#26–Lady Killer
Even as my lungs pulled in air, I clamped my lips, stifling the scream. Squished against Darryl, I didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. My eyes stretched so wide in terror I felt they would crack.
“I beg your pardon.” the bearded lips smiled. His tongue touched them as if savoring my fear. “I didn’t mean to startle you, miss.”
“You’ll have to excuse us, Mr. Brampton.” Darryl shifted to stand up, putting himself between me and the intruder. “My girlfriend isn’t feeling well.”
“Call me Jerry. I live on the floor below and when I heard footsteps, I thought Paul had returned.”
“I’ll tell him you stopped by.” Darryl walked Jerry to the door and stepped over the threshold with him. Jerry tried to give Darryl an elaborate message for his brother, but Darryl wasn’t taking it. I covered my face with my hands. My cheeks felt wet. I trembled.
Was this how my mother had felt when murder came calling? Did her hand shake when she took her wedding china from the cupboard and poured coffee for the last time? Had death walked in the front door of my parent’s modest home, wearing a civil mask, speaking the usual pleasantries about the weather? The fabric of civilization, that safety net we humans rely on in order to live side by side, now seemed as thin as spider silk in a tornado. Jerry’s tread faded on the heavy carpet as he moved away. He walked, no, strutted in the light of day while the voice of his helpless victim was stifled forever.
And I, I knew the truth but was also helpless. I couldn’t prove it. And those who had the means to prove it weren’t listening to me. Was this how my mother had felt? Helpless? Defeated? Alone?
More talking in the hall, Darryl’s voice: “Thanks for coming by, Doctor.”
“Blame the effing traffic I couldn’t get here sooner. Where’s the patient?” boomed a new female voice. She wasn’t shouting but she rattled the windows.
“In here. Sugar, the doctor’s here.”
Dr. Harriet Pritchett was short and chubby, with grey curly hair like a grandmother envisioned by Disney. She moved like a whirlwind, swore like a sailor and ruthlessly ripped off all the tape the other doctor had put on me.
“He’s a freaking moron,” she said, when I told her the hospital, “How are you supposed to breathe with all that crap on you?”
She slapped some cream on my bruises which numbed the pain and then turned cold. I shivered. She made me get into bed, ransacked the closet for a warm comforter and tucked me in with all the tenderness of a mother.
“That big lug out in the living room,” she said, “He didn’t cause these bruises by any chance?”
My eyes flew open. “Oh, no. He wouldn’t. He didn’t.”
“You can tell me the truth. I can get you help if you need it.”
“It was at the bed and breakfast—the caretaker murdered his daughter and brought her body back to be sawed up so they could dispose of her. I saw it and they tried to kill me as well.”
With questions, Dr. Harriet dragged enough detail out of me to get Darryl off the hook. She laughed uproariously when I told her about whacking Mustache Man in the crotch with my cell phone.
“The reason I ask is that I donate two days each month to a local battered women’s shelter.”
“I do the same during the summer when I’m back at my base in Colorado.” I sat bolt upright and would have gotten my purse to give her my card except she wouldn’t let me get out of bed. Darryl was summoned to bring me my purse. Inside it, my cell phone beeped piteously, begging to be charged, so Darryl dug out my charger and plugged it in, and then, bless him, did the same for my computer. Accepting the prescription that she wrote for me, he offered her some of our leftover pizza. The last thing I heard before I fell asleep was Dr. Harriet’s booming voice:
