Date Rape New York

by Janet McGiffin

  Grazia was watching her arms. They were floating again. Her stomach churned. “I’m sick,” she croaked. A plastic bowl appeared. She vomited. The bowl went away and a tissue wiped her mouth. When she looked up, Detective Cargill was watching her with such sadness that she felt somehow better.

  “I’m sorry about all this,” he said quietly.

  “Time for you to go, Cargill,” said Cindy. “She’s having drug surges. Look at her; she’s watching her arms.”

  “If I leave now, she’ll forget,” Cargill said stubbornly. “Try to remember, Miss Conti. How did you get back to the hotel? The snow was really coming down last night. Do you remember snow?”

  Grazia watched her arms float down to their normal position. “When I try to see last night, it’s a dark hole.”

  “Can you find the taxi driver who drove her back to the hotel?” asked Sophia.

  Cargill shrugged. “Yellow cabs are independent. I could try calling a few cabbies I know but it’s a long shot.” He turned to Grazia. “Here’s another possible scenario. You get drugged somewhere, possibly the Brazilian Bar. Some man brings you to the Hotel Fiorella by taxi or on foot. It’s late so the lobby is empty except for Manuel. The man hands Manuel a bribe. Manuel turns a blind eye while the two of you go into the elevator. Manuel leaves for Italy before his shift is over.”

  Stanley exploded. “The Hotel Fiorella is a boutique hotel, for God’s sake, Russell. Rich people stay there. We don’t hire staff who take bribes.”

  “Manuel is our only witness. He’s also a possible perpetrator, Stanley. Why is he on a plane to Italy?”

  Stanley pulled out his smartphone. “I’ll call his wife. She has to be home. They can’t afford to fly three children to Italy at the drop of a hat.”

  Cargill turned back to Grazia. “Let’s assume you went to the Brazilian Bar and nowhere else. Who did you meet there?”

  “I don’t know. Oh, my head hurts.”

  Cindy cut in. “Time’s up, Detective. You’ve got the possible location of the drugging, the bartender’s name, and a vanished desk clerk. You have detective things to do. Janine has medical things to do before Grazia’s body metabolizes the drug. So you can leave. If we learn anything that will help you, we will phone.”

  Cargill’s voice seemed faint and far away. “If you remember anything more, Miss Conti,” he was saying, “write it down in that journal of yours. Write every thought, every memory that might light up that dark hole in your memory. I’ll be with the medical examiner’s team at your hotel when you’re through here. With luck, they may have a DNA match for you by, say, Tuesday.”

  Janine appeared as soon as Detective Cargill left. She ran her eye down her clipboard. “We need another urine sample.”

  “But I filled a whole jar!” Tears came to Grazia’s eyes, astounding her. She hadn’t cried since her divorce five years before. Now she cried every time someone looked at her!

  Janine answered patiently. “The urine in the jar contains the drug. The lab will test that urine. But the lab has to verify that it is yours. So give us another sample. The lab will compare that to what’s in the jar. If your case goes to court, the information in the rape kit must be absolutely accurate.”

  Bewildered by the overload of medical and legal information, Grazia followed a nurse’s aide to the toilet. She filled the small vessel with urine, and then slowly washed her hands, watching the water run over her fingers without feeling its warmth. She looked at her reflection in the metal-rimmed mirror and examined it minutely: broad, low forehead with stylish bangs concealing one arched brow; large, oval, dark eyes flecked with green; small nose; tanned cheeks and chin; and the wide mouth that usually relaxed into a smile but this morning drooped at the corners. “Do I look the same to others today as I did yesterday?” she thought. “Can a person look the same and yet be entirely different?”

  A lab tech was waiting with a tray of needles, tubes, and jars. Grazia stretched out on the exam table, hearing the tech snap on gloves, trying not to think about the needle going into her arm and the tube after tube of blood being drawn out of her. She moved her foot slightly back and forth to relieve the tension. When the tech had finished, Janine returned.

