Building the Family

by Amy DeMeritt

  I try to wrap my arms around her, but the pain shoots through me, and I release a small loud scream and fall backwards, with my arms around my ribs. I groan and sob from the pain.

  “What happened?”

  “She sat up and tried to hug me.”

  “Did you pull her up?”

  “No, I promise.”

  A hand is on my cheek and on my shoulder. “Kayla, breathe, very slowly. Unclench your body.” I try to uncoil, but a new pain shoots through me and I scream out again. “Oh, sweetie, you have to stop clenching your stomach muscles.”

  She places a hand on my hip and grips it while she presses into my shoulder, trying to force my body out of a fetal position. I’m very sensitive on my hips and her gripping my hip seems to have the effect necessary to get my body to relax. My upper body relaxes and she moves her hand from my shoulder down to grab my other hip and turns me back onto my back. She places a hand on my stomach and one on my chest and instructs me through my breathing to help my body to relax and bring my breathing back to where it needs to be. After I’ve stopped panting and my body is relaxed again, she pats my stomach and stands back up.

  “I’m going to order some oral pain medication. Please don’t try to move anymore.”

  “Ok, I’m sorry. Thank you.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I’m sorry this happened to you and you’re in so much pain. I’ll be back.”

  After she leaves, Madison sits back down next to me and takes my hand. She looks so concerned and upset.

  “Maddi, did someone hurt you?” She shakes her head and looks down. She kisses my hand a then leans forward to kiss my lips a moment. “Remember when I told you I want to be a child psychologist?”

  “Yes. You said you want to work with children that had been abused because of someone you knew a long time ago.”

  “In second grade, I found a girl crying in the bathroom and we started talking. After that day, we became best friends. We went everywhere together in school and out of school. We were inseparable. It wasn’t till after being friends for a few months that she told me her parents died when she was a toddler, so she lived with her aunt and uncle, which she didn’t seem to be happy about, but I just thought it was because she wanted her own parents back. Sometimes, she would come to school with bruises on her arms and legs and she would say that she’s a klutz and falls down a lot or said she sleep walks and would bump into stuff at night walking around the house. She spent the night at my place a few times and she never slept walked. It wasn’t till fifth grade that I was old enough to realize what was happening.”

  She pauses and wipes a few tears from her eyes.

  “I didn’t think anyone would do anything if I just told them what I thought was happening since she had never told me, so I decided to try to get proof. My dad hunts and he has these motion cameras that he sets up in the woods to scope out active game trails. I borrowed one and hid it in my friend’s bedroom one day while she was in the bathroom. I waited till I saw new bruises on her and then retrieved the camera.” She swallows hard and wipes tears away again. “Kayla, Genny wasn’t a girl. She was a boy. His aunt and uncle were forcing him to be a girl and were beating him at night and in the mornings. They even…”

  Her face goes pale and she stands up and paces a moment, taking deep breaths and trying to compose herself. After a couple minutes, she sits back down and leans over me, hugging me.

  “Kayla, they were molesting him. They were beating him and molesting him for all those years.” She starts sobbing and I carefully lift my arm on my good side to wrap around her. “Maddi, I am so sorry. You don’t have to finish telling me right now.” She kisses my neck and sits up, wiping tears away and shaking her head. “I immediately brought it to my parents and they called the police. They arrested his aunt and uncle and he was placed in state custody. My parents wanted to adopt him, but after a psych evaluation, the state determined that he was too messed up to be placed in a regular home. So, he was placed in a mental hospital. I wasn’t able to see him for a while, but when I was finally able to visit, he was a zombie. The medication they had him on made him so lifeless. A year after being there, he committed suicide.”

  “Oh, Maddi. I’m so sorry. What happened to the aunt and uncle?” She shakes her head. “They’re still in prison and hopefully will be for life. Once the police started digging, they determined that his parents’ death wasn’t just a freak accident like they originally thought. They had killed his parents so they could have their son. They falsified documents and paperwork to change his identity after they moved to Maryland from Idaho, and somehow, no one figured it out sooner.”

