“Good.” The cop nodded. “That would be very helpful. I’m sorry that this happened to you. Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital? Just to get checked out? Make sure there is no permanent damage and that you have the painkillers you need?”
“I’ll get something tomorrow if I need it. I just want to sleep now.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
It was an uncomfortable night. Micah thought more than once that she should have listened to the opinions of the first responders and gone to the hospital. Or at least to a doctor or clinic to get some painkillers. As it was, all she had in the house were over-the-counter pain pills, and none of those were very strong. She didn’t generally medicate for pain. She just powered through the occasional headache or twisted ankle, preferring not to take anything.
But the pain from the unexpected attack was not like anything she had experienced before. It hurt to move, but her body was stiffening up and it hurt to stay still. She couldn’t get comfortable. She wanted to sleep, but after all of the people left, she found that she couldn’t. Her brain didn’t want to deal with the attack, but her body was letting her know that it wasn’t going to forget that quickly.
Sometime during the night, she managed to drag herself to the bathroom to swallow a few aspirin. Then she lay on the fuzzy bathmat for some indeterminate period, unable to raise the energy to return to her bedroom. The kitten came and meowed over her a few times, nudging her and sniffing her face, and eventually curling up on the bathmat beside Micah, purring and snuggling into Micah’s body.
❋
She made it back to her bed sometime around dawn. She knew she wasn’t going to be working at the office. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to do anything at all. She’d have to call in sick, maybe even explain what had happened. If she did go back to work in a day or two, she would have to explain the bruises then anyway. She wasn’t going to be able to walk in without anyone noticing she’d been attacked.
Micah awoke and reached for her phone. It was still in her pocket, and she was still wearing her street clothes, not her pajamas. The phone was nearly out of juice, but Micah at least managed to read the time. She plugged it in and waited for it to charge up a bit. Then she would call in to work.
She felt feverish and unwell. Not just like she had been hurt, but like she was sick with the flu. Everything hurt. She was tired, such a heavy tiredness that she felt weighed down, pinned to the bed.
She clearly should have gone to the hospital. She could barely turn over on the bed to ease the pain on one side of her body, let alone get up to take more painkillers and take care of herself.
And the kitten. She had asked a policeman or paramedic to feed her the night before, but she was going to need to be fed again. It wasn’t fair to the kitten that she should go hungry because Micah had been hurt. It wasn’t her fault.
Getting herself from the bedroom to the kitchen where the kitten’s food and dishes were seemed like an impossible prospect. It was farther away than the bathroom, and Micah wasn’t sure how she was going to get herself there again.
The phone was charged enough for her to make a call to Kwong and give him the news that she had been mugged the night before and was too sore to get in. He made appropriately shocked and soothing noises, assuring her that she could rest and they could manage without her for a day.
For a day. Micah wasn’t sure whether she’d be able to get back to the office in a week.
But she left it at that. She’d deal with him again the next day, when she was feeling incrementally better. Maybe after she’d taken a painkiller. She lay on her bed, breathing in gasps as if she’d been running instead of just making a phone call. She wanted to go to sleep. But going to sleep wasn’t going to help her.
Micah tried to control her breathing and settle herself down again. If she breathed through the pain and was calm, she could make another phone call. She didn’t know what she was going to say, but there was no one else to call.
She tapped the speed dial and waited while it rang. Were they home? Or would they be out shopping or running some other errand? Surely at least one of them would be home.
Eventually, the phone was picked up, and she could hear her mother’s voice. “Micah? Are you okay? Is something wrong?”
Micah tried to laugh, but it hurt too much. Of course Marianna suspected that something was wrong. Micah never called her during the day. It would take an emergency for her to make a personal call on company time.
“Mom, can you come over? I’m not feeling well. I need help.”
“Yes, of course! What’s wrong? What happened?”
“There was a burglar,” Micah wasn’t even sure how to start. She didn’t know what to tell them. How to explain about the intruder and the attack.
“Oh, my goodness! Are you hurt? Did you call the police?”
“I talked to the police. But today… I need help with the kitten. And… something for the pain.”
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear,” Marianna was muttering, doing something noisy in the background, and Micah didn’t know how much she had heard.
But it didn’t matter. As long as she came over, she could see what Micah needed. They’d work it out.
She heard her father’s baritone in the background.
“She’s hurt, Cole! She was attacked by a burglar!”
“What?” He snatched the phone from her and spoke into the receiver. “Micah? Is that right? You were attacked?”
“Yes. I’m okay. But… I could use some help.”
He swore angrily. “We’ll be right there, baby. Hang on.”
He hung up. Micah stared at her phone.
She couldn’t remember him ever calling her ‘baby’ or any other pet name before.
❋
As Micah had told the policeman, no one had a key to her house, including her parents, so when they arrived, Micah was going to have to let them in. She didn’t know how she was going to manage that. If she couldn’t make it to the kitchen to feed that cat, how was she going to get to the door to unlock it for them?
