Just What I Needed

July 6 (Evening)

For the second night in a week, I found myself walking through the emergency room sliding glass doors.

I walked up to the triage desk to get checked in but when the nurse asked me why I was there, I couldn't find the words to explain what happened.

"A boy attacked her while she was on her way home," Holly spoke up for me. "He hit her head on the ground."

"Ok, hun, you're going to come in right away, ok?" the triage nurse's expression softened and she led us in through the triage section to a curtained enclosure in the emergency department. She slid the curtain closed around Holly and me. The sound of beeping monitors and people speaking in other curtained enclosures encroached on our small space.

"Would you like me to call the police on your behalf, hun?" the nurse asked as she helped me lift my feet up onto the hospital bed and started setting up the heart rate monitor.

"Ok," I responded. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to talk to the police. The thought of it was intimidating and as much as I knew I should, I didn't really want to recount the event. I wished I could just forget all about it. But if I didn't say anything Scotty could come back again or worse, he could target a new victim.

"What are you thinking about?" Holly asked.

"I'm thinking about whether I'll still be able to train if I have a concussion. I'm thinking about how this would never have happened if Nicky were around to protect me. I'm thinking about what I did to make Scotty so angry at me and why he couldn't just leave me alone..."

"Ok, well first of all, you did nothing to make Scotty target you. He's just a psychopathic predator. It took me a long time and some therapy to figure that out."

"You went to therapy?"

Holly nodded.

"But... why didn't you say anything? Why didn't you tell Kari or me?"

"I was ashamed. I thought like you did. I thought if I hadn't dressed a certain way or had been so flirty with boys... I thought I had done something wrong. I thought about going to the police but I had been drinking. I didn't want my mom to find out I had been drinking the night he attacked me. They would just say I had brought it on myself."

We sat in silence for what seemed like forever. I had so many questions but my head was throbbing and the lights of the hospital were making it worse. I closed my eyes to block out the light.

"Ok, what do we have here?" a doctor slipped in the break in the curtain. He was an older man, probably in his mid-fifties. I really didn't want to talk to him about what happened. I watched him in silence and he looked at my chart and notes from the triage nurse. I saw his expression change from general concern to one of a much softer appearance as he looked back at me. "I'm sorry to read what happened to you, my dear. I'm just going to do some tests to check for signs of a concussion, ok?"

I nodded.

"Do you have a parent or guardian that you would like us to call for you?"

"I called her dad on the way over. He should be here any minute," Holly responded.

The doctor nodded and began his examination.

"Are you comfortable standing for me, my dear?"

He asked me to perform various reflex and balance tests. It felt like I was undergoing a sobriety test.

My dad arrived and rushed through the curtain in the middle of the coordination tests. He gave me an almost overpowering hug. My head throbbed under the pressure of his hug, but I didn't have the heart to tell him.