  “That’s horrible. It sounds like something out of a movie. Maddi, are you sure you want to work around stories like that every day? Wont it make you have to remember this pain every time you see one of those broken children sitting in front of you.”

  “Yes, but I think if Gene had received the proper treatment, he would still be here today. I don’t want to see that happen to any more children. I want to be able to help those kids work through their problems and horrors and have the life they were meant to have – one where they are treated with dignity and respect.”

  “I know I told you this before, but you are extraordinarily brave for wanting to do that, Madison.” I try to sit up again, completely forgetting my pain. “God, damn it!” I groan and wince as everything clenches again.

  “You are just going to keep torturing yourself, aren’t you?” Shannon quickly places her hands on me and starts easing me out of my ball of pain. When I’m lying back and relaxed again, she hands me a little plastic cup holding a large oblong white pill and a really tiny round white pill. “Take these; they should help.”

  I know I should probably question what I’m popping, but I don’t care; I just need this pain to stop.

  “I have a special treat for you. But to receive it, I’m going to have to incline your bed. Are you ready?” I inhale deeply and wince a little. “Ok.”

  She smiles and gently places a hand on my shoulder, pressing me firmly against the bed. A moment later, the back of the bed starts to slowly incline. When I’m at about a forty-five-degree angle, my ribs begin to feel pinched and I moan out in pain. She stops and waits a moment.

  “Do you think you can sit up any higher?” I close my eyes a moment and try to concentrate on anything but the pain. It’s just too much. “No, lower.”

  “Sweetie, I can’t let you lay back any lower to eat and drink. It’s not safe. You could choke.”

  I get a sharp stabbing pain, making me scream, and I black out.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  My head jolts up from a sickly pungent smell, but a hand is holding my shoulders down so I can’t sit up. Shannon is leaning over me and has a small tube of something she is holding in front of my nose.

  “What is that? Its foul.” She smiles and pulls it back. “You passed out. These are smelling salts to wake you up. How are you feeling?”

  “Like hell. How long was I out this time?”

  “Only a couple minutes. We need to get you seated up high enough that you can try to eat something. You haven’t had any food in almost two days. I’m going to ask if we can bind your ribs just for a seated position to help lessen the pain. I’ll be right back.”

  “Maddi, I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” She takes my hand and brushes her thumb across my forehead. “For not being able to give you the proper love and affection right now after that horrible story you told me.” Madison smiles and bends down to kiss my lips. “The loving look in your eyes is enough, baby. I want you to get better so we can hold each other in bed. I need to love on you so badly right now.”

  I smile, but before I can say anything, Shannon is coming back in with a thin rectangular box. She pulls out a big white compression wrap out of the box and sets it down next to me.

  “Ok, this is probably going to be painful to get on. If at any point the pain is too much, tell me to stop and we’ll take a
break. I don’t want you blacking out again.”

  “Ok.” She pulls my sheet and blanket down to my waist and looks at me a moment. “Ok, I’m going to stick my hand under your back and try to slide this under you. Try not to contract any muscles; just let me do all of the work.”

  “Wait, can I see what it looks like?”

  She nods and reaches to untie my gown, but then stops and turns to close the door to my room and pulls the curtain around my bed to give us privacy. She looks up at Madison and is about to say something, but I cut her off.

  “She can stay. She’s seen it all, many times.” Madison giggles and blushes and Shannon smiles and releases a small laugh. “Ok, sweetie.” She unties the gown and pulls it apart. I try to lift my head enough to see, but doing so makes my abs clench. Shannon places a hand on my bare stomach and shakes her head. “No clenching.” She places a hand behind my head. “Relax and let me take the weight of your head.” I obey and she lifts my head for me.

  “Shit. Why does it look so bad?”

