by Kim Purcell
She handed the phone back to Stephanie. It was more reassuring than she ever could have imagined to hear Katya’s firm, happy voice.
The nurse spoke to Stephanie. “The doctor says she’s an emancipated minor, which means we only need her consent for treatment. I have a form for her to sign.”
Stephanie explained and Hannah signed her name, her real name, for the first time in months. She looked down at the clipboard. She was very businessy, this nurse, so unlike Hannah’s mother, who had been so warm, she often hugged the patients. Some people said her mother made them feel better by just touching them. This nurse was not that kind of nurse. She asked Hannah what hurt and wrote everything down: her eye, her nose—her whole face, really—her right elbow and wrist, her left hip, and her chest. Then she checked Hannah’s eyes, heart rate, and blood pressure.
“The doctor will be right in,” the nurse said, and left the room.
Hannah rested on the inclined bed, her chest aching from the exertion of leaning back. She closed her eyes. Her uncle was safe. Sergey had found a way to get him released. Maybe he really did love her, like he said, in his own sick way. Or maybe he was trying to make up for what he’d done to her parents.
A sudden noise made Hannah sit up, and she cried out with pain. But it was only the metal on the blue curtain chattering as the curtain opened and a doctor, middle-aged with short blonde hair, entered. She came up to Hannah’s bed and introduced herself, an American name Hannah forgot instantly. Stephanie began translating for her, even though she understood everything the doctor said.
“I’m so sorry this happened to you,” the doctor said, looking down at her kindly. “But we’re going to get you fixed up.” The doctor asked her what hurt and Hannah answered. “We’ll check everything out, do some X-rays, and I want you to have an MRI because of the damage to your head. Did you go unconscious?”
Hannah nodded.
Then the doctor asked her some of the same questions the police officers had asked, like who had done this to her, and what her living situation had been like since she’d come to America. And then she asked if Hannah had been raped.
“No,” Hannah said, then looked away as she remembered what Sergey had done, the feeling of him on top of her. Maybe he’d figured she owed him.
“You can tell us,” Stephanie said.
Hannah hesitated but then told her what Sergey had done. “It was my fault,” she added at the end. “I didn’t say no at first. He couldn’t stop.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Stephanie said firmly. “None of this is your fault.”
Hannah had a hard time believing that, but it was nice to hear. The doctor asked if she’d showered since it had happened. “No,” Hannah said, embarrassed at her smell. She’d been stuck in the garage after Lillian had attacked her and then Paavo had come—there hadn’t been any chance to shower.
“Good,” the doctor said, to her surprise. “We’ll take some samples and do an examination in case there was penetration.”
“You think she was raped?” Stephanie asked.
“It was no rape,” Hannah said to the doctor in English.
The doctor looked down at her sympathetically. “I’m going to check your whole body, and I’ll need to do a quick vaginal exam as part of that.”
She must have looked frightened, because Stephanie explained softly. “We want to put these people in jail,” she said, “for what they did to you.”
“Oh.” Hannah was confused, but she took off the shiny blue pants and the bloodstained white shirt, and put on the gown with Stephanie’s help. Stephanie put the clothes in a plastic bag.
Stephanie held her hand and the nurse came in to help while the doctor swabbed her stomach and checked her body. Hannah’s face and chest and right hip throbbed. But she tried not to think of the pain. She thought of Katya’s voice, remembering her laughter when she said the soccer team would walk her home. Hannah couldn’t believe how much she had missed hearing that laugh.
Once they were done with the samples, they brought her in for X-rays, and she lay on the cold X-ray machine, shifting with pain. The doctor looked at the large gray sheets and said two ribs were broken. Her nose, too. The doctor numbed her face, poking a needle in three separate spots, pressing her finger to each one, asking if she could feel it, and then she pulled on her nose, one quick motion to straighten it. It was strange to be without pain while she felt the bones shifting numbly inside her.
After that, the doctor stitched up her lip. Hannah breathed in the doctor’s minty breath and stared into her blue eyes just inches from her own, noticing the focused yet gentle nature of the doctor’s gaze. She was the kind of doctor Hannah wanted to be.
When the doctor was done, she said, “This’ll heal up real nice and you’ll be good as new.” It was nice to hear, even if she didn’t quite believe it.
The doctor taped up her chest, providing more relief than Hannah could have imagined. Then Hannah sat in a long white tube machine called an MRI that checked her brain with beeps and squeals. The doctor said she had a concussion and she’d have to be careful not to bang her head, but it would heal within a month.