But she needed to. There was no way for them to get in to help her unless she unlocked the door. Micah crawled painfully out of bed. It was a long way to the door, but it would take her parents at least ten minutes to get there. Maybe longer. Her mother would have to find her purse and her keys and anything else she thought important to bring to take care of Micah. It might even take her half an hour to get all of her things together. If Micah had forty minutes, could she get to the door?
It would have made a funny skit on the TV or stage, the way that Micah inched along the floor, racing at a snail’s pace. Every movement hurt. And when she reached the door, she was going to have to find a way to get up to unlock it, and she wasn’t sure her spinning head would let her stand upright.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Micah. Honey. We’re here, sweetie. Micah, open your eyes.”
Micah pried her eyes open and tried to focus on the blurry shape over her. Marianna. She knew the voice. Everything else seemed hazy, like they had brought the fog inside with them.
“She’s awake,” Marianna said quietly. “We should get an ambulance, don’t you think?”
“See how she is first. She shouldn’t have tried to get up.”
Micah held her mother’s hand. It was warm and silky smooth. Her knuckles were enlarged. How had Micah not noticed that before? Marianna never complained about her health, but she was getting older, things were starting to wear out.
“How did you get in?”
“Your father.”
Micah wondered whether he had kicked the door in. It was too cold. The door would have to be fixed right away; the weather had been so wintry the last few days. And Micah didn’t want the kitten sneaking out through a door that didn’t shut properly.
“Meow…”
“Cole will feed the cat. Don’t you worry. The kitten is fine.”
“Okay.” Micah closed her eyes and rested her head. “Where am I?”
She felt beneath her with the other hand. It would seem that she was back on her bed again, though she was sure she had made it at least a few feet down the hall.
“You’re in your own bed, dear. Are you okay? Where does it hurt?”
“Everything hurts.” Micah moaned a little. She didn’t like to show weakness in front of anyone, but Marianna was her mother. If Micah could be human in front of anyone, it was Marianna.
“Oooh,” Marianna stroked Micah’s long hair. “When did you last take something? I brought painkillers.”
“I don’t know. Last night. It was dark.”
“What did you have?”
“Just aspirin.”
Marianna clucked. “You need something stronger than that. You’re black and blue, you poor thing!”
Micah normally didn’t like anyone, even Marianna, touching her, but she abandoned herself to her mother’s ministrations, comforted by her soothing touch and words. Marianna left for a moment to get her a glass of water and some painkillers and, when she returned, helped to prop Micah up a little on pillows so that she could drink the water rather than just dumping it over herself.
“Thank you.”
“Your mama will take care of you, honey. I’m glad you called. I can’t imagine you just lying here by yourself, in so much pain. You should have had them take you to the hospital last night.”
“Didn’t want anyone touching me,” Micah murmured, closing her eyes.
“Well, sometimes we have to put up with a little bit of discomfort in order to get better. You’re a scientist; you know that. People don’t heal broken bones or ruptured kidneys just by lying in bed.”
“They can,” Micah argued.
“They don’t,” Marianna told her firmly, just as certain. “You need to have a doctor look at you and make sure that everything is okay.”
“No. I’m okay.”
Marianna tsked and shook her head.
Cole returned to the bedroom. “Your kitten is just fine,” he told her. “She’s lying in a patch of sunshine to sleep off her breakfast.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
He sat on the edge of the bed, making it rock. Micah tried to keep her seasickness at bay.
“Now, tell me all about what happened. I want to know every detail. Have police reports been made? What have they found out?”
“I had the police here both times. I don’t think they’ve found anything yet; it’s too soon.”
“Both times?”
“Well, first there was the burglary.”
She described the incident to him, from the time she had come up the sidewalk and seen the footprints filling in until the police had checked the house, walked her in, and made sure she was safe for the night.
“Strange.” Cole meditated on this. “Doesn’t sound like a normal break and enter. If it was, they would have at least taken the laptop and tablet. Your television is crap, no self-respecting burglar would have bothered with that, but the other electronics… easy to fence. Quick money.”
“My TV is not crap!”
“Yes, it is,” he asserted. “Maybe like he said, they were interrupted by a neighbor returning home. But it’s still pretty strange. They could have taken the tablet and computer with them, even if they spooked. But then to show up again last night…”
“I don’t know if it was the same person.”
“Of course it was. Too much of a coincidence otherwise. Did you get a look at him? Tell me everything you remember.”
Micah went through the story slowly, but there wasn’t much to tell. Checking out the backyard to be sure the house was secure, getting knocked down and whaled on, and then rescued by the police. The whole thing was over in a space of minutes or even seconds. Micah had not been able to fight back against someone so much heavier than she was, especially after having been taken off-guard.
“I taught you how to fight,” Cole pointed out.
“I know. But… I guess I’m out of practice, and I didn’t have any time to react. Before I knew there was anyone there, I was on my back and he was punching me.”
“You couldn’t get any sense of his face or body? You’re trained in this, Micah; you know faces and builds.”