  “The lab has to know all the drugs you are taking. Then they can isolate any new ones from last night. Tell us the truth. In this situation, you will not be prosecuted if you admit to taking illegal drugs, according to New York state law. Are you using marijuana, heroin, cocaine, or drugs like those?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t do drugs.”

  “Mind if I look?” Janine gently grasped Grazia’s left wrist and slowly pulled her arm straight. She peered at it from all sides, wrist to shoulder. Then she checked the other arm, both legs, and her stomach and abdomen. She made a note on the chart. “Sorry, honey. Women come in here saying they were drugged and raped, but they lie about the drugs they’re on and we can’t figure out how to help them. Do you drink alcohol?”

  “One glass of wine. Or I throw up.”

  “Have you ever used Rohypnol? It’s also called “roofies,” “rope,” or “roaches.” It’s a feel-good drug. People take it to get high. Or they take it after methamphetamine or cocaine to lift the depression. It’s a popular drug for raping women. It’s banned in the US but well known in other countries.”

  “I said I don’t do drugs,” she snapped.

  “What’s in your medicine cabinet at home? Prescription drugs? Antibiotics?”

  “Aspirin.”

  “Sleeping pills?”

  “A friend gave me some for jet lag, but I haven’t taken any.”

  “Throw them away,” said Janine. “A brain as drugged as yours can’t handle sedative-type drugs. You could end up in the emergency room again.” She checked her list. “Are you taking medications for panic or anxiety? Many of these are used on women to cause amnesia.”

  “No.” Grazia didn’t mention that the friend had also offered her anti-anxiety pills, worried that Grazia would have trouble saying goodbye to Francisco at the airport. But Grazia didn’t need them. She hadn’t felt a twinge of emotion. She was fed up with Francisco and his back-and-forth to Belinda. So she hadn’t taken any pills, but they were in her cosmetics case.

  “Did you ever wake up one morning and couldn’t remember the night before?”

  “No.” Her answers were getting shorter as the full meaning behind the questions struck home. She had been raped. She felt herself beginning to withdraw.

  Janine took a Polaroid camera out of a bag. “Time to photograph your bruises.”

  It took a long time. First her face. Then her back, shoulders, elbows, and hips. Grazia lay still, even though every muscle in her body screamed out to leap off the exam table and run out of the emergency room. She couldn’t think about what Janine was doing because then she would have to think about how the bruises got there. She began listening to what was going on in the adjoining curtained cubicles. So much misery in one room on a Sunday morning! How we human beings suffer, she mused, feeling detached. She wondered at her lack of feeling. Did she not care about these sufferers on either side of her? Or were her efforts to deaden her own reactions to her situation making her dead to other people’s misery?

  “Deep blue-purple bruising,” Janine said, breaking into her thoughts. “That means relatively recent. Matches your story.”

  Grazia watched Janine sign each photo on the back and record it in the chart.

  “One more decision,” announced Janine. “We recommend certain tests for sexually transmitted diseases. Your insurance might not pay for them. Our hospital can’t afford to do these for free. What do you want to do?”

  “Do all the tests. I’ll find the money.”

  Chapter 5

  Long after noon, Grazia was finally pulling on her jeans. She felt weak with hunger and resignation. Her face and neck were damp with sweat. It seemed as if her identity had been sucked out of her and deposited into tubes and bottles.

  Janine had taken two t
ypes of samples—toxicology and evidentiary, she had explained. Toxicology samples would pinpoint the drug Grazia had swallowed and any diseases she had acquired from her assailant. Evidentiary samples were what the rapist left behind—his hair, fingerprints, sperm. The lab would get his DNA identity off these samples.

  Janine had done a pelvic exam to find sperm or other fluids. She had run a cotton swab over Grazia’s abdomen, thighs, and inner legs to pick up DNA in semen, spit, blood, sweat, or skin cells left during sex— “touch DNA”, she had explained. She had scraped under Grazia’s fingernails in case Grazia had fought and scratched.

  Grazia had stood on a large paper drape while Janine combed her head and pubic area to release hair or skin left by the man who had raped her. Every sample and test result went into the rape kit for the police to use as evidence when Detective Cargill found him.

