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By the time, hours later according to the clock on the dash, we broke through to some old back road, the queasiness returned, and I was pretty sure I was choking on my heart that had somehow managed to break free of my ribcage to lodge in my throat.
“Those are my people,” Ranger’s gruff voice announced a while later, too loudly for an enclosed space, making me jolt in my seat, arm flying out to whack into the window. “Gunner and Miller,” he added, lowering his voice slightly, jerking his chin toward the road ahead where an SUV and a truck with a horse trailer were situated.
Pulling the truck up to the other truck, we found both a man and a woman sitting, waiting, in the same vehicle together. Ranger rolled down my window, leaning forward to talk to the man in the driver’s seat with lighter hair and a full beard. The woman – a dark-haired, dark-eyed, pretty woman with a slightly olive skin tone – leaned forward to be seen, eyes moving over my face, something in her gaze steeling before she abruptly turned, threw open her door, stormed around the back of the car, and climbed into the small backseat to the truck cabin.
“Let’s go,” she demanded, tapping the back of Ranger’s seat. “We can update Gunn once she gets some medical attention,” she added when Ranger paused.
Then, surprisingly, the unmovable man put the car back into drive, following the instructions of the somewhat petite woman in his backseat.
“Do you want us to wait for you to call a friend or family member to meet you before the exam?” Miller asked.
“I, ah, no. I don’t have anyone to come. It’s okay,” I added, shrugging it off as though it was, as though I didn’t feel sicker by the moment as we finally turned off onto a busy road, as we – presumably – got closer and closer to a hospital.
My breathing started to shallow out, and I sat there unraveling the bandages on my hands just to have something to do, looking down at the raw scratches covering my palms. From the forest floor, I imagined. Twigs and needles and such.
“I don’t have shoes,” I mumbled as we pulled up toward the looming all-white hospital, windows gleaming, lot packed. Somehow, more than knowing I would have every inch of me examined, be questioned by cold-eyed police officers, the idea of stepping my bare feet on a filthy hospital floor was troubling me.
“Socks in the duffle,” Ranger’s voice mumbled, lower, almost quiet, seemingly to Miller who I heard unzipping said duffle, shuffling things around, producing a pair of giant black socks, handing them to me.
Leaning down, I removed the bandages from my feet, slipping on the socks in their place as Ranger moved over toward the emergency room entrance.
He pulled to the curb, no one saying a word, the silence the loudest noise I had ever heard before.
It took an embarrassingly long time to find the strength to raise my hand, to close it around the door handle, to push it open, to step outside. I was vaguely aware of Miller’s door opening and closing as she moved to stand beside me.
“I… I don’t think I…” I mumbled, shaking my head.
“Sure you can,” she told me, her hand closing over mine, curling my hand into a fist so as not to touch my scratches, but holding on. “We will do this together, okay?” It was more of an assurance than a question as she charged forward, bringing me with her, walking me up to the front desk where a woman was trained to show no alarm had her deep-set grey eyes widen when they looked up to land on my face.
“I, ah, I need a…” I took a breath that in no way steeled my nerves. But we were here. This was happening. I found the words anyway. “I need a rape kit,” I told her, swallowing past the fist of fear in my throat.
From there, it was all a blur.
I had a basic examination, doctors brows furrowed at my stomach wound, at the stitching. My pee was taken. My blood was taken.
From there, a specific team was called out of nowhere while I waited in a back room with a door and all – no curtains hinting at privacy you would never truly know. They filed in, telling me their names, talking about the process of the exam. Everyone had calm, reassuring voices.
By the time I was coaxed into position, the only thing I could do was shut down, shut everything down. No thoughts, no feelings, just a body I felt no attachment to.
It wasn’t until I felt Miller’s hand give mine a squeeze that I snapped out of it, finding the nurse standing over me, eyes expectant.
