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As soon as I reach the door, I grab the knob and dash outside. It’s a fire escape. I'm seeing double and my head spins, making me dizzier with each passing second, but I manage to grab the railing on the third try. Clutching the cold iron, I fumble down the steps, miraculously without falling. The moment my bare feet reach the ground, I turn left and run into a dark alley. A car horn blares on my right, and I turn just in time to see blinding lights shining into my face before the darkness swallows me.
“Shit!”
I open the car door and dash out, running to the front of my vehicle. On the road, barely a foot from the front bumper, lies a completely naked woman. I know I didn’t hit her. I managed to stop the car before I reached her, but it looks like there is something wrong with her. Her body is shaking as if she has a high fever.
I bend and scoop her up into my arms. The smell of rancid male cologne invades my nostrils as I adjust my grip. The woman’s skin is unusually cold and she is trembling so much that, if I wasn’t clutching her to my chest, she’d slip from my grasp. Turning on my heel, I carry her to the car. Shifting her meager weight in my arms, I somehow manage to reach the handle and get the back door open. I don’t have a blanket, so once I gently lower her onto the seat, I remove my jacket and drape it over the girl’s naked body. She immediately curls into a fetal position while tremors continue to shake her slight form. As soon as I’m back behind the wheel, I hit speed dial on my phone, and floor the car.
“Doc!” I bark the moment he takes the call. “I have a girl in my car who seems to be having a seizure, maybe. Should I try to do something or drive straight to a hospital? Or should I bring her to you? I’m five minutes away.”
“Symptoms?”
“She’s shaking really bad, and her arms and hands are twitching.” I throw a look over my shoulder. “Doesn’t seem coherent.”
“Foam at her mouth? Vomiting?”
I look over at the girl again. “No. Not at the moment.”
“Bring her here,” he says. “If she vomits, you need to stop the car and make sure she doesn’t choke. It could be an epileptic seizure or an overdose.”
“Okay.” I toss the phone on the passenger seat.
Luckily, the traffic is light, so it takes me under five minutes to reach the building where the doc has a small clinic on the ground floor, just below his apartment. Since he mostly does house visits for the Bratva, he only uses it when someone needs an ultrasound or an x-ray.
I park at the front and lift the girl from the back seat. Her limbs are still twitching uncontrollably, but she’s not vomiting. Holding her in my arms, still wrapped in my jacket, I run toward the glass door the doc is holding open.
“Put her on the gurney,” he says and rushes toward the medical cabinet. “Why is she naked?”
“No idea. She ran out of a building, disoriented, and collapsed in the middle of the street. I almost hit her with my car.”
The doc comes over carrying a syringe, leans over the girl, and pulls open her eyelid. “Overdose. Move away.”
I take a couple of steps back and watch as he gives her an injection of something, then proceeds with attaching an IV with saline into her arm.
“I’ll take a blood sample so we know what she’s taken. But I won’t have the results before tomorrow. I assume it was one of the common drugs so I’ve given her something to counteract it. It will reverse the effects.” He grabs a blanket and places it over the girl. “Unless she is a heavy user, she should be okay in a couple of hours. Just drive her to a shelter or something and leave her for them to deal with.”
I look down at the girl. Long dark brown strands are falling over her face, hiding it from view. She is still shaking under the blanket, but there is no twitching. Her breathing also sounds slightly better. What the fuck happened to her?
“I’ll take her to my place for tonight,” I say without taking my eyes off the girl. “When she’s better in the morning, I’ll take her home.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.” I look up and find Doc staring at me.
“You can’t take a drug addict to your place.”
“I won’t drop her off at the shelter as if she’s a bag of junk, Doc.” One of the girl’s arms is hanging down. I take her small hand and tuck it under the blanket next to her side. “And it will be just for tonight anyway.”
The doc sighs and shakes his head. “If she is an addict, which I’m pretty sure she is, she will go through withdrawal. With the medicine I gave her, it’ll probably start right away. Depending on what she took and how heavy a user she is, it could take anywhere from a couple of days to two weeks for it to pass.”
“Even though she is naked, her hair is clean, and her nails are manicured. It’s more likely that someone drugged her while trying to sexually assault her, or she escaped an abusive partner.”
The doc watches me, then nods. “All right. I’ll see if I have a rape kit. I’ll also do a basic exam. Wait outside.”
I glance at the girl, who seems to be sleeping, and head toward the exit. It’s started snowing. I lean back against the wall and stare at the street in front of me, wondering what the hell happened to that girl.
Fifteen minutes later, the doc comes out and stands next to me.
“So?” I ask.
