand back from his warm grasp and putting both palms back over my face. “No.”
Will can’t handle this. He can’t even look at me. He will literally combust and fall into a pile of ash if he has to sit by me while a doctor sticks a speculum up into me and measures how thoroughly I’ve been raped, if she can collect any DNA evidence, if I need surgery, if there’s any lasting damage apart from the pain.
“Can’t you give her something?” Elliot asks the doctor. “Something to calm her? And for the pain?”
The doctor shakes her head. “She’s just come out of a massive overdose. There’s Fentanyl still in her system, but the Narcan is fighting it off. We give her more opiates, her body could shut down all over again.”
I’m right here, I want to say, but I don’t. Because I’m not really here. I’ve started to divorce my mind from my body again, started to unravel my physical being from my mental one. It hurts too much to exist.
One thought rallies me from that sickening falling sensation. Rome. I need to do this for him, I realize. I need this doctor to find some shred of DNA of whoever it was that actually took us, whoever did this to me, so that Rome can be cleared of any wrongdoing.
“What about your friend - Jennifer?” Elliot asks softly. “I’ll sit here all day and night and hold your hand if that’s what you need. But speaking from experience, there is nobody more comforting in a time like this than somebody who you love. Somebody who loves you.”
It’s true; I need somebody I love to help me get through this next excruciating experience. Even though, when I was first in that dark room, I had nobody to hold my hand while I screamed and bled.
I had nobody, and then I had Rome.
And he was enough to keep me alive.
But he’s not here.
So I need somebody who loves me — to love me. I need that energy, that connection. I need to know I won’t open my eyes and suddenly be back in that room. I need to know that this is real and not a construct of my drugged mind trying to comfort me.
Not Will, though. It can’t be Will. He won’t survive this.
I take a deep breath and turn to Elliot, who is waiting wordlessly beside me. “Nathan,” I say quietly. “Get Nathan.”
Nathan is strong. He’ll be able to deal with it. He was the one whose hands held me up at Adeline’s funeral, even in his own grief. He may as well be my brother; we’ve grown up so close. We know each other’s secrets, and each other’s pain.
I know he will willingly bear this moment with me.
* * *
A few minutes later, Nathan is sitting in the chair previously occupied by Elliot. He’s a Capulet, just like me. We are used to projecting confidence and biting our tongues until they bleed to get through difficult situations. We are used to putting on a brave face when things are grim. We are fluent in navigating the stages of grief with detachment and poise.
And that’s what he does for me.
“It’s okay, Aves,” he says, over and over.
I scream every time the doctor has to put her gloved fingers inside me to make her measurements, to check if I need to go into surgery. I look up at the ceiling and cry and scream and pant because this pain, the agony of having my wounds touched and measured and poked, is unbearable.
“Look at me,” Nathan says gently, in the midst of the horror. “Focus on me.”
I do what he says. I look into his dark brown eyes and try to separate myself from what’s happening down there. He tells me stories about our childhood. About how I taught him to swim one sun-drenched summer. “Remember?” he implores. He’s trying to push bright, happy nostalgia into my mind as a distraction, but it doesn’t work, and he can tell. So he stops, reducing his words to just a handful:
It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.
Focus on me.
It’s almost over.
I’m wild-eyed, bearing down from the pain, like a woman bearing down to birth a baby — but there is no miracle inside me waiting to be pushed forth. There is no relief of the agony ending. Only the brutal truth of w
hat happened in the dark, being dragged out into the light by a doctor in a white lab coat perched on a stool between my spread thighs, her own eyes shining with emotion as she tries to be gentle with what’s left of me.
“You’re lucky,” she says after. “Your uterus was perforated by the IUD. If he had persisted in pulling it out, you would have bled to death in minutes.”
Lucky. So lucky. There’s that word again. Everybody tells me what a lucky girl I am. But all I feel is bitter, blinding rage.
All I feel is a hollow spot where my heart used to be.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ROME
Blinding light. Am I dead?
Then nothing. I drift along, darkness alternating with that bright light. Am I still dying?
The pain is what jolts me out of my unconsciousness. It’s not a localized pain. Rather, it’s as if every nerve ending in my body is on fire, all radiating agony. Am I in hell?
