by Harry Kraus
Jensen started running toward the house, scrambling across the wet pavement toward the gravel lane.
Billy Ray started behind him and then turned back to pick up his shotgun before jogging behind the deputy.
Inside, Cyrus fell to the floor, gripping the top of his left leg. “You shot me! You shot me in the leg!”
“I wasn’t aiming for your leg.”
“I’m bleeding.” He stumbled backwards, teetering for a second, as Claire wondered if he would stand or fall.
“I told you to stay put.” She raised the gun again, this time pointing for his chest.
A red stain rapidly expanded away from his left groin. When he hit the floor, blood erupted in a pulsatile fountain, spraying into the air.
“Your femoral artery has been severed.”
“I’ll kill you.”
Claire kept the gun trained on her attacker. “You’ll be unconscious in two minutes.”
Alarm picked up the tenor of his voice. “Help me,” he said, grasping at a bedsheet hanging from the bed. Desperately, he wadded the sheet against his upper leg. Blood sprayed through his fingers. “I can’t see it! I’m bleeding!”
Slowly, she knelt, the gun trained on the man’s chest. With her other hand, she reached forward and shoved her hand over his to push tightly over the artery. “You will bleed to death in a minute or two unless this is done correctly!” Her eyes bore in on his.
He reached for her neck, but Claire was too quick. She pulled back, releasing his hand as a red geyser sprayed from his leg. His eyes widened with the terror that comes just before impending death.
She shoved the wadded sheet back over the artery. She spoke with a firm, but quiet demeanor. “If you touch me again, I’ll let you bleed to death.”
She looked toward the doorway. Someone was pounding. Pounding hard. “Police! Open up.”
Cyrus pleaded. “Don’t leave me.”
Claire screamed. “We’re in the bedroom. I can’t come!”
The front door exploded in. Deputy Randy Jensen came in with his weapon drawn. Behind him was Billy Ray.
“We need an ambulance. He’s got a femoral artery injury.”
Jensen lowered his gun. “What’s going on here?”
Claire looked up from where she knelt over Cyrus, her rapist, who now, in a sudden twist, had become her patient. “He attacked me. He’s bleeding.
I can’t take my hand from his femoral region here or he’ll exsanguinate.” She winced at her own pain in her lower abdomen. “Just keep his hands off me.”
“You!” Billy Ray stepped forward, leveling his shotgun at Cyrus’s head.
“You work for her!”
Jensen grabbed Billy’s arm. “Careful.” He grabbed a radio from his belt. “He’s not going anywhere.”
Billy Ray cursed, but yielded to the officer and lowered his weapon. “That jerk told me she was in the hospital.”
“Let’s get an ambulance,” Jensen said, raising the radio to his mouth.
“Listen,” Claire said, tilting her head. “Sirens!”
Cyrus twisted in agony. “She shot me! She’s got a gun!”
“Shut up,” Jensen ordered. “Hold still.” Claire watched as the deputy’s eyes scanned the room and moved to grab a blanket from the bed. He leaned over and pulled it around Claire’s shoulders.
Claire moaned. With her concentration on surviving, and then on Cyrus’s life-threatening situation, she hadn’t even paused to think about her clothes—or lack of them. Fortunately, she was still wearing a baggy sweatshirt, and her resistance had kept him from removing her underwear. The blanket would cover the rest for now.
“Hey,” Cyrus yelled. “Cover me!”
“Shut up,” Jensen shouted. “Billy Ray, help the doc. Hold pressure on the bleeding.”
Billy Ray’s eyes were wide as he obeyed and knelt at Claire’s side.
“Here,” she said, guiding his hands to the right spot, before easing her own hand back and checking for blood running around the wadded sheet. “Don’t rock to the side or you’ll lose control.”
“No! Stay with me, Doc!”
Jensen kept his weapon trained on Cyrus’s chest and laid one hand under Claire’s arm to help her up. “Put on some pants,” he said quietly.
She stood, gripping the blanket around her waist.