  Now, as Grazia tiredly pulled on her clothes, she blurted out the question that had been tormenting her since Sophia had whispered the word that morning. “Am I pregnant?”

  Janine stopped clicking the computer keys and swiveled the stool around to face Grazia. “We did a pregnancy test to see if you were already pregnant when you were assaulted. If you were pregnant, we can’t offer you the Morning-After pill. The lab reported you weren’t pregnant. To find out if you got pregnant when you were raped, you need to wait six days and do a pregnancy test. You’ll be in Italy then so buy a home pregnancy test. It is ninety-seven percent accurate. Or go to your doctor and get a blood test for pregnancy. Or I can give you the Morning-After pill.”

  “Give me the pill.” Being pregnant by a man she didn’t even know was unthinkable!

  “We also tested you for HIV. Negative. You didn’t have AIDS before you were raped. But you might have got AIDS when you were raped. It takes some time for HIV to show up in a blood test.” Janine folded her hands. “Many women who have been raped take one month of HIV medications—just in case—to prevent themselves from getting AIDS.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Then you need to start today or tomorrow. I have to warn you—the side effects are bad. You will feel nauseated and tired. But you won’t get AIDS.”

  “I’ll take the medicine,” Grazia repeated.

  Janine nodded and tapped into the computer. “You will need an HIV test in three months and another test in six months to make sure the medicine worked. Talk to your doctor as soon as you get to Italy.”

  Cindy cut in. “No sex until the results show you’re clean.”

  Sex. The thought was appalling. Still, Grazia mustered the courage to ask, “Can I still have children?”

  “Your pelvic exam showed no damage. You should be able have all the babies you want.”

  Relief was so profound that tears filled her eyes. The fear that had brought her to the emergency room—that she had been physically damaged by the rape—was easing. She still didn’t know if she had got pregnant or acquired diseases, but those answers were coming from the lab. She asked the next hard question. “What was I drugged with, do you think?”

  “The toxicologist will know by tomorrow. You don’t have a doctor in New York, do you? I’ll have the lab send me the results. Call me tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Which drug do you think it was?” Grazia was desperate for one fact to cling to in this sea of unknowns.

  “Rohypnol. You came in with typical Rohypnol symptoms—drowsiness, confusion, and dizziness. You had trouble coordinating your arms and legs, and you kept forgetting where you were. And you have anterograde amnesia—you lost your memory of what happened after a certain time. Rohypnol remains in the urine for seventy-two hours and you came in after twelve so the lab will find it, if it’s there. Just in case, we tested for two other common amnesiac drugs—ketamine and GHB, or gammahydroxybutrate.”

  “When will I get the test results?” Grazia demanded.

  “Some tests take weeks. I’ll have them sent to your doctor in Italy. Can you give me your doctor’s details?”

  Grazia couldn’t recall her doctor’s name. Worried, she reached for her phone in the big Gucci handbag that Francisco had given her. The bag was one of his many lavish gifts, this one after he had not shown up one night and she had waited for hours in the hotel room before he called her. Grazia clung to the bag, wanting Francisco to be there and comfort her, even though she knew he wouldn’t. She found her smartphone and scrolled through the names until she recognized her doctor’s name. She read off the address.

  “Can you tell me what tests you did?” she asked, pulling out her Monet journal and pen.

  Janine consulted the computer screen. “Besides for various drugs that you might have been given, we tested for hepatitis B and C, for several venereal diseases, and for herpes.”

  She wrote that down. It took a lot of concentration. “When will I get my memory back? I need to help that detective find this man before I leave on Friday.”

  Janine and Cindy exchanged a glance. “You won’t get all your memory back,” said Janine, gently. “Rohypnol blocks the brain from making memories. You didn’t forget last night. You never stored it in your memory.”

  “I’ll never remember?” Grazia stared at her in disbelief. She looked at Cindy. “Is this true?”