Finally, the doctor handed her some forms to sign and she was free to go.
Stephanie pulled some clothes from a backpack: underwear, a stretchy cotton bra, and a blue sweat suit, which she said wouldn’t put any pressure on her injuries.
“We can keep your other clothes,” Stephanie said, “if you want.”
Hannah nodded. “They are from my babushka.”
At least it wasn’t gray, Hannah thought, while Stephanie helped her put the sweat suit on. They brought a wheelchair and Stephanie pushed her through the large white room. Nurses and doctors smiled down at her. She wanted to stay.
The large double doors to outside swooped open automatically. The sun was low in the sky now—it had been high above her head when she’d arrived. The police officer led them toward the police car, which was waiting right by the entrance. The male police officer was gone. Maybe Paavo had already killed him.
“Where is the other officer?” she asked Stephanie in Russian, glancing back at the doors to the hospital emergency room. She could make it back inside if she ran.
“What’s wrong?” Stephanie asked.
“Paavo could be here.”
Stephanie explained to the female officer that Hannah was worried because the other officer was gone.
“It’s okay. He had to go home to his family. His daughter has a birthday party tonight. Don’t worry. I’ve got you,” the female officer said, smiling like that would be reassuring. Hannah wished the woman seemed tougher. She wanted her nurses to be soft and her police officers to be tough, not the other way around. There were no female police officers in Moldova, at least none she’d seen. She hoped the woman knew how to shoot a gun.
Stephanie helped her into the backseat of the police car and climbed in next to her. “It’s normal to feel nervous. You’ve gone through a terrible ordeal. But I promise, we won’t let anything else happen to you.”
How could anyone promise that?
The officer drove down the road, and Hannah looked out the back window while she asked Stephanie the question that had been burning in her. “What will happen to me now?”
“You’ll stay in the safe house. They will try to track down Paavo Shevchenko and the Platonovs and proceed with litigation. You’ll have to be a witness in the trials if you want to stay in America. And in the next weeks and months,” Stephanie explained, “I’ll help you go through the legal process of getting your documents, if you want to stay, and help you transition to a regular life. I can also help you go back home if that’s what you decide.”
Hannah didn’t know what regular life was anymore. Even in Moldova, everything would be different. She’d love to see Katya and her uncle, but she didn’t want to
return worse off than when she’d left, and even though she missed Vladi, she didn’t want to live with him in the village. He didn’t even like living there. Maybe he could come to America. Life would be better for him here too.
“If I decide to stay, I can go to school?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“Will I be able to bring family here?”
“Eventually.”
“I want to stay,” she said firmly.
“You don’t need to make any decisions right now.”
Hannah looked down at the carefully wrapped present from Colin, which the police officer had grabbed for her on the way out of the hospital. The Santa Claus paper was thick, good quality, and he’d put a lot of tape on it. She wanted to open it, but not here, in the police car. Maybe at the safe house.
She looked out the windshield and saw something shimmering. Like water.
“Is this the beach?” she asked Stephanie, pointing ahead just to be sure that she wasn’t seeing things.
“Yes.”
“Can we go closer? I’ve never seen the ocean.”
“You’ve lived here for six months and you haven’t seen the beach?”
Hannah shook her head slowly.
“How many times did you leave the house?”
The Russian store. The park with the horses. The run. Maggie’s school. “Four times, not including driving from the airport. And I often went into the backyard.” Did taking out the garbage count? “One time I went to the neighbor’s backyard.” She squeezed Colin’s present in her hand. It was a long cardboard tube, but she had no idea what it was. Maybe a magazine.
Stephanie shook her head in anger, then leaned forward and asked the police officer if they could go by the beach. They drove down a steep road to a busy highway right next to sand that stretched on and on, until it finally met a bluish-green glistening ocean with long curling waves dotted with surfers, just like in the movies.
The police car pulled into a parking lot and stopped right next to the sand. Hannah asked to open the window, and the officer pushed a button to slide the back window down. The smell of fish and salt filled her nostrils. She closed her eyes and listened to the sound of the crashing waves.
“You want to get out?” the officer asked.
Hannah did want to get out, but she was afraid to leave the safety of the car, even though she hadn’t seen anyone following them. She looked back at the road.
“If you’re not ready—” Stephanie began.
Hannah felt angry at herself then. Angry at her fear. Was she really going to tell the officer to drive away from the beach, a place she’d dreamed of going for the past six months?
“I am ready,” Hannah said in English, and opened the door.
She walked slowly across the sand, holding on to Colin’s present. She kept walking and didn’t let herself look back, not even when her fear was screaming at her to stop, get back in the car, hide. Her shoes sank down and filled with warm sand. She walked on.
She made it to the edge of the water. The Santa Claus paper on the present was hard to get off with her cracked fingernails, but finally, she removed the tape. Inside the tube was a rolled-up piece of paper from Colin’s sketchbook. The ripped fringe was still at the top. She unrolled it and took in a sudden breath of sea air.
It was a black-and-white pencil drawing of her on the day she had thought he didn’t recognize her, after Lillian had chopped off her hair. She was framed in the window, one palm pressed against the glass. Her hair came up in uneven tufts and her eyes were desperate and sad, but her chin was held high. Hannah stared at the picture. In it, she recognized her own bravery. Her strength.
She kicked off her shoes, pulled the sweatpants up, and walked into the water. A wave splashed up over her feet and the bottoms of her legs. Cold. Beautifully cold. Like the cold showers she used to take in Moldova.
She squished her toes down into the wet sand and lifted her chin up. Once again, she was a girl with possibilities.
Author’s Note
When I taught English as a Second Language, I heard too many stories about immigrants being mistreated in America. Even though Hannah and all the characters in this book are made up, I based them on real-life people. It saddens me that many children, teens, and adults are slaves today, even in America. Government estimates are that 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked into the United States every year. At least half of them are children and teens.
They are hidden in warehouses, brothels, and regular American neighborhoods. They are kept imprisoned not with locks or bars but with words and fear. They are America’s modern-day slaves.
If they escape, they rarely go to the police. Often they’re too afraid. Sometimes they don’t realize that what they experienced was a crime. Mostly they just want to move on and forget what happened to them.
If they do go to the police, they have to be willing to face their abusers in court in order to get a visa to stay here. The traffickers’ threats make this a terrifying option for many and could result in retaliation against their families back home. Going home is also not a safe option. As a result, there have been far too few convictions in the United States.
My greatest hope is that we can end slavery in all its forms, including sex slavery and domestic slavery, in this country and around the world. Children and teens should never have to endure this kind of abuse. As a result, I’m donating twenty percent of whatever I make from this book to organizations that help trafficking victims like Hannah. If you’d like to find ways to help girls who are trafficked into this country, go to my website: kimpurcell.com.
Thank you.
Thank you . . .
To my husband, Gavin, who believed in this book from the beginning and, most importantly, believed in me.
To my daughters, who provided the inspiration for the children in this book, and who give me so much joy and laughter every day.
To my sisters, Tara and Jenn, my dad, and my mom for their loving support.
To my cousin, Charlotte Dubec, who let me stay with her in Moldova, introduced me to her Moldovan friends, and helped me in endless ways with this book.
To my agent, Kate Lee, for her wonderful notes on draft after draft of this book and for reading it more times than any reasonable writer would hope for.
To my editor, Kendra Levin, for recognizing the promise in this book and the need for people, especially teens, to read a book about modern-day domestic slavery, and for challenging me to stretch myself as a writer.
To writer Jennifer Castle, for reading three drafts (or more) of this book, for giving amazing feedback, and for being such a wonderful friend.
To my early readers and fellow writers Susan Merson, Barbara Bottner, Justine Lambert, Kenneth Nowell, J. R. Hevron, Anna Van Lenten, Molly Castelloe, Dara Schlissel, Delina Codey, Kathryn Purcell, Jake Purcell, Florine Gingerich, Elif Cercil, and Tali Noimann, who gave me wonderful feedback at various stages of this book.
To John Rechy, whose writing workshop and lessons on suspense have been unforgettable.
To Keren Taylor and WriteGirl, who empower teen girls and give them the strength to avoid exploitation and who encouraged me to write this book in the beginning.
To Gurmukh Kalsa, who taught me more than anyone else about how someone overcomes fear.
To the many housekeepers, nannies, Russians, and Moldovans I interviewed for this book, including Ally Fedorov, Vladimir Wexler, Adelina Castillo Garcia, Viorica Damian, Aksana Plotnikava, Alina Radeanu, and Elvira Rusalova-Robles.
To all the nonprofit agencies that combat trafficking, especially La Strada, the Salvation Army, and Safe Horizon, for aiding in my research and for helping so many people like Hannah.
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