“Don’t clean up. You’ll need a SANE exam.”
She nodded slowly and listened as the sirens grew in volume.
“He works for you?”
“Cyrus Hensley.” She shook her head. “He’s my maintenance man.”
John Cerelli sped on, nearing Claire’s place, daring to push his speed to the limits of safety on the wet road. His pulse quickened as questions of Claire’s safety surfaced again. He argued with himself, reminding himself that Claire would be prepared. She had never been a woman to proceed into situations without a sense of control.
He raised his voice again, and sang with the Italian baritone, singing phrases that rolled from his tongue with natural grace.
But a flashing light in his rearview mirror and the scream of a siren squelched his song and tightened a knot in his throat. He glanced instinctively at his speedometer. He really wasn’t going that much over the limit. John slowed and began to pull over, but the car behind responded only by accelerating past. It was a state-patrol car followed closely behind by an ambulance.
John pulled back into the road, his pulse rate quickening again. He edged his speed higher, but the flashing lights disappeared beyond the crest of a hill. Once he arrived at the top of the hill, he could hear the distant, rhythmic warble of the sirens, but the flashing lights had vanished.
Anxiety tightened his chest. Claire!
With a mile to go, John rubbed at the moisture on the inside of his windshield and muttered about his faulty defroster. Then, he began a prayer, this time out loud with the opera still blaring. “Keep Claire in your hands.”
He shifted the wipers to high again and approached the final turn before the lane to the McCall house.
John prepared to brake and again wiped at the windshield with his hand. That’s when he saw the flashing lights of a police car parked beside, no, partially on the road! He cut to the left to avoid sideswiping the vehicle and began a skid when he added the brakes.
The Mustang missed the car by inches, skidded into the oncoming lane, then back, spinning a one-eighty off the highway on the right, then flipped as it careened onto the road’s soft shoulder.
John held his breath, bracing for impact. The trees were upside down, the ground a dark ceiling which fell with smothering force. I’m going to hit those tr—
Claire sat huddled in a blanket and watched the paramedics hoist Cyrus Hensley into the back of the emergency van. She stood from her position on the front steps of the house when she heard the noise. “What was that?”
Jensen shook his head. “More thunder.”
She tilted her head. “That’s not thunder.” She paused. “Listen!”
Jensen hesitated as he walked toward the ambulance. “Aw, someone’s playing a radio or something.”
A paramedic slammed the back double doors of his vehicle. “Let’s roll.”
Claire sensed trouble. “Shut up!” she yelled.
Her scream met curious stares of the emergency personnel.
“That’s not a radio,” she said, beginning to hobble toward the road, ignoring the light rain. “That’s opera!”
Jensen started after her, calling out, “Dr. McCall!”
She heard a muffled question about her bizarre behavior, someone saying something about the trauma she’d undergone. She halted in her tracks and screamed at the paramedics. “Pull to the end of the lane. There’s a car in the ditch!”
Claire half walked, half limped, holding her abdomen with her eyes focused on the roadside just beyond Jensen’s vehicle. “John!”
She saw the Mustang just before Deputy Jensen began to bark orders at the paramedic crew. The red car was upside down,
its roof collapsed except for a corner where the passenger door rested against a large pine. Italian opera blared. The engine was off, but steam hissed from beneath the crumpled hood.
She dropped to the ground beside the driver’s door, ignoring her own pain. “John! John!”
There was no response.
She scrambled to the other side where the car body was elevated by the tree. “John?” She dropped to her stomach, trying to see into the front seat. The window was smashed, the ragtop nearly ripped away. “I need light!”
A paramedic knelt at her side. “What’ve you got?”
“The driver’s trapped.”
“We’ll call for another vehicle.”
“You’ll take this man first!”
“The other patient could exsanguinate!”
“This one’s unconscious!”
“This guy might already be dead. It could take an hour to extract him! Our patient could lose his leg!”
