Far Country (40 page)

           
George's blue eyes seethed in anger, but he managed to keep his voice
low.  "Beth, I can't believe you are lying to
me,
after all
the times I've shown up at your door with a bloody lip!" Then his eyes
welled with uncontrollable tears. He wiped them away on his hand as he looked
at her with helpless reproach. "Why didn't you come with me, Beth? Why did
you go back up the stairs to
this?
"

           
Steve called down the stairs to Pastor Graham. “Call 911,” he said
quietly.  “David did quite a number on her.”  He stepped back into
the bathroom and crossed the tiled floor carefully, crunching glass with each
step. He crouched down next to the battered girl. “Beth!” He called gently,
shaking her arm, but she didn’t respond to his voice.  Steve was uncertain
if she was simply ignoring them, or if she was partly unconscious. With all the
bruising on the outside of her, it was a very real possibility that she might
have internal injuries as well. He glanced around at the glass strewn across
the floor and decided moving her was his only choice. 

           
“George, we’ve got to move her,” Steve said after a third attempt to rouse her
brought no better results.  “I’ll lift her shoulders, you pick her up
under her legs,” he instructed.   A few moments later, they lowered
her onto the bed.  Beth’s eyes fluttered open at last.

           
“Just leave me here, I‘ll be better in the morning,” she moaned, curling
herself into a protective ball.

           
“Sorry, sweetie,” Steve apologized. “I know you’re a nurse, but the view from
here says you’re
gonna
need more than a good night’s
sleep.  EMS is on the way.”

           
“No!” Beth protested.  “I’m Okay! It was just a stupid accident!”

           
Steve rolled his eyes. “Beth, David is gone. You’re safe. You can quit
pretending.”

           
“He’ll be back,” she whispered fearfully. “He just got called in to clear up
some paperwork. He said he’d be back in a couple of hours.”

           
Reverend Graham stepped up beside the bed and rested a fatherly hand on her
blood matted hair. “No, Beth,” he soothed her. I spoke with his C.O. David
won’t be back here tonight - or for a long time. We’ll see to that," he
added grimly.

           
Beth’s blue eyes welled with tears, as she recognized the pastor’s voice. 
“Reverend Graham?” She whispered through her swollen lips. She clutched his
hand and began to cry softly.  “I’m so ashamed, pastor.”

           
Reverend Graham held the bloodstained hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “He
should be ashamed, Beth, not you,” Reverend Graham replied fiercely. Then he
mustered a smile.  “But let’s not think about him, right now.  We
need to get you to the hospital.”

           
“
Noo
!” Beth groaned again. “Don’t call!” She begged
him.  “I don’t want them to see me. Not like this!”

           
“Too late,” he answered her firmly.  “I’ve already made the call, and
they’ll be here in just a few minutes. You’re more hurt than you realize, young
lady,” he scolded her gently. “You really don’t have a choice.” 

           
He looked around and pulled a small chair closer to the bed and sat down, never
letting go of her hand. When he spoke again, his voice was gruff and
protective. “It WILL be Okay, Beth. I will be right here with you , the whole
way.  And don’t worry about seeing your co-workers. They care about you,
too. They will be there for you, you’ll see! You won’t have to go through this
alone.”

           
Too exhausted and hurt to argue any more, Beth stared miserably out of the
window, fat tears leaving pink trails through the bloodstains on her face.

           
Steve  paced the room angrily, then finally bolted down the stairs to wait
for the ambulance outside.  Once they did arrive, it only took a few
minutes for the team to transfer Beth to a gurney and load her into the back of
the ambulance.  They allowed Reverend Graham to ride in the back with her,
so George drove Reverend Graham’s Toyota, and Steve followed in his SUV.

           
An hour later, a grim middle-aged woman came out to the lobby and sat down next
to the three men.  She absently swept her dark hair back from her eyes and
sighed.  "I’m Doctor Adler. I treated Beth, and she gave me
permission to speak with the three of you, since she doesn’t have any other
family around here.”

“And?” George asked leaning
forward anxiously.

           
“Bad enough,” she answered bluntly.  “Contusions everywhere. Cracked ribs,
internal bleeding. He worked her over pretty good..." She permitted a
half-smile to cross her lips.  "Chances are you saved her life.”

           
She looked them over, as if assessing their reliability. “We’ve fixed
everything we can, for now.  She’ll be in the hospital for a couple of
days and then she’ll be ready to go home. I’d like someone to stay with her,
though, while she recovers.”

           
“She’ll stay with my wife and me,” Reverend Graham spoke up before Steve or
George could reply. “She will need a woman to help her with some things, and
maybe Hester can get her to open up and talk about what happened.”

           
Doctor Adler nodded her approval. “That’s good. But I am still concerned about
the man who did this. Will he leave her alone?”

           
Steve and Pastor Graham looked at each other. “I think she’s got about a year
that he will be out of the area. I can’t guarantee, though, that he won’t come
back to town at some point. We know from experience that he doesn’t forgive or
let go easily.”

           
“I don’t know why she doesn’t just put him in jail!” George burst out angrily.

“She’s got enough evidence
that he attacked her. You all saw what he did!”

           
“I’ve talked to her about it,” Doctor Adler told George. “She is refusing to
press charges.  She admits that they had a fight, but she claims that she slipped
on the wet bathroom tiles and cracked her ribs when she fell against the tub.
The police might try press charges on her behalf, but in most cases he’s going
to be back on the street in no time at all. The problem doesn’t’ really go
away.”

           
“This is nuts,” George muttered. “She’s pretty! She’s got a good job and she’s
smart. Why would she let a guy beat her like that and then lie about what
happened?”