I crack one eyelid open a fraction, the effort all-consuming. Everything is a blur. Bright white lights. Scratchy sheets. Fuck, it hurts. The fact that it hurts means I’m still alive. But where am I alive? My stomach lurches. If it’s that makeshift surgery where I had my bullet wound attended to, if they’re going to do even worse things to me now, then fuck it. I’ll hold my breath until I die. The light pummels my eyelids. There are no fingers in my bullet wounds, no locks being turned on the dungeon door, onetwothreefour.
There’s only the sheets against...
Something else.
Clean clothes?
It smells clean, if clean means antiseptic and bleach. There’s another smell here, too, underneath all the cleaner. Something old and rotted, like piss and a fistfight.
I force my eyes open and the light sears them. A clang alerts me to the fact that I can’t move my wrist.
Not my right wrist, or my left. Both of them are handcuffed to the bed.
“What the fuck?” I try again, testing, because this is on another level. Lock me in a dungeon and torture me. Shoot me. Starve me. But handcuffs? Shiny silver handcuffs? Fuck that.
“Rome, I see you’re awake.”
Shock bolts through me faster than the drugs did. She’s pretty, the person who spoke. Brunette and pretty and just like the other girls the XO killer took out. If this is hell, this is spot fucking on.
“Who the fuck are you?” I demand. “Where’s Avery?”
She doesn’t seem perturbed by my bluntness. In fact, a small smirk tugs at one side of her mouth. “I’m Amara Langley, your lawyer.”
I look around the room, trying to figure out what this place is. It’s too run-down to be any reputable kind of hospital, but the medical instruments remind me of a torture chamber in a horror movie. “Am I dead?”
The woman wears a pantsuit that nips in at the waist and carries a leather portfolio. She sits in a chair by the bed with the portfolio balanced on her lap and gives me a sad purse of her lips. It’s nothing for her to scrawl a note in her portfolio. What I wouldn’t give to fight my way out of here with that pen, wherever here is.
“No, Rome. Dead clients don’t generally pay their legal bills, so we try to stick to the live ones.”
Despite being almost dead, I’ve still got a thread of snark left. “Hate to break it to you, but me being alive doesn’t mean I’ll be able to pay you shit.”
She isn’t impressed. I suppose I probably look terrifying–covered in tattoos and bruises, strapped to a bed like some psycho.
“Wait. Why do I need a lawyer?” I ask slowly. Truth is, I already have an overwhelming suspicion that my worst fears have come true. If I’m being cast as the villain in this tale that can only mean one thing - Avery is dead.
And if she’s dead, I won’t stop until I am, too.
The lawyer opens her perfectly-lipsticked mouth to answer, but I cut her off. “Is she dead?”
Amara flips her leather portfolio open to a page of notes. I try to peer over the metal edge of the bed, but from this angle, I can’t see shit.
“I take it you don’t have much memory of the events of your rescue,” Amara says.
I rattle the handcuff against the bed rail again. “Wasn’t much of a rescue if I’m cuffed to the bed, wouldn’t you agree?”
“That’s what I’m here to speak with you about. I’ll be your representation for the charges.”
I want out of this bed, out of this sickeningly bright room, and to be somewhere comfortable. That’s all I want. The industrial fabric of the hospital gown is sandpaper on my skin. The blankets aren’t much better.
“Hey.” Her eyes snap up to meet mine. Dark eyes, just like that last girl he shot in front of us. Is this some kind of fucked-up trick? “It’s not illegal to get kidnapped. That’s what happened to me.”
This woman peers at me, like she’s trying to decide, right here and right now, if I’m innocent or not. “It must be disturbing to wake up with no memory of processing, but unfortunately, Rome, you’re in the San Francisco jail infirmary. You were brought in last night on...” She consults the portfolio. “First-degree murder, attempted murder and kidnapping. Plus the sexual assault charges, which they’ll add to your ticket in the coming days.”
Maybe I don’t remember it, or maybe I just don’t want to remember it. I have dim, flickering memories of trying to stand up. Of being stripped down. Camera flashes. A low voice reading out my rights. That was a hallucination, wasn’t it? Fuck. Wasn’t it?