“Then take them both!” she screamed. She began to squeeze forward under the Mustang. With as much control as she could manage, she spoke again to the paramedic. “Have one person stay with Mr. Hensley, and you and your driver get over here with your tools. Now!”
She turned her attention to John. She felt along the seat until she found his hand. A light came on as Randy Jensen crawled in beside her. The beam illuminated the grim situation. John was buckled in, but the steering column was collapsed onto his left leg. Blood streamed from his forehead. There was blood coming from his right ear, but he was breathing, gurgling as blood and saliva filled his airway.
It took only ten minutes to extract him, another five to establish an IV and slide in an endotracheal tube to assist his breathing. John never responded.
Claire looked at the sky. “We need a helicopter.”
The young male paramedic shook his head. “The university chopper has been grounded all night.”
She steeled her gaze on the young man, anticipating another hurdle. “Take ’em to Brighton.”
“Carlisle’s closer. Protocol mandates—”
“Forget the protocol! There is no neurosurgeon in Carlisle! This patient needs a neurosurgeon!”
The paramedic was about to protest again when Jensen stepped forward. “Protocol allows the transport decision to be made by the ranking medical professional in the field.”
“I’m the chief on the crew tonight.”
Randy raised his voice. “And this is Doctor McCall. Now get rolling.”
The paramedic shook his head and helped load John Cerelli into the van beside Cyrus Hensley, but his comments to his partner weren’t lost on Claire. “I swear, I thought she was a nurse. I knew she was pushy, but I didn’t know who she was.”
Claire gave one more set of instructions before the ambulance crew pulled away. “Call for a neuro-trauma alert when you’re ten minutes out. I want everything done by the book on this one.”
The driver, a woman who appeared about Claire’s age, nodded. “I’ll see to it.”
As the van pulled away, Claire felt her knees weaken. After a moment, she slumped to the roadside and began to cry.
Randy Jensen put his arm around her shoulder. “Let’s get you to the house.”
She shook her head. “Take me to Brighton,” she sobbed. “But first turn off that music.”
In spite of her objections, Claire relented to a SANE exam. She knew the importance of every step in gathering the evidence needed to ensure her attacker would not go unpunished.
Even though there had been no penetration there was still important documentation to make. Lucy was gentle, as always, photographing every abrasion, collecting hair samples and clothing with precision and organization. In a touch of irony, Lucy was the one who cried through the exam, with Claire providing the reassurances to continue.
“I should have stayed with you,” the gray-haired nurse remarked for the fifth time as they walked toward the clinic waiting room.
Randy Jensen stood. “I doubt it would have made much difference.”
Lucy sniffed. “I could have stayed up. I’d have heard him come in.”
Randy shook his head. “I just heard from some of our men at the scene. It looked like he’d been in the house for hours. What time did you get home?”
Claire shrugged. “Must have been close to ten.”
“He was already in the house.”
“But we looked around.”
“He was hiding in a back bedroom closet. He had a pillow, some magazines. The boys even found a bottle of whiskey.” The deputy nodded. “He probably entered the house earlier in the day, not even caring if you’d come home that day. He knew you’d be home eventually, and when you did, he hid in the closet.”
The thought of Cyrus hiding in the closet gave Claire a chill. “I’m not staying there alone again.” She looked at Lucy. “I want to call my mother. Then can you take me to Brighton?”
Lucy offered a weak smile. “The sun’s just beginning to rise here. What time is it in Hawaii?”
Claire shrugged. “I’m sure Mom’s internal clock isn’t reset anyway.”
“Call your mom. Then I’ll take you home. Rest for a few hours. Then I’ll take you.”
“I’ll never sleep. Not in that house. And not without knowing what’s happening to John.”
Lucy sighed. “I guess you’re right.” She put her arm around Claire’s shoulders. “But let’s go home and pack a bag for you. Then we’ll get you a hotel room next to the hospital so you have someplace to crash.”
She could live with that plan. “Thanks, Lucy.”