  The entire mid-section of my left ribcage is completely black and blue and dark red. I also have a big bruise right in the middle of my ribs at the top of my abs. She gently places a hand on the bruise in the middle of my ribs.

  “This is where you were punched.” She slides her hand over to my ribs, making me slightly gasp from a tingling sensation caused by her fingers gently gliding over my skin. “This is where you were struck with his foot. Where your fractures are, and how you were laying when it happened, it looks like he stomped on you and then kicked you.”

  “Where are the breaks?” Her fingers trace over my ribs and she gently shows me where each break and fracture is on the front of my ribs and then gently rubs the side of my ribcage. “You also have a break on one rib around here.” Then she rests her hand on my abs again. “Ready to try to put the brace on?” I groan. “You might as well just ask me if I’m ready to experience excruciating pain again.”

  She smiles and laughs a little bit. She gently rubs my stomach and lays my head back.

  “You’ll be ok. You’re a tough girl.”

  I smile and my cheeks blush. I glance at Madison and she quirks an eyebrow at me in an amused way. It’s the same look she gave me when Carmen was flirting with me the first time she was our waitress.

  Shannon reaches to fix the first tie on my gown at my waist and has to pull the blankets down some. She hesitates and pulls the material back and bends down some. She places her hand on a spot just inside my right hip and traces it while she examines it, making me inhale deeply. She looks up at me with a confused look and my cheeks blush even darker.

  “What happened here? Were you struck right here as well?”

  “Uh, no. That wasn’t a bad marking and there are probably many others.”

  “This bruise looks like it was created by teeth. Did someone bite you?”

  I laugh a little and immediately regret it. She places her hands on my stomach and shoulder again, preventing my body from contracting forward in pain.

  “Yes, but I was in consent of those.” She looks in my eyes like she is trying to read me or something and it makes me very nervous. “Relax your stomach, Kayla.”

  My nerves started to clench my abs and her hand that’s gently resting on my stomach sensed it. But, her hand being on my stomach, her eyes staring into mine, and her ability to sense my nerves, only makes it harder to unclench. She smiles and shakes her head.

  “You are not listening very well.”

  Her fingers just slightly press into my skin and I feel heat shoot up my chest. She looks down at my body again and her eyes scan my entire torso. Her fingers begin to roam as she finds more bite marks. I glance at Madison, who is watching Shannon with a slightly confused and slightly amused look. She also looks a little aroused. I swallow hard and look back to Shannon. She is currently tracing a bite on the top of my left boob and keeps looking between it and the one on the inside of my right hip. She smiles and looks in my eyes.

  “Were there multiple assailants?”

  “Uh, assailants? That makes them sound dangerous or like they did something wrong. I wanted those.”

  “So, there was more than one?”

  “Why? Is this going in my medical record or something? These have nothing to do with the beating I received from Darren.”

  “These are from two different mouths, but look like they were from the same time.” I swallow hard and feel my clit start ticking. “You have several of these on your torso and…” She leans forward and moves my hair to look at my neck. “There are a few bad ones on your neck. Which, looks like a different bite from these other two.” She pulls back some and rests her hand on my stomach again. “So, instead of assailants, we’ll just call them diners. Were there three?”

  I laugh and she quickly presses into me as I start to coil from the pain. After I relax, she stares in my eyes, waiting for an answer.

  “Am I going to have to officially speak on these markings?” She shakes her head and her fingertips just slightly dig into my stomach. “Why are you so good at reading bruises? That was like something off of a forensics TV show or something.” She laughs and licks her lips. “I had to study it in school to be able to recognize domestic abuse cases.”

  “Ok, but do they teach you how to be able to know how many different mouths were used?” She blushes some and visibly swallows. “No, I just have an eye for certain things.”

  The corner of her mouth twitches into a meaningful grin and her hand glides over to the inside of my hip and rubs the bite mark.

  “I, uh. Well, that’s impressive. You are correct.” She smiles and laughs a little. “This weekend?” My eyes get big and she laughs again. “You are a freak of nature.”

