She realized, with a start, that she had already begun to divide her life into before and after.
* * *
Hi, you've reached Laura Stone, her voice said. Leave me a message and I'll get back to you.
Leave me.
I'll get back to you.
Daniel hung up again and walked back inside the hospital, where cell phones were prohibited. But when he got back to the waiting area, Trixie was gone. He approached the triage nurse. “Which room is my daughter in? Trixie Stone?”
The nurse glanced up. “I'm sorry, Mr. Stone. I know she's a priority case, but we're short staffed and . . .”
“She hasn't been called in yet?” Daniel said. “Then where is she?” He knew he shouldn't have left her alone, knew even as she was nodding at him when she asked if she'd be all right by herself for a moment that she hadn't heard him at all. Backing away from the horseshoe desk, he started through the double doors of the ER, calling Trixie's name.
“Sir,” the nurse said, getting to her feet, “you can't go in there!”
“Trixie?” Daniel yelled, as patients stared at him from the spaces between privacy curtains, their faces pale or bloodied or weak. “Trixie!”
An orderly grabbed his arm; he shook the massive man off. He turned a corner, smacking into a resident in her ghost-white coat before he came to a dead end. Whirling about, he continued to call out for Trixie, and then - in the interstitial space between the letters of her name - he heard Trixie calling for him. He followed the thread of her voice through the maze of corridors and finally saw her. “I'm right here,” he said, and she turned to him and burst into tears.
“I got lost,” she sobbed against his chest. “I couldn't breathe. They were staring.”
“Who was?”
“All the people in the waiting room. They were wondering what was wrong with me.”
Daniel took both of her hands. “There's nothing wrong with you,” he said, that first lie a fissure crack in his heart. A woman wearing a trowel's layer of cosmetics approached.
“Trixie Stone?” she said. “My name's Janice. I'm a sexual assault advocate. I'm here to answer questions for you and your family, and to help you understand what's going to be happening.” Daniel couldn't get past the makeup. If this woman had been called in for Trixie, how much time had been lost applying those false eyelashes, that glittery blush? How much faster might she have come?
“First things first,” Janice said, her eyes on Trixie. “This wasn't your fault.”
Trixie glanced at her. “You don't even know what happened.”
“I know that no one deserves to be raped, no matter who she is and what she's been doing,” Janice said. “Have you taken a shower yet?”
Daniel wondered how on earth she could even think this. Trixie was still wearing the same torn blouse, had the same raccoon circles of mascara under her eyes. She had wanted to shower - that was why, when he'd found her, she was in the bathroom - but Daniel knew enough to keep her from doing it. Evidence. The word had swum in his mind like a shark.
“What about the police?” Daniel heard, and he was stunned to realize he'd been the one to say it.
Janice turned. “The hospital automatically reports any sexual assault of a minor to the police,” she said. “Whether or not Trixie wants to press charges is up to her.”
She will press charges against that son of a bitch, Daniel thought, even if I have to talk her into it.
And on the heels of that: If he forced Trixie to do something she didn't want to, then how was he any different from Jason Underhill?
As Janice outlined the specifics of the upcoming examination, Trixie shook her head and folded her arms around herself. “I want to go home,” she said, in the smallest of voices. “I've changed my mind.”
“You need to see a doctor, Trixie. I'll stay with you, the whole time.” She turned to Daniel. "Is there a Mrs. Stone . . . ?
"
Excellent question, Daniel thought, before he could remember not to. “She's on her way,” he said. Maybe this was not even a lie by now.
Trixie grabbed onto his arm. “What about my father? Can he come in with me?”
Janice looked from Daniel to Trixie and then back again. “It's a pelvic exam,” she said delicately.
The last time Daniel had seen Trixie naked, she had been eleven and about to take a bubble bath. He had walked into the bathroom, thinking she was only brushing her teeth, and together they had stared at her blossoming body in the reflection of the mirror. After that, he was careful to knock on doors, to draw an invisible curtain of distance around her for privacy.
When he was a kid in Alaska, he had met Yu'pik Eskimos who hated him on sight, because he was a kass'aq. It didn't matter that he was six or seven, that he hadn't been the particular Caucasian who had cheated that person out of land or reneged on a job or any of a hundred other grievances. All they saw was that Daniel was white, and by association, he was a magnet for their anger. He imagined, now, what it would be like to be the only male in the room during a sexual assault examination.
“Please, Daddy?”
Behind the fear in Trixie's eyes was the understanding that even with this stranger, she would be alone, and she couldn't risk that again. So Daniel took a deep breath and headed down the hall between Trixie and Janice. Inside the room, there was a gurney; he helped Trixie climb onto it. The doctor entered almost immediately, a small woman wearing scrubs and a white coat. “Hi, Trixie,” she said, and if she seemed surprised to see a father in the room, instead of a mother, she said nothing. She came right up to Trixie and
squeezed her hand. “You're already being very brave. All I'm going to ask you to do is keep that up.”
She handed a form to Daniel and asked him to sign it, explaining that because Trixie was a minor, a parent or guardian had to authorize the collection and release of information. She took Trixie's blood
pressure and pulse and made notes on her clipboard. Then she began to ask Trixie a series of questions.
What's your address?
How old are you?
What day did the assault occur? What approximate time?
What was the gender of the perpetrator? The number of perpetrators?
The Tenth Circle
Daniel felt a line of sweat break out under the collar of his shirt.
Have you douched, bathed, urinated, defecated since the assault?
Have you vomited, eaten or drunk, changed clothes, brushed your teeth?
He watched Trixie shake her head no to each of these. Each time before she spoke, she would glance at Daniel, as if he had the answer in his eyes.
Have you had consensual intercourse in the last five days?
Trixie froze, and this time, her gaze slid away from his. She murmured something inaudible. “Sorry,” the doctor said. “I didn't quite get that?”
“This was the first time,” Trixie repeated. Daniel felt the room swell and burst. He was vaguely aware of excusing himself, of Trixie's face - a white oval that bled at the edges. He had to try twice before he could maneuver his fingers in a way that would open the latch of the door.