Randy Jensen promised to keep her updated, and promised to arrange a police guard for Cyrus Hensley.
Claire walked numbly back down the hallway and sat at her desk. She called Margo first, waking her from sleep and asking for the number to reach Della. Claire recited the events of the morning beginning with her attack and ending with John Cerelli’s accident. Perhaps it was her sister’s sleepy response, or the emotional distance in their relationship, but Claire felt as if she were talking about horrible events that had happened to someone else. It wasn’t until she had her mom on the phone a few minutes later that the emotional cap came unplugged.
“Mom!” She started to sob.
“Claire?”
She sniffed. “It’s me, Mom. The rapist attacked me and I shot him with your pistol and John was coming to help me when he crashed the Mustang in front of our house.” She gasped for air before launching ahead again. “John’s in the university hospital. He’s unconscious. I entubated him for the paramedic team before they took . . . him . . . a-way.” Her voice cracked and halted.
“Oh, Claire, I’m so sorry.”
“Mom, I’m not even sure he’s still alive. Lucy is here and she’s going to take me up to Brighton.”
“Claire, listen to me. As dark as this seems, God is still in control. He still loves you and holds you in his hand.” She paused. “Claire? Are you there?”
She sniffed. “I’m here, Mom.”
Della began to pray. She asked for peace and strength for Claire and for guidance for John’s doctors. She asked for healing and for comfort, knowing God knew best, and loved them more than they understood.
Claire whispered, “Amen.”
“I’ll be home as soon as I can arrange a flight.”
“But, Mom—”
“No arguments! I’m your mother. And I know best!”
The phone went dead. Della couldn’t be dissuaded from her plan to come home.
And for that, Claire was very thankful.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
By ten A.M., Claire was standing in the Brighton University neurosurgical ICU at the bedside of John Cerelli. She stroked his hand and watched the rise and fall of his chest as the mechanical ventilator provided him oxygen. He hardly looked like the John she loved. A strip of hair was shaved in an irregular diagonal across his scalp, revealing an even row of surgical clips where a complex laceration had been repaired. A breathing
tube exited his mouth, a central venous line exited his neck, and a tube which drained stomach fluid exited his right nostril. A thick white gauze taped beneath his nose reminded her of a cheap Santa Claus mustache used in an elementary school Christmas play. His eyes were closed with the head of his bed elevated to thirty degrees, a nice position for reading or to assist with venous drainage from a swollen brain.
Wires connected to his chest provided information about his cardiac rhythms, and a tube in his bladder monitored his urine output. Inflatable devices surrounded his calves and intermittently were pumped tight to squeeze blood through the calf veins to prevent clots from forming.
His heart rate was fast, over one hundred twenty, probably from dehydration rather than pain.
Ryan Hannah, M.D., stood across the bed from Claire and nodded slowly. Claire rotated on neurosurgery as a medical student under Dr. Hannah, and as the chairman of surgery, he had tried to convince her to stay at Brighton for her surgical training. At the time, Claire had designs on a more prestigious position in Boston and declined his offer. Having a familiar face and one whom she trusted implicitly gave Claire reassurance. He folded his hands and gave her the update. “His CT scan is mostly okay.”
“Mostly okay?”
Dr. Hannah motioned for her to follow him to a computer monitor on the counter at the nurse’s station. After entering John’s medical record number, the neurosurgeon called up the images of the CT scan. “Look here, Claire.” He pointed to several areas on the scan. “He has a basilar skull fracture and a contrecoup injury to his frontal lobes. You can see evidence of contusion here and here.”
“Is that impressive?”
“Not really.”
“Frontal lobe injury means personality changes?”
“You remember well. But realize that many injuries to this area are silent or temporary.”
“Or permanent.”
“True, but don’t let your knowledge of what might be rob you of hope. We know very little at this point, Claire.”
“Will he be okay?”
Dr. Hannah took her hand. “You know I can’t answer that. The CT scan can appear normal and the patient can have diffuse brain damage from axonal injury.”