Falling Down полностью

She stood there a long time in the heat letting the water massage her front, washing away the dried residue of their cum. Her memory was too clear and bright, even if it only came in flashes, like someone taking photos at night. She saw herself, still, outside of herself, hanging suspended, beaten, aching, bleeding. Flash. A slim girl spread flat in the pine needles and dirt, three men kneeling over her, working their way into her, on her, in one way or another. Flash. Brian’s face an apology, his trembling hands gripping her hips. Flash. Running, desperate, the birch trees like negatives in the growing darkness. Flash. Her stepfather, looming. Flash. A blood stained mattress, the darkness spread like a question mark, or a crescent moon. Flash. Zach’s stunned face, the twist from disbelief to anger, his hands gentle, his words soft.

She cried then, turning the water salt, shoving a washcloth into her mouth to muffle her sobs. Zach was right outside the door, and listening, she was sure of it.

There was only so much pain one man could stand, she reasoned, as she bent over double, retching, nothing in her stomach, but vomiting anyway, as if she could rid herself of every memory but the last.

Finally, she stood, paying special attention to the area between her legs then, using one of the harsh, bleached hospital washcloths laved with soap to scrub herself

clean. Her whole body felt raw as she used the rough, stingy towels to dry off and realized she didn’t have any clothes to put on, the hospital gown just a blood-stained ball on the floor.

“Zach?” Poking her head out the door, she spoke in a stage whisper, looking around for the doc, but she was gone. “I don’t have anything to wear.” He looked up from where he was sitting, head in hands, in the chair next to the bed. “She left you something. I guess they…they keep stuff on hand for when…” He let his words trail off, but the sentence finished itself in her head, anyway. “For when women get raped.” Lindsey held out her hand and he put a bag into it, thinking about the sentence he hadn’t wanted to finish.

Raped. And so, she had been. Wouldn’t be the first time, she mused, digging through the bag. Sweatpants, bright pink, size large-she was going to swim in them-

and a t-shirt with a logo she recognized from another business-sized card sitting on the table out there in her hospital room. Turning Point. It was the place that other woman was from, the one who said she was a social worker, an advocate. Lindsey had dispatched her pretty quickly, she remembered, pulling the clothes on, tying a knot in the sweats on the side so they would stay up.

“Get out,” Lindsey had insisted, pointing the way toward the door, in case the young social worker had missed the way. “I don’t want to talk to you.” The dark-haired woman had persisted for a few minutes, trying to explain her role. “I’m just here as a friend, really,” she explained. “Someone you can talk to.”

“What part of ‘I don’t want to talk to you’ didn’t you understand, lady?”

Lindsey had submitted to the examination, the questions from the nurse, the doctor, demanding in spite of their objections that Zach stay by her side-she squeezed his hand the whole time-not because she wanted to, or even thought it was necessary, but because he had insisted she report it. But this, this woman claiming she just wanted

“to talk”-that affront was just one step too far.

She’d heard the woman whispering with the cop in the hallway, but hadn’t seen her again after she’d left her business card.

“Ready to go home?” Zach looked up when she came out of the bathroom, still tugging up the sweats.

Home. She didn’t have a home anymore, she remembered. She couldn’t ever go back there again. Part of her was gleeful at the thought, but another part ached with a loss that made no logical sense at all. Zach slipped his arm around her waist, tucking her discharge papers into his back pocket. She made her best effort not to wince at the pain as they made their way down the hospital hallway, ignoring the eyes of the cop, who was still filling out paperwork at the desk and talking to the social worker Lindsey had kicked out of her room.

“It’s gonna be okay, baby,” Zach murmured, pushing the button for the elevator, his hand moving up to cup the back of her neck, massaging with his thumb.

She nodded, stepping in as the doors opened, and couldn’t believe how much she wanted to trust him.

* * * *

“I should have stayed at the hospital!” Lindsey groaned as Zach turned off the alarm and flipped on the light next to the bed for the thousandth time that night.

“Open your eyes,” he insisted, pulling her arm from across them.

She sighed, blinking at the brightness, shaking off the dream she’d been in the middle of-something about swallowing small blue marbles, one after another, until she felt impossibly full. His gaze moved over her face, flickering between each of her eyes in studied concentration.