Temple also hated being a passenger in her own car. From the moment the two men had trapped her in the parking ramp, she had lost control of her life. Even the fact that it was Matt driving the Storm—he couldn’t afford a car on his hotline salary, he told her apologetically—didn’t lessen the insult of how much had been taken from her in a few, cataclysmic minutes.
Besides, the Storm’s stops and accelerations, its occasional turns, burdened a body no longer anesthetized by the shock of injury. Temple concentrated on not adding a chorus of moans to her unwanted progress to the hospital.
In the glow of an orange-purple sunset, Las Vegas was beginning to light up the sky with artificial candlepower. Strip traffic was thinning to a constantly moving stream of pallid headlights after the rush-hour logjam. Matt drove straight to the University Medical Center emergency room on Charleston, and helped her in. The moment the automatic door whooshed open to receive them, Temple felt a cold stone in the pit of her stomach that said that this was a mistake.
Glaring overhead fluorescents. Functional walls and plain, tiled floor. The inevitable plastic chairs lining the wall, some filled with waiting people whose harshly shadowed faces never looked up. A ballpoint pen chained to a clipboard. A lined form demanding that Temple remember long strings of numbers and write down personal information—like her age—in front of Matt, who might be younger, and who was supposed to care anymore but people did?
They sat together, waiting in a pair of inevitably orange molded chairs. Temple kept her sunglasses on to fend off the threatening headache.
An ambulance siren whined in the distance, then grew louder and louder, like a baby working itself up for a good long bawl. Just when Temple thought she would scream to keep it company, it choked off. What followed was worse. A man’s cries—deep, guttural, repeated over and over. Only searing pain would make a man cry out like that. Temple’s aches suddenly seemed minor.
A knot of people plowed through the waiting room, a small storm of activity in the stagnant pool of becalmed patients, and rushed back to the examining area.
One person in the group stopped, paused, then walked slowly over to chairs by the wall. Temple was watching the floor, too tired to hold her head up, when she saw the feet and legs stop in front of her.
She looked up. And up. And up.
“What are you doing here?” Lieutenant C. R. Molina asked with open surprise.
“Minor accident,” Temple replied quickly.
Matt turned to stare at her, and drew Molina’s notice. Temple watched Molina’s policewoman’s eyes rapidly tour Matt from head to toe, from clothes to posture to speculated vocation and possible vices.
“This is Matt Devine,” Temple said, “the neighbor who brought me in.”
“Nice to have good neighbors,” Molina remarked cryptically, her expression as flat as ever.
She was looking at Matt Devine, boy dreamboat, Temple thought with irritation, and all Molina could do was look suspicious. She finished the introduction, because Molina obviously wasn’t leaving without it.
“Lieutenant Molina of LVMPD.”
Matt turned to Temple again, confusion in his eyes, and his lips parted to inform Temple that she could tell the police of her assault right here and right now very conveniently.... Sweet Shalimar!
“That man who was moaning,” Temple said quickly to Molina, “must be in dreadful pain. Is he why you’re here?”
“Yes, unfortunately. Nice meeting you, Mr. Devine.” Molina's remarkable ice blue eyes rested on Temple with a hint of speculation. “Take care of yourself.”
She wheeled and was gone. Temple let her shoulders slump. One protested. She had known that showing an interest in Molina’s business would be the fastest way to get rid of her.
“That’s Lieutenant Molina? And why didn’t you tell her?” Matt demanded. “It was a perfect opportunity, if you know a police officer personally.”
“Molina was on the ABA case. We don’t get along.”
“Still, it’s her job—”
“Not the small stuff. Matt, I don’t want to tell her, and I won’t. Maybe I don’t need to go to the police at all.”
He was about to argue, but at that moment her name was finally called. Matt squeezed her hand as other eyes glanced up to follow her into the examining area. She didn’t limp, but neither did her footsteps announce her assertive progress. Instead of a click, she padded as silently as Midnight Louie, only she owed her subtle approach to L.A. Gear metallic pink sneakers.
They made her feel like a kid, as the two men had made her feel helpless, as Matt’s solicitude had made her feel like a teenager with a hopeless crush, as Molina’s presence had made her feel found out. Hopeless and helpless.
“I hate this,” Temple gritted between her teeth just before the nurse bearing a clipboard led her into an examining room.
“Come along, hon.” The nurse was a chubby, cheerful soul with bright blond hair cut into a modified punk crew cut, plus the obligatory rattail trailing down her broad, white-covered back.
She took Temple’s blood pressure and wrote it on the clipboard. She handed her a hospital smock. “Just undress from the waist up. Opens in the back.” The nurse was almost out the door when Temple remembered an embarrassing fact.
“Uh, wait! You’ll have to unhook me. My arm won’t go back.”
“Sure thing,” the nurse said. “Should have remembered. You said your shoulder was really wracked up. Terrible what happens.” And she glanced at Temple from under blue-shadowed lids, her eyes holding a puzzling trace of blame.
Tied by the nurse into the limp cotton smock and finally left to herself, sitting on the sanitary paper liner accorded each of the sequence of patients, her feet swinging free at the end of the examining table, Temple felt sore and tired and helpless.
She had a while to wait for that feeling to end. The doctor didn’t come in for twelve minutes. Now he carried her life data on a clipboard. He was an Indian man with skin the color of brown shoe polish, blue-black hair and fine features. Like many professionally trained natives of that land, he radiated a benign good cheer reminiscent of Gandhi. Dr. Rasti.
“Shoulder, arm, jaw and midsection.” He enumerated her injury zones in a pleasant singsong. “You are an unfortunate young lady. Let us see.”
Away went the charade of the hospital gown as he drew it back in stages to poke and prod and examine.
“Muggers, you say?”
Temple nodded. She had wanted to write “car accident,” but then the police might want to know why it hadn’t been reported. Besides, her injuries were not consistent with a close encounter with a dashboard, even she knew that. Dr. Rasti scribbled a long entry between the fine lines of her clipboard sheet.
His verbal diagnosis mirrored Matt’s: no serious—seerius, he chirped like a friendly bird—damage, only bruises and contusions. No X-rays needed. Ice packs. Rest. A prescription for painkillers. Call your own physician if any symptoms persist unreasonably.
“As for here”—his hands thumped his white coat, his own chest—“perhaps bad bruises, discomfort. Will be fine.” Then he frowned at the clipboard. “Muggers very bad. More than one?”
Temple nodded.
“Two? Big men, bad men?”
Temple nodded.
Dr. Rasti shook his head and regarded her narrowly. “Very bad. I will have nurse step in. Little more business needed.”
Temple sighed when he left and started to pull her bra on. The nurse rustled through the door, hooked the back and helped her pull her loose top over her head.
The nurse held the clipboard, gave Temple a prescription, and finally flourished a brochure.
“Now, Miss Barr.” She licked her lips. “Dr. Rasti is very worried. Your injuries...well, they are most unusual for a mugging. Usually scraped knees, a fractured elbow. Your injuries are the result of punches. I have a brochure from the Women’s Shelter—”