• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 938 0

die, sitting there, drugged but unable to sleep and blot it out, the horror so vast that it became numbing, watching their eyes, seeing and feeling the pain, knowing that she could do nothing, knowing even that they knew it as well. A nightmare was bad enough, but one of those couldn't reach out and touch you. You could wake up and flee from one of those. Not this. She could watch herself from outside, as though she were a robot outside her own command but not that of others. Her body would not move unless others commanded it, and she even had to conceal her thoughts, was even afraid to voice them within her own mind lest they hear them or see them on her face, but now, try as she might, she could not force them away.

Rick lay next to her, breathing slowly in the darkness. Part of her liked Rick. He was the gentlest of them, and sometimes she allowed herself to think that he liked her, maybe a little, because he didn't beat her badly. She had to stay in line, of course, because his anger was every bit as bad as Billy's, and so around Rick she tried very hard to be good. Part of her knew that it was foolish, but her reality was defined by other people now. And she'd seen the results of real resistance. After one especially bad night Pam had held her, and whispered her desires to escape. Later, Doris had prayed that she had gotten away, that there might be hope after all, only to see her dragged in and to watch her die, sitting helplessly fifteen feet away while they did everything to her that they could imagine. Watching her life end, her body convulsing from lack of oxygen with the man's face staring at her, laughing at her from an inch away. Her only act of resistance, thankfully unnoticed by the men, had been to brush out her friend's hair, crying all the while, hoping somehow that Pam would know there was someone who cared, even in death. But the gesture had seemed empty even as she'd done it, making her tears all the more bitter.

What had she done wrong? Doris wondered, how badly had she offended God that her life should be this way? How could anyone possibly deserve such a bleak and hopeless existence?

* * *

'I'm impressed, John,' Rosen said, staring at his patient. Kelly sat on the examining table, his shirt off. 'What have you been doing?'

'Five-mile swim for the shoulders. Better than weights, but a little of that, too, in the evening. A little running. About what I used to do back in the old days.'

'I wish I had your blood pressure,' the surgeon observed, removing the cuff. He'd done a major procedure that morning, but he made time for his friend.

'Exercise, Sam,' Kelly advised.

'I don't have the time, John,' the surgeon said - rather weakly, both thought.

'A doc should know better.'

'True,' Rosen conceded. 'How are you otherwise?'

The reply was just a look, neither a smile nor a grimace, just a neutral expression that told Rosen all he needed to know. One more try: 'There's an old saying: Before setting out on revenge, dig two graves.'

'Only two?' Kelly asked lightly.

Rosen nodded. 'I read the post report, too. I can't talk you out of it?'

'How's Sarah?'

Rosen accepted the deflection with good grace. 'Deep into her project. She's excited enough that she's telling me about it. It's pretty interesting stuff.'

Just then Sandy O'Toole came in. Kelly startled both of them by lifting his T-shirt and covering his chest. 'Please!'

The nurse was so startled that she laughed, and so did Sam until he realized that Kelly was indeed ready for whatever he was planning. The conditioning, the looseness, the steady, serious eyes that changed to mirth when he wanted them to. Like a surgeon, Rosen thought, and what a strange thought that was, but the more he looked at this man, the more intelligence he saw.

'You're looking healthy for a guy who got shot a few weeks ago,' O'Toole said with a friendly look.

'Clean living, ma'am. Only one beer in thirty-some days.'

'Mrs Lott is conscious now, Doctor Rosen,' the nurse reported. 'Nothing unusual, she appears to be doing fine. Her husband's been in to see her. I think