  She laughs hard and reaches to start tying my gown, but then stops. Her thumb glides over the top of a bite mark, just barely poking out of the covers on the top of my thigh. She looks up at me a moment with desire all over her face. It makes my clit pulse and I release a small moan. She smiles and licks her lips.

  “Can I check something?”

  My brow scrunches in confusion and her eyes glance at the space between my thighs. I glance at Madison, who is watching with her thumb between her teeth like when I was “punishing” Carmen in the alley. She doesn’t meet my eyes as she is completely fixated on watching what Shannon is doing to me. I can tell by the look on her face that she would want me to say yes.

  “As long as it stays out of the official reports.”

  Shannon smiles and slowly pulls the blanket and sheet down passed my groin and stops about mid-thigh. She pulls the rest of the gown apart and I am now completely naked and exposed to her. She looks my body up and down and smiles in a hungry way. Her fingertips glide over my hips and thighs, tracing the many bite marks I have. Her hand slowly parts my thighs and I gasp from a strong twinge she causes between my legs, which makes me coil in pain. Her hand grips the inside of my thigh and she pushes on my shoulder.

  “Shh… So reactive. No clenching, Kayla. Now, obey me or you’re going to keep having those horrible pains.”

  I release a small moan and Shannon smiles. I glance at Madison and she is grinning and chewing on her thumb. Her face is beet red and she is pressing her thighs together. She is loving this.

  “I thought so.”

  She’s looking at the inside of my thigh and starts tracing the many bites I have between my thighs. Her fingers slowly trail up my thigh and stop just at my bikini line. She looks in my eyes and smiles, licking her lips.

  “One more thing I’d like to check and this will definitely remain out of the official report on your comfort and wellbeing. Can you lay still without reacting?” I moan and swallow hard. “Oh, my god. I’m going to wake up tomorrow and everyone is going to make fun of me for talking in my sleep about some sexy naughty nurse that I just hallucinated about. There is no fucking way this is happening.”

  Shannon laughs and presses her fingers against my slit. She easily slips between my soaki
ng wet lips and rubs up the length of me.

  “You are soaked.” I release a quiet moan, but my stomach starts to clench. She places her other hand on my stomach while leaving her other between my lips, pressed against my clit. “Shh… You don’t obey well, do you?”

  “Oh, shit. This is insane. What kind of medicine did you give me? This is not happening. No, I don’t obey. They obey me.” She laughs and shakes her head. “You are not hallucinating. Do you want me to stop?”

  “I don’t know how not to react.” She smiles and pulls out of me. “Then I should stop because if you clench these amazing abs, you’re going to be in agony, and that level of pain won’t help at all.”

  “She can do it.” We both look over at Madison and she presses a hand against her mouth and shakes her head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.” I smile and take a slightly painful deep breath. “No way this is real. I’m just going to lay here and let this play out. I’m going to wake up tomorrow and… Ooohh, shit.”

  Shannon has reentered me, rubbing up and down my center. She presses two fingers inside me and my abs immediately clench, making me groan. Madison is quickly at my side pushing my shoulder down and placing her other hand on my hip.

  “No fucking way. This is just a really hot dream. Oh shit.” My abs clench and Shannon presses her hand against them. “Unclench, Kayla.”

  The next several minutes are a mix of amazing pleasure and agonizing pain as I struggle not to clench my muscles from the sensations she is erupting in my nervous system. As I start to cum, Madison bends down and kisses me to muffle my moans. After I finish, Shannon rubs her palm over my whole center in a slow gentle circle, making me jerk and spasm and cry out in pained pleasure. She pulls out of me, and a moment later, she is running a towel between my legs.

  Breathlessly, I ask, “What are you doing?” She smiles in a mischievous way. “Getting rid of the evidence.”

  “Did this really just happen?” She laughs and places her hand on my stomach. “Yes, it did.”