  Cindy nodded. “You may piece together a few facts by talking to people. But you won’t remember anything after the drug took effect.” Cindy put a hand on Grazia’s arm. “Don’t waste energy trying to find out what happened. Concentrate on recovering from this awful experience.”

  Grazia exploded in frustration. “How can I recover from an experience if I can’t remember what it was! How can I protect myself if I can’t remember the man’s face!”

  “Every woman who is drugged and raped feels like you—helpless and frightened,” Cindy reassured her. “Every woman thinks if she can discover her attacker’s identity, she can make this fear go away. I understand your need for closure, but lighting up that dark hole in your memory will bring you into contact with this man. And there are consequences. If you look for this man, and you find him, you may not be strong enough to face him. You could delay your own recovery. If you wait until you’re stronger, you’ll be better able to decide if you even want to do this.”

  Grazia didn’t want to hear that. She turned to Janine. “Do you think I can eventually figure out who this man is?”

  Janine lifted her hands. “Maybe. Wherever you were, you met people that night before you were drugged. You talked to them. After you swallowed the Rohypnol, you had twenty to thirty minutes before the drug took over your brain. You were getting fuzzy during that time, but your brain was storing conversations, people’s faces, things happening around you.”

  “But I can’t remember anything at all!” Grazia burst out in despair. “I can’t even remember talking to Manuel before I left, or writing his directions in my journal.”

  “You’ve had a shocking experience,” Cindy explained. “Your brain could be blocking every memory associated with this event until you’re strong enough to handle them. It’s called psychogenic amnesia or dissociative amnesia. After you return to your family and friends and start to feel safe, you may begin to remember. Some women get flashes of events even from when they were completely drugged,” she added. “They describe it as intuition. But forget this guy. Get back on your feet. Go on with your life.”

  “But I need to remember his face so I can protect myself if he comes after me again!”

  “This man is a criminal,” said Cindy flatly. “Let Detective Cargill deal with him. Cargill has had a few personal problems this year, but he’s a good detective. And he’s got a score to settle with Nick, so he’ll push this to the finish.” She pulled out a card and handed it to Grazia. “Do you want to make an appointment to talk? How about tomorrow? You’re a very self-contained person, Grazia. You keep yourself under tight control. You need to talk out your feelings. Otherwise this experience could cause you psychological problems the rest of your life.”

  Grazia didn’t
want to think about the future. She just wanted Detective Cargill to arrest this man. But Cindy’s advice had helped her cope all morning; she had to trust that talking to Cindy tomorrow would help her in other ways. They settled on ten o’clock.

  “Call the Crisis Center if you feel anxious or you can’t sleep,” advised Cindy. “Now I’ll get you back to your hotel in a taxi. Take a hot bath, and get in bed. You will feel groggy for couple of days and the AIDS medications will make you tired and maybe nauseated. Flush the drug out of your system by eating healthy foods—soups, salads. Drink lots of herbal tea and juice.”

  “No caffeine, no alcohol,” added Janine. “Caffeine can make your heart beat faster which mimics anxiety. Alcohol can make you depressed. And the AIDS medicine could make you feel very tired and nauseated.”

  Grazia’s whole body ached. She longed to escape the emergency room and its cubicles of tragedy. She needed a familiar face and a familiar language. When she got to the hotel, she would call housekeeping. Sophia would come. “Will Detective Cargill really know who this man is by Tuesday?” she dared to ask.

  “It’s possible,” Cindy said. “He’s expediting this because the chief security officer at your hotel used to be a cop and is pushing for an investigation. And the main suspect is the reception desk clerk. Otherwise, the medical examiner wouldn’t give you the time of day. You’re not an American citizen, you can’t remember what happened, and you leave for Italy in five days.”

  “Manuel didn’t do this. We are friends!” exploded Grazia.

  Cindy grimaced. “Friends are typical drug-facilitated perpetrators. You trust a friend so you let down your guard; you don’t keep your hand over your drink. Bingo, you’re doped and in trouble.” She stretched and got to her feet. “Come on, let’s find a taxi.”