“I know… but he was dressed in winter gear. Poofy coat, balaclava, gloves. I couldn’t see any skin. I couldn’t see what his body shape was under the coat.”
“You know it was a man.”
“Well… I guess so.” Micah thought about it. How did she know it had been a man? Had she been able to tell by his body shape? His big hands? Had he said something to her? Grunted? What had given away his sex? “I guess… he was heavy. But he didn’t move like he was weighed down. Not bulky. His hands… they were big, hard.”
“Yes…?”
“I don’t know what else. I’m not sure what else I might have seen or sensed. It all happened so fast.”
“But it is over now. It isn’t happening fast now. You can think about each thing separately. Analyze it. Picture it in your mind like a movie or slide show that you can slow down.”
Micah wished she weren’t so dizzy so that she could focus on it better. She tried to do as he had said, slowing it down in her head, taking a look at it like a series of snapshots instead of the high-speed thriller it had been. She tried to imagine what it would be like to draw him. She had seen only the planes of his mask, but they followed the same planes as his face. She couldn’t see his mouth and nose under them, but they had been there, out of sight, the elastic knit clinging to them. In ways, it obscured, but in other ways, it couldn’t hide the structure of his face.
She saw his eyes for a moment through the holes of the mask. It had been dark, but his irises and the skin of his eyelids had been light.
“He was white,” she said. “Blue eyes.”
“Good,” Cole approved. “Height? You’re a tall girl. Was he taller than you? Shorter?”
“My height or taller… I think.”
She tried to remember that initial rush of motion before she realized she was being attacked. Had he come at her low? High? Where had he initially hit? It was hard to tell, just picturing it in her mind, what his full height had been. Most of the time, he’d had her on the ground.
“My height. I think.”
“Your height, but heavier. Male suspect. Caucasian. Blue eyes. Eyelashes? Eyebrows? Were they dark or fair?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure.” Micah shook her head. “And even if they were dark, people often have eyelashes and eyebrows that are darker than their scalp hair.”
“True.”
“I don’t think he said anything. Grunted, maybe, but I don’t think he told me anything. He didn’t call me by name, or say something in an accent or another language.”
“That would be too easy,” Cole said, humor in his voice.
“Yeah. It would be nice if he was a one-armed man with an accent. And who wasn’t wearing a mask.”
“Better yet, if he was a one-armed man and you pulled off his prosthesis,” Cole agreed. “Serial numbers.”
Micah chuckled, but it hurt the muscles of her stomach, so she stopped. If she’d only been able to pull off his mask. Or she had a surveillance camera that had picked up more details. A lot of people had those now, doorbell and porch cameras. So they knew when someone approached the house. She didn’t like to spend money on things that were not necessary, but maybe a burglar alarm and surveillance equipment were not luxuries. Maybe they were a necessity.
“She’s tired, Cole,” Marianna said. “Those painkillers are starting to kick in. She needs to sleep.”
“She might still have more to tell me.”
“She’ll be too drowsy. She can try to tell you more later. When she’s had a chance to sleep.”
“The earlier, the better. These cases are often solved based on what can be discovered in the first forty-eight hours. It has already been that long since the burglary. We don’t want to wait on this.”
“You’re going to have to wait for now,”
Marianna told him firmly. She stroked Micah’s hair again. “Go to sleep, sweetie. The questions will still be there when you wake up again. Your father will help to catch this guy.”
Micah didn’t have the energy to agree or disagree. Drowsiness was taking over. Her eyelids were getting heavier and heavier, and she couldn’t hold the picture of her attacker in her mind. The image slid away from her like slippery soap. And as she tried to chase it down mentally, she lost track of consciousness.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Micah slept and woke several times throughout the day, but mostly she slept. She didn’t know how much medication Marianna was giving her, but it was enough that she was not so uncomfortable and could not stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time. She didn’t have the energy or desire to tell Marianna to cut down the dose. Maybe after she’d had a day and another night to recover, she would feel better.
She awoke to Marianna straightening the sheets and leaning over her to check her pulse.
“Oh, sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to wake you up.” But Marianna didn’t seem too concerned that she had done so. “How would you like to have a nice warm bath to soak those sore muscles and joints and get out of those clothes? We can get you into some nice comfy jammies, and I’m sure you’ll rest better tonight.”
“No.” Micah clutched her clothes to her as if Marianna might try to rip them off. “No, I’m okay.”
“You don’t want to keep sleeping in your work clothes. I can get the bath filled and help you into the bathroom, and then you can get undressed yourself. How about that?”
Micah swallowed. She looked at Marianna, remembering her difficult trip to the bathroom the night before, and the occasional trips during the day when Cole had pretty much carried her into the bathroom. “I don’t know if I can do that.”
“You’ll feel better if you can. You’re doing much better than you were. You’re not in as much pain, are you? And you’ve had a little bit of nourishment.”
Marianna had, of course, made Micah some chicken soup and helped her to eat it. The kitten had been very interested in the whole process and cuddled up in Micah’s lap afterward, purring, her tummy full and warm with her own meal.
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