Red Light (36 page)

That same clarity that resolved itself into a small, faint voice between my eyes told me there was no way I could or should drive, and I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and hit the “last-dialed” button.

Three rings, four rings. “Please answer,” I prayed silently as the fifth started.

“Tori, are you okay?” Jean’s voice, the one I wanted to hear. Thank God.

“Jean…I don’t feel very well,” I said through another round of pain and sickness. “I think I took too many Benadryl or something—I need someone to drive.”

“Where are you?”

I gave her the address. “I’m just going to curl up in the passenger seat, and I’ll leave the driver’s side unlocked, okay?”

“Baby, I’ll be there in a few minutes. Hang up now and I’ll call you back in a minute, but don’t go to sleep, okay?”

“Okay. Wait. Jean?” I asked, hoping she hadn’t hung up yet.

“Yeah, baby?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too,” she answered, her voice a soft reassurance in my ear as I climbed over the gear shift into the passenger seat. “Now don’t go to sleep. I’ll call you right back, okay?”

“Okay. I won’t go to sleep.”

I wasn’t, I really wasn’t going to go to sleep, but that light, fuzzy float was crawling up my legs, up my stomach, approaching my neck, an inexorable march to my head as I curled against the fleece cover of the seat, each whorl of softness a tiny hand on my face as I waited for the phone to ring.

“Hey,” I answered when it did, and the sound came from so very far away.

“Baby, what are you feeling?” Jean asked me.

As I tried to find the word to describe my signs and symptoms, memory hit me like a blow to the mouth. Trace. Trace on top of me. She had said something, something…I couldn’t remember, but I recalled a quick flash of light and then the sharp sting that cut into my skin just below my navel, and I lifted my shirt to touch it as I remembered Trace fucking me, the way she’d always said she’d wanted to. Oh, shit. Holy fucking shit. I could feel the lines she’d cut into my skin. “Oh, my God…you’re gonna hate me…” was all I could say.

My fault. This was my fault, I realized as light glanced off the ring I wore on my left hand, a ring that symbolized vows I’d shattered in one stupid moment. I should have never had that glass of wine. I’d led her on, let her think this was okay, and now, now I’d ruined my relationship with Jean because she’d never forgive me—how could she? I couldn’t. The whole situation started to spiral through my head, twisting me with it, and I started to shiver uncontrollably, my teeth rattling in my head. I could feel each one as it hit another.

“I’m not gonna hate you, baby. I’m never gonna hate you. Now look out the window, because I’m walking up to your door now. I brought a little help, okay?”

I curled up tighter on my seat, the caress of the fleece changing to a coarse sting as my face rubbed against it.

The door opened and I saw her pants before her knees flexed and her beautiful face was in my line of sight. “Hi, baby,” she said softly and smiled.

Samantha peeked around her arm. “Hey, Tor. Jean’s gonna drive you, and I’m gonna drive Jean’s car.”

The skin of my face was cold and I realized I’d been crying, because I was pretty sure I’d slept with Trace, and if I felt sick, I deserved it.

“It’s all right baby, it’s all right,” Jean said as she tried to put her arms around me.

“No,” I said and struggled to push her away as the nausea kicked up with a vengeance, and she stepped aside just in time for me to heave my guts up onto the sidewalk, leaving my throat sore and my head light. Jean was holding me in a nanosecond, one hand against my face, the other grasping my wrist, and as sick as I felt, I tried to pull away. I wasn’t at all worthy of her.

Jean’s expression changed from gentle concern to the professional look I knew so very well. “Sam, you drive, we’ll pick up my car later,” Jean said as she counted my pulse, and I heard the driver’s side door pop open.

“Tori, are you bleeding?” Samantha asked.

“Yeah, yeah, a little,” I said muzzily. “There wasn’t anything, you know…” The words disappeared from my head as another wave engulfed me. “I’m gonna throw up…”

Jean caught me before I fell out onto the sidewalk, and once again I tried to struggle free of her embrace, the embrace I so wanted and didn’t deserve.