           
“Reverend Graham shrugged. “It happens more than you’d believe, George. 
Part of it is embarrassment. Part of it is denial and a belief that they can
change the guy. And often, its fear of what will happen if she does try to
break it off or get away.”

           
“So you think she’s doing the right thing?” George asked him in disbelief.

           
“No, actually I don’t, but I do understand it.”  Pastor Graham rubbed the
back of his neck wearily and looked at his watch. “I
cant
believe it’s only seven o’clock!”

           
Doctor Adler smiled again in understanding. “This
as
been a lot of stress. You boys might as well go on home.  I’ve sedated her
and she’ll sleep through the night. There’s nothing more you can do for now.”

           
Steve nodded. They thanked the doctor and walked to the exit. Steve shook
Pastor Graham’s hand.  “Thanks for all your help. Who knows what he’d have
done to her if you hadn’t been able to get to his C.O.”

           
Reverend Graham smiled. “We do what we can. God does the rest. For now, we must
continue to pray.”

           
“I know I’ll be praying for Beth,” Steve said.

           
“Don’t forget about David,” Pastor Graham reminded him gently.

           
Steve shoved his hands in the pockets of his shorts uncomfortably. “It’s
getting harder to do that, sir,” he said after a moment.

           
“It’s not easy,” Reverend Graham agreed, “but it’s what our Lord requires.”

           
Steve closed his eyes for a moment.  Once again the night of the crash
flashed through his mind.  He remembered David’s anguished howl of grief
on the phone.  How different would all of their lives have been if that
night had never happened?  How different would David be?  Slowly,
Steve nodded. “You’re right, of course,” He replied hollowly. “I’ll pray for
David.”

           
George listened to their exchange, shaking his head in disgust. “Maybe I’ll
pray too – pray that he gets hit by a bus!”  He stalked out of the exit
door, calling over his shoulder.  “I’m
gonna
go
spend the night on the boat – see if I can fix the radio or something. 
Call me if anything happens.”

           
Steve and Reverend Graham watched the angry young man stride across the parking
lot and disappear into the shadows.

           
Steve sighed wistfully. “Sometimes I miss being able to think like that,” he
said truthfully.

           
Reverend Graham laughed tiredly. “Me too.  Even after all these years, it
doesn’t get any easier.”

           
Steve looked at Reverend Graham unhappily. “What do I tell his parents? Should
I say anything?” His shoulders slumped. “I feel as if I’ve single handedly
destroyed their children.”

           
Reverend Graham rested a big hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Steve, you can’t be
responsible for David’s choices. Tonight, it is possible that you stopped David
from becoming a murderer. Take comfort in knowing that.  Beth told me on
the way to the hospital that the phone call came just in time.”

           
His words sent a chill through Steve. “I should have gone back! George was
right. We shouldn’t have left her alone with him!” Steve said remorsefully.

           
“You couldn’t know what he was going to do, Steve, and George said himself that
she refused to leave the house.  If you had tried to intervene, it might
have been even worse.  Be grateful we got her out in time, and that he’s
going away from a few months.  I’ll work on her in the meantime. You’ve
done all you can do. It’s up to God now.”

           
Steve drove home and climbed the stairs to his childhood bedroom.  His
mother had left the room untouched over the years, and he had done little to
change it during his convalescence. His old football was still on the shelf,
lying next to the baseball he had used to pitch one perfect no hitter. On the
wall was a picture collage that Sarah had made of the two of them. It hung
beside his bed. Steve paused in front of the picture collage. Shots of himself
and Sarah at the beach, dressed for proms, even the playbill from Oklahoma,
with a shot of the entire cast. Steve smiled as he realized that Deborah was in
the picture, too. Sarah had always been so jealous…and so wasn’t David, he
recalled suddenly.

           
Steve thought back to their high school years: David the football star; David,
the track star; David, the Prom King; David, always with a different girl.

           
Except…Heather.  Heather had been David’s girl sophomore year, Steve
recalled. She had been extremely pretty, with dark eyes and hair – and such a
flirt!
She had driven David crazy...

           
Steve went cold. He also remembered Heather in a cast with a broken arm, caused
by a clumsy fall from her bike. There had been a black eye too…something about
getting hit by a baseball?  And a badly sprained wrist, once. Heather had
always laughed about her accident prone ways, always with David close by her
side
. Then Heather had moved away suddenly to Quantico.
The story was
that she was going to live with her older sister while her husband was deployed
that year. Now, Steve wondered.

           
Had David’s jealousy caused any of those accidents? Maybe, the pattern of
David’s behavior had already been set long before he and Sarah had gotten into
that car after graduation…

           
Troubled and exhausted, Steve threw himself down on the bed, wanting to forget.
But it was a long time before sleep found him.

           
Steve sat at the Bolton’s dining room table, sipping on a cup of cold
coffee.  Gracie had been tucked into bed over an hour ago, and he had just
finished telling Lee Ann and Richard what had happened the day before at Beth’s
house.  He sat now, staring uncomfortably into his nearly empty coffee
mug, waiting for David’s parents to absorb the news that their only son had
violently abused a woman, and had been spirited away by his command to defray
the situation.

           
A police report lay unread on the table between them. Neither Lee Ann nor
Richard had made any attempt to reach for it. Steve wondered if he should offer
to leave now, to give them time alone.

           
Finally, Lee Ann stirred. “This girl, Beth Stewart – you say she will recover
fully? She asked in a strangely detached voice.

           
Steve nodded. “So I’m told.”

           
Richard had taken off his glasses and was chewing absently on the ear piece.
“And she doesn’t intend to press charges.”  It was a statement, not a
question.