Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [52]
Amanda’s breath—warm and sweet.
“Pretty Number Two Wife. So beautiful. So sad. So wanting.”
Julie looked into her eyes. Amanda’s eyes seemed endless to her—deep pools of darkness.
“66S,” Amanda whispered, letting it become a hiss.
Then, Amanda leapt toward her, and for just a second, Julie felt as if she were watching some wild animal, sprung loose from its cage.
4
Julie’s chair went backward, and her legs went in the air. Amanda Hutchinson was on top of her, swinging her fist down for the side of her head.
Once hit, Julie felt as if she were losing consciousness, and wasn’t sure, but felt a strange warmth—as if Amanda’s hand were now going down between her legs, down to touch her, beneath her skirt, the edge of her panties.
Amanda’s urgent whisper in her ear, “Does he come to you at night and touch you, only it’s better than he ever did before? Does he make you moan, Wife Numbah Two? Does he try to get inside you?”
Julie took a deep breath, and brought her knee up, knocking her attacker in the arm, pushing her hand away.
The fingers had just grazed the skin beneath her panties.
Then, an orderly was running in the room shouting, “Mandy! Get off her right now! Holy shit, Jimmy, get down here!”
5
“Ms. Kaufmann? Gigi?” Julie asked, nearly out of breath, tapping at the door of the social worker’s office.
The social worker came to the door, opening it a crack. “Yes?” Large steel blue eyes behind thick glasses. “Mrs. Hutchinson? My God!”
“I think…I think she’s upset. Something’s wrong.”
The social worker looked at her. “My God. Are you all right?”
The screeching could be heard down the corridor.
“I’m fine.” Julie wasn’t sure if this was true.
“Your face.”
“It’s all right. Please. She needs help now.”
6
After Amanda had been subdued, Julie stood just outside the doorway to her room. She briefly glanced inside. The orderlies had not yet righted the overturned chairs. They had just finished tying her in restraints to the edges of the mattress. Although she’d been given a shot of some kind of sedative, Amanda continued to struggle in the restraints. One of the staff nurses bandaged her fingers where the nails had torn.
The social worker touched Julie’s arm. “She’ll sleep now. It’s all right. Sometimes there are flare-ups. Let’s get you down to the nursing wing to look at those cuts.”
7
“She jumped me,” Julie said, as a young male nurse daubed a Q-tip soaked in hydrogen peroxide on the slight cuts on her arm.
The nurse grinned. “You’re lucky. She took someone’s eye out last winter.”
“My God.”
“It happens now and then. Mandy is docile as a lamb for eleven months of the year, and then one day— or night—snaps. Sorry for the gallows humor. I know it can be pretty scary. She went Lizzie Borden on me once, too. Right after I started.”
“I just didn’t expect it,” Julie said. “We were…well, I hope I didn’t do something to provoke her.”
“Probably not,” the nurse said. Then, noticing the cuts on her knee, “She didn’t…do anything else, did she?”
He means “did she touch me down there?”
“No, well, I mean, she sort of scratched me up…all over.”
The nurse nodded, as if considering all of it. “Sometimes, she does some inappropriate touching.”
“I’m sure that’s not what it was.”
He shrugged. “Business as usual,” he said. “You probably just upset her a little, and that’s enough for her to go full throttle. Ever since her son’s death.”
“Her husband,” Julie corrected. “Her ex. My husband.”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” the nurse said. “I’m sorry to hear that. I can’t believe I got it wrong. Well, it really gets her going, sometimes. Probably you just reminded her of some bad stuff. And she never really sleeps much. She wanders sometimes, at night. Just wanders, and thinks someone’s following her. She thinks someone is trying to kill her.”
When Julie looked up at the doorway, the social worker stood there with a slight frown to her face.
“I’m afraid I have to ask that you not make these kinds of visits,” Gigi Kaufman said. “Whatever you said in there upset her tremendously.”
Chapter Thirteen
1
That