The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [205]
“The room was filthy with cockroaches the size of silver dollars all over the place and the stink of raw sewage from the open drain outside the tiny window that let in just enough light for him to see her. She was lying on a sagging iron cot, covered with a dirty, bloodstained sheet. Her eyes were closed and her breathing shallow and beads of sweat stood out on her forehead.
“Her face was as gray as the sheet, and Zev groaned as he felt her head: She was burning with fever. He pulled back the sheet and stared at the bloody mess, then he closed his eyes, tilting back his head and praying out loud for God to help her, for he had no doubt Azaylee was mortally ill.
“She opened her eyes suddenly and looked at him, puzzled. ‘Zev?’ she whispered. ‘Am I alive?’
“He could hardly speak he was so choked with emotion. ‘Yes, milochka,’ he replied, ‘you are alive.’
“‘Good,’ she murmured, ‘I wouldn’t want to let you down with Marietta.’
“He took her to the hospital, where they cleaned her up and gave her blood transfusions and told him there was no hope. He stayed by her bedside all night, holding her hand, praying for her, and wondering how he was going to break the news to me, but early in the morning—the crisis time when the doctors told him people usually die or else they rally and live—a little color crept into her face. She began to breathe more quietly, and by nine o’clock she was resting peacefully and they knew she would pull through. And then Zev went to find Doc Loco.
“The ‘doctor’ was picked up later by the police, his face beaten to a pulp. He was taken to jail and never heard from again. The police also arrested Villaloso and charged him with racetrack fraud, and by noon that day he was on his way to Mexico City to await trial. Eventually, after months of delay, he was sentenced to ten years, but he was lucky to be alive—if you can call a Mexican jail ‘lucky.’ C. Z. Abrams was a powerful man, and he had used that power the way he thought best.
“Azaylee was like a broken doll, completely bewildered by what had happened to her. She kept insisting that it wasn’t true, that she had done nothing, and we were afraid to argue with her in case we upset her.
“She was weak and subdued, but when she was finally strong enough I tried to talk to her. She acted vague and strange and I knew at once we were in trouble. Zev called in a famous New York doctor who said she was lost under layers of different identities and suffering from a disassociation of personality. A person suffering from this psychosis is not a real character at all. She is not an individual but a ‘collective.’ It is impossible to know which is the true personality. Azaylee was not ‘a bad girl,’ she was a confused being who did not really know who she was. In her normal surroundings she would behave the ‘normal’ way we expected; in strange circumstances she would behave like another person and therefore do whatever was expected of that person. The doctor said she would need treatment for at least three years, maybe longer.
“So Azaylee began her new treatment and life went back to normal, although, of course, now we were never sure what ‘normal’ was.
“Zev shelved the Marietta movie she had made and canceled production of the next, and we concentrated on giving her a stable home life and just getting her well again. The final blow was that the doctors said she had been so badly damaged in the abortion that she would never be able to bear children. And afterward I thought maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing after all. You see, this was only the first of her troubles with men.”
Missie sighed as she glanced helplessly at Cal. “The years passed, we had tutors and she finished her high school education, but we dared not let her go away to college. Instead, she concentrated on her dancing. The psychiatrist said that Azaylee understood that what had happened was because of her mother and her confused childhood and she also understood now that it had happened to her and