Page 4 of Nothing To Lose
My throat burns when I try to force more words out. I just want to be done already. To go back to sleep. To wake up and have this be some kind of twisted nightmare.
"I—I don't remember."
"That can happen sometimes with head injuries," she says gently. "But if you can tell us what you do remember, anything at all, it would be really helpful."
My eyes cut over to the police officer standing at the end of my hospital bed. He's wasting his time.
"It was dark. I was lost. He came up behind me and I blacked out," I say quietly, averting my eyes to my lap, where I've shredded the bandage around my hand.
"So it was ahe?" the officer says, making a note in his handy-dandy notebook.
What?I shrug, wincing because every movement hurts. It feels like I was hit by a truck, not a person who isn’t that much bigger than me. "I mean, I think so? I didn't see them."
The officer gestures to my hands. "Those are some gnarly defensive wounds you have there. You must have fought back pretty hard."
I tuck them beneath the pile of thin, white blankets piled on top of me. They were warm when the nurses covered me in them, but I'm shaking. I can't stop.
Officer What's-his-name sighs and pulls a card from the front pocket of his uniform shirt. "If you remember anything at all, give us a call. I'd like it if you came down to the station to give a proper statement once you've recovered from the shock."
"Okay," I say, but don't reach for the card.
He lays it on the pile of my belongings, sitting in a chair. What's left of my belongings, anyway. My clothes were cut off my body, some of them put into bags that said evidence before they started throwing questions at me. Mostly, I just stared and blinked until there were questions about whether I needed to be examined for a sexual assault. I managed to confirm that wasn’t the case. That’s not what he wanted. I don’t know what he wanted. To humiliate me, confuse me, hurt me… but why?
"Alright, well. Call me to set something up. I'm going to ask your friend some questions before I go, so I'll still be here for a few minutes if you change your mind."
The officer backs out of the room, leaving me with Aisha. She gives me a sympathetic look and walks closer, taking my hand in hers. Despite willing my body to calm down, I can't stop the shaking. It's distracting me from processing the officer's words.
"Friend?"
"Isaac. He’s outside in the waiting room.”
"I don't know an Isaac," I say quietly, thinking hard and worrying over who it might be.
What if he gave them a false name and followed me here to make sure I didn't tell?
"I’m pretty sure that’s what he said his name was. Tall guy, tattoos?"
Okay, not him then.A brief flash of a familiar face looking down at me, black eyes, ink crawling up his neck, flickers through my foggy memory. My name said in a deep, worried tone. The sound of sirens…
That can't be right. He doesn’t know me. It was probably a hallucination.
"He found you and called for the ambulance, then came here to be with you," she says, her tone confused as she looks at me with worry etched across her features. "He's been sitting in the waiting room this entire time."
The shivers racking my body get worse.
"I'm not cold," I tell her, unsure what else to say. I don't want her to feel like she has to keep bringing me blankets.
She gives my hand a tender squeeze. "It's adrenaline. It might take a while to come down, and then you'll be exhausted."
I already am.I'm ready to get out of here and sleep for days.
"Can I go home?"
"We're waiting for the results of your CT, and I still need to finish cleaning and bandaging the cuts that didn't need stitches. It might be a while longer," she says sympathetically.
Her gaze moves to the open door, cocking her head to see out. "You’re sure you don’t know an Isaac? He mentioned you don't know each other well, but now you've got me worried he's some kind of creep or the one that did this to you."
"It wasn't," I blurt without thinking. "I mean… I don't think he had tattoos."