“You required urgent medical care, which the jail has provided. How are you feeling?”
Like I’ve been hit by a row of semi trucks, all going seventy miles an hour. I feel battered, aching, starving and sick at the same time. My head is too heavy to lift it off the pillow.
“I’m fine. Where is Avery?”
She gives a slight shake of her head. “I can’t give you any information about the victim.”
Pure, unadulterated rage wraps itself around my heart and squeezes. “If you can’t give me any information and you’re not getting me out of these cuffs, then what the hell are you here for?”
“Representation,” she says again.
“I don’t have representation.”
“Your father didn’t want you to face the charges with a public defender. A wise move on his part.”
If my head wasn’t already pinned to the pillow I’d have let it fall. This is the most fucked-up scenario on earth. I couldn’t have dreamed up a worse outcome. All those times I thought Avery and I might be rescued, the fantasy didn’t end up like this.
“Just tell me, is Avery alive.”
Amara glances at the door. “I can’t give you any information about your victims,” she repeats, slower this time. “I can tell you that you’re being charged with the kidnappings of Penelope Blake and Avery Capulet. The murder of Penelope Blake. And the attempted murder of Avery Capulet.” She stresses the word attempted as she tilts her head, imploring me to understand. I nod. She’s telling me Avery is alive.
“Thank you,” I say weakly. My heart thuds a beat of relief for Avery’s survival. Those pills were so strong, but my girl was–is–stronger. My girl. Ha. Maybe she was my girl when we were young, and maybe she was my girl down in that hellhole, but back here in reality? She has a fiancé, a future mapped out, a destiny to fulfil.
I wonder if I’ll ever see her again.
“Let’s talk about your bail hearing,” Amara interrupts my frantic thoughts. I try to focus on her, but it’s so hard. I’m still half-dead from the pills, from the torture, from the starvation, from the fucking bullet hole in my shoulder.
I raise my eyebrows at her as if to say, go on. As she’s gathering papers from her portfolio, I watch her, seething, letting her words sink in.
My father hired her. A lawyer. My fucking lawyer.
The fact that my dad even knows about this, out there in his off-the-grid, no cell service hippie commune, means that we’ve hit the news. I shouldn’t be surprised. Avery Capulet has been in the news since the moment she was born. The
lawyer is still talking, but I’m thinking of those trailers out in the Joshua Tree desert and the way Avery smiled when I told her that I loved her.
That wasn’t a fucking hallucination. That was real, and it still throbs in the middle of me like its own open wound. If I’m in jail on murder charges, it’ll be forever before I can see her. And I need to see her. I need it more than I need air, more than I need the IV stuck into my arm, which, judging by the feel of it, has pumped me full of Narcan and saline. I need her.
“I didn’t hear any of that,” I interrupt Amara.
She pauses and looks at me. I can’t tell if her compassion is real or fake. I’m not sure if it matters. Nothing really matters, except getting to Avery, and I can’t get to Avery because I’m chained to this fucking bed like an animal. I’ve swapped one prison for another.
“Your bail hearing is set for tomorrow.” Even. Clear. Like a bail hearing for murder charges always happens upon being boosted from a kidnapping scene. “If you’re not well enough to attend, I can motion for it to be delayed. All things considered, it would be best to stand for the hearing tomorrow. That way the process is in motion.”
All things considered. What things has she considered? The fact that we were held hostage in an underground hellhole for weeks? The horrible shit I was forced to do? How has any of this led to murder charges?
“I didn’t kill anyone,” I say flatly.
“That may be, but the prosecution apparently has compelling enough evidence to press charges.”
That fucking camera. That little red light. The footage could be played from any angle, couldn’t it? Those fuckers. Out of one prison and into another.
My mouth has gone dry and I can’t keep my eyes open anymore.
“I’ll see you tomorrow for your hearing.” There’s a snap as she shuts her portfolio and then a steady click of heels across the floor. “Rest up, Rome.”
“Did anyone else come?” I wrench my eyes open to find her halfway to the door, looking back at me. “To visit me?”
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