“It’s me, baby. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to check you out. Let me see your eyes.”

I lifted my head and leaned it against the soothing fleece of the seat as Jean’s serious brown eyes evaluated mine by shading them with her hand, then removing it to watch my pupil reaction.

“Take the seat cover off carefully and throw it in the back,” Jean said over my head to Sam. “It’s evidence. Tori, you have to go to the hospital.”

“I don’t want to. I just need a ride home. Please.”

The unmistakable sound of my car engine roaring to life rang through my head, and the vibration settled into my gut, a shake that matched the tremor I felt bodily.

Jean sighed. “Tori, your pulse is slow and erratic, you’re pale, your pupils are sluggish, you’re vomiting
and
bleeding. You
have
to get evaluated.”

I shook my head in the negative. “Jean, I’m Ay and Oh times three. I know your name, my name, and Sam’s, I know it’s almost dusk, and we’re in my car in front of Trace’s—”

I had no warning before I threw up this time, but nothing was left, and Jean climbed into the seat next to me, crushing me against her, an arm wrapped securely around my shoulder.

“Sam, the closest ER,” Jean directed. “I’ve got my badge if we get pulled over.”

I tried to protest. I wanted to go home, home to forget this whole thing had ever happened, to be sick in the privacy of my room and bath before I had to deal with the inevitable reality of having slept with Trace, but I was starting to drift again, and my only thought as I floated away into nothing was that I finally hated someone as much as I hated my father—myself.

*

I didn’t get to make any decisions at all, because I opened my eyes to the cool white light of a hospital room, and the painful twist of my head revealed a drip on the right side and hooked into my forearm, and the distinctive vitamin smell of O
₂
rushing up the plastic in my nose. The needle itched and someone held my other hand.

“Colposcopy with toluidine blue dye showed tears in the fossa navicularis as well as the posterior fourchette. And here…okay. She needed a few stitches, too.” The voice was male, clinical and subdued, and as I looked for its source, I spotted a TV screen on the wall showing an image of pink flesh with some extensive purplish blue markings, then some deeper-colored viscera that seeped blood. I watched as a pair of small-tipped forceps pushed a curved needle into one end and out the other, closing the tear.

“That…had to hurt,” I thought, “wonder
what
it is.”

“Hey, you’re with us.” Jean’s voice cut through my thoughts and I oriented on it instead.

“Hi,” I said as I found her face right above the hand she held. Her eyes were warm as always on me and I smiled at her. “What are we up to?” I tried to sit up.

“Relax, stay there.” Jean leaned over and pressed gentle fingers against my chest. “You passed out.”

“Really? I did? Why?”

“I’m Dr. Petrossi. How are you feeling, Ms. Scott?” the same male voice I’d heard before asked.

I thought about that question before I answered. Better. I wasn’t nauseous, and the cramp that had knocked me silly seemed to be gone. “I feel better.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Ms. Scott, I have to ask you a few questions, and I need you to be really honest, even if it’s embarrassing, okay?”

“Sure,” I said, not really caring much about anything, because I was feeling light, drifty, like everything was made of gossamer and about to float away.

“Are you on medication for anything?”

“No, not at all.”

“Do you use recreational drugs, like Ecstasy, K, or GHB?”

Why in the world would anyone ask me that? “No, I don’t do drugs.”

“Okay,” he answered, “you should know you’re testing positive for ketamine and for GHB.”

“What’s ketamine?”

Jean smoothed my forehead. “It’s an anesthetic and a hallucinogen, and GHB is Liquid X.”

I struggled to think and wondered what the doctor was talking about; I didn’t do that shit. “Benadryl,” I said finally. “I had Benadryl because the wine made me itch…and some water.”

“Well, it’s not Benadryl alone that made you
that
sick,” Dr. Petrossi said, “even with the wine, Ms. Scott.”

“It’s Tori. Jean, tell him to call me Tori?” I asked and squeezed her hand.

