Women Scorned (2 page)

She felt her chest and neck. Her necklaces. The fucker took her necklaces. Breath coming in harsh gasps, she moaned deep in her throat, the precursor to tears. But she wouldn’t cry. Tears were useless now.

She fluttered her hand over the cut in her head and winced. She felt her breasts and cringed, the ridges of his bite marks tender. Her pants were gone. She sniffed and ran the back of her arm under her nose, hitching in a breath. No tears. She was a big girl. She could handle this. She squeezed her eyes shut and explored between her legs. She pushed her fingers inside a slit much larger than it should be, made larger by the cop’s knife. She remembered how large it had been, how it had glinted the red lights from his cruiser into her face. Bloody mucous draped her fingers like string when she pulled them out. She shuddered, recalled his grin as he had cut her open. She pulled her torn shirt around her, leaving smears on the white fabric and scrambled for her pants, hands shaking so badly it took her a couple tries before she could get her feet into the correct holes.

Alive.

She slid between the two front seats, leaving traces of herself on the upholstery and plopped into the driver’s seat. She didn’t dare venture outside. Not after what had happened. The scent of cherries wafted from her air freshener, masking the unpleasant smells from the back seat. She turned the key in the ignition with a shaky hand. The car wouldn’t start. Slamming her palms into the steering wheel, she screamed, “No, no, no!” After a minute, she regained control and took a deep breath.

“Okay.” She looked out the window. “Okay, okay, okay.” She took three short breaths the way women do when giving birth, just before pushing. With her last held gasp, she opened the car door and stepped into the windy night. Still. Waiting. Listening. No one there but her.

“Okay,” she said again.

Blood soaked through her clothing. She looked at her crotch and touched the fabric. Wet. She needed help, or she would die. There was a town up ahead. She could hitchhike. Maybe no one would notice all the blood in the dark. Or maybe they would and know she needed help. Either way, she needed to get to a hospital.

She walked away from her car, surprised by the lack of pain between her legs. So much blood. She was probably in shock. Her jeans squelched, cold and sticky against her thighs. Rocks bit into her naked feet. Her duffle bag, full of clothes, sat on the floorboards, forgotten. She hugged her body. Her open shirt fluttered in the wind. Crimson footprints marked her passage.

Headlights stabbed through the darkness as a car approached from behind. The first car in hours. She stuck out her thumb and stopped walking, turning toward the vehicle, a half smile on her face, eyes lit. The driver didn’t slow down. A look of shock erupted on her face. Her hand dropped and smacked her leg in its descent.

“Fuck!” She kicked the ground leaving a red smudge in the dirt. “Damn it!” She hugged her chest, covering her breasts and shuffled on. Her small, slow steps didn’t get her very far, but she couldn’t move faster. How long was this back road, anyway? She passed a couple empty houses and what appeared to be a boarded up market, but nothing else. Night turned to day and she trudged on, each labored step scuffing the ground. In the daylight where she knew her condition would be obvious, someone would have to help her. Another car came and went. And then another.

The sound of an engine rumbled from behind her. She was ready to flag it down when she noticed the dome lights on the roof. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. She was certain it was the same cop, certain he had come back for her to do more damage, stop her from telling. She darted off the road, seeking the shelter of the trees. The cruiser passed without stopping, a female officer behind the wheel. When Camilla was sure the road was clear, she ventured out again, legs more shaky than before.

When a car approached from ahead, Camilla stood in the middle of the road and waved her arms above her head. The driver would have to stop or hit her, she decided. Enough of this passive shit. She could make them give her a ride to a hospital. Or at least make them give her their phone. Something. But when the driver didn’t slow, Camilla let her arms drop. It hurtled toward her at an alarming speed. At the last moment, she lunged out of the way, scraping her knee on the road. She lay on her back staring at the blue sky above. A hawk circled.

“I’m not dead yet, you idiot,” she said to the bird as she got back to her feet and kept walking.

The next day, Camilla took to twisting her belly button ring up and down as she shuffled along, shoulders hunched, head drooped. Her matted, black hair stuck out at odd angles, the gel she’d used to style it two days before still there, holding the basic shape of her textured spikes. Another car approached from behind. She didn’t raise her thumb, but instead extended her middle finger at the dwindling taillights. Over the last two days, too many had passed without stopping for her to get excited anymore.

She stopped her slow shuffle and thought back over how long she’d been walking. Her brown eyes lost their focus as she looked inward, her lips moving as she counted under her breath. Three nights. Three nights without stopping. She’d been traveling along this back road without rest, without food. The town looked a lot closer on the map. How long until she came to civilization? She looked at the ground, then into the forest.
Should be resting
, she thought. She stepped off the shoulder, toward the forest, in search of a place to sit. She wasn’t tired, knew she could keep going, but logic said she needed rest.

After finding a mossy patch at the base of a tree, she reclined, back against the rough bark. The blackness swarmed around her, choking out the light, but she didn’t care. She closed her eyes, heaved sighs and then shuddered. Her body tensed as she tried to relax, back arched, neck straight, head leaning against the trunk. Camilla wrapped her hands around her knees and hugged them close to her chest causing more blood to ooze from between her legs, soaking through her jeans, staining the green moss beneath her.

Bats chirped, insects buzzed, wind soughed through the branches overhead. There was meaning in these sounds, she just knew it. Then a different noise caught her attention, heavy breathing next to her cheek and the smell of thick air, rotten breath. Her eyelids flickered open, and she gasped. Large, golden eyes stared into hers. The wolf panted then growled and took a step away. It sat in front of her, its tongue lolling, tail batting the ground, and threw its head back ululating into the dark, the sound echoing all around.

Camilla screamed and clapped her hands over her ears.

Five other wolves lunged from nowhere and nipped at her. She flinched and yipped like a pup every time they got close enough to bite, but they didn’t actually touch her. Then they stopped and sat, watching. She stared at them, panting, calming herself. They began a murmured growl. She scrunched her eyebrows, cocking her head, listening. There were words in those noises, telling her to get going.

“Okay,” she said and stood up. The large one snapped at her ankles, its teeth grazing her enough to hurt. “I’m going,” she said, no longer afraid and sounding more like a petulant teenager talking to her stern father. The wolves watched as she trudged back to the road. Once there, the pack faded into the shadows. The sky grew lighter in the east, and the night ended.

After less than a mile, she saw what they had said would be there. Just over the next rise, a city sprawled beneath her, only a few miles downhill. She ambled along, glancing over her shoulders every once in a while. She no longer tried to hide her breasts within the tattered remains of her shirt, intent on finding a hospital rather than concealing her nakedness.

Morning-gray lit the horizon from behind the city, marking the start of her third day on this journey. She smiled for the first time since its inception, as she trotted down the hill, a new bounce in her step. Soon, she would get the help she needed.

Questions flitted through her mind—why hadn’t she bled out yet; why wasn’t she dead?—but she pushed them away knowing it did no good to think on these things. Her pants squished as she shuffled toward civilization. The smell of cold hung in the air.

Streetlights cast orange pools on the sidewalk. She walked through the creamy circle of each glow as she followed the road signs directing her toward the hospital. The sleeping town nestled around her. It didn’t take her long to reach her destination. In front of it, she stopped and stared at the two-story building. She looked down at her bloodied jeans and curled her lip at the mess between her legs. She hugged her breasts again when she noticed people moving around inside.

“I made it,” she whispered, unaware that she had spoken. It didn’t hit her until now that she’d never believed she would make it to safety. The realization made her knees buckle. With a firm hand, she steadied herself against a car