“Tori it is, then,” the doctor answered. “Tori, do you remember what you did or where you went earlier today?”

“What?”

Jean’s grip on my hand tightened almost imperceptibly as he repeated the question, and the floating, drifting feeling started to crumble as I remembered the funeral, the amazing amount of grief that had hit me in waves as Trace held my hand and pressed against me at the burial.

I’d driven her home and she’d cried some more, and then I’d had the glass of wine and the Benadryl about fifteen minutes later, which I supposed had knocked me out, and then we…toluidine blue, that’s what the doctor had said. It was used to detect abnormal cells in cervical cancer, and a low-percentage tincture was used in the ER because it clung to damaged tissue and was especially useful during colposcopy in evaluating for—

Once more nausea raced through me, but my head was perfectly clear when I sat up and ripped the damn tubing off my face. “What’s that on the screen?”

“That’s the colposcopy exam,” Dr. Petrossi answered.

“You didn’t ask me if you could perform that exam,” I said tightly. I might not have been feeling my personal best, but I knew my rights.

“I just did the immediately necessary, Tori. You were passed out and bleeding. It’s up to you if you want to go through the rest of it…and you might be a little light-headed,” he added as I shifted and swayed. “I did administer a mild anesthetic so the exam and the stitches wouldn’t be painful.”

“I gave permission for that, Tori,” Jean said quietly. Her thumb brushed across the back of my hand.

I nodded briefly. Of course. She had the legal right to do that for me, as I did for her.

My heart started to pound as I stared at the image on the screen. That…was me. My body, the toluidine clinging to the damaged tissue like it was supposed to, making what would have been varying shades of pink, some of the tears invisible, a vivid portrait of bruised blue. What the fuck had I done to myself?

“Get this line
out
of my arm, stop
whatever
the fuck you’re doing. I want my clothes, and I want to go home.”

“You’re almost done, baby, we’ll be out of here soon,” Jean soothed, but that familiar heat had flamed up my neck, and though I was trying very hard not to flip out, I was hand over hand on a very thin line.

“Don’t fucking touch me. I don’t want
anyone
to fucking touch me,” I snapped and swung my legs off the bed.

“Just a moment, Tori,” the doctor said, “you’re gonna hurt yourself. Let me—”

“Fine. Whatever. Just let me out of here. Can you take this out of my arm, please?” I asked, holding up the arm with the line in it.

I got a good look at Dr. Petrossi as he clipped, closed, and carefully removed the needle that was sunk into the vein of my arm. Had I not been so scared and angry, I would have said he looked both kindly and intelligent, with salt-and-pepper brown hair and a close-trimmed beard.

But I was both those things and more, so it was a great relief for me when he didn’t try to smile as he put a piece of gauze and tape over the insertion site, then asked me to hold pressure on it for a bit.

“Tori,” he said, and his voice was serious and steady, something I could listen to without reacting, “this is all recorded if you want to press charges, because considering your urine, bloods, and my findings, I’m finding it hard to believe this was consensual,” he stated quietly as I stared back up at the screen.

Consensual. It was an adjective we learned well in 911, because consent had legal ramifications for all patient-care providers, especially at the pre-hospital level. My brain seized on that word. Consensual: by mutual agreement of all the parties involved, legally. Medically, biologically, it meant the reflexive response of one part of the body to the stimulation of another, such as both pupils reacting to light even though only one is being directly evaluated.

“You’re gonna need to come back and see me in two weeks. I would like to make sure that you’re healing properly. You’ll also want to avoid penetrative sex for about that long too, or at least until you’ve been reevaluated.”

I shook my head, staring at him in disbelief.

“You’re going to be fine,” he said reassuringly, misunderstanding my reaction. “There’s no permanent damage, everything should clear up in a few weeks, you’ll be able to have sex, have kids, you’re young and healthy, you’ll be okay.”

I nodded curtly. Now I felt completely humiliated. “I’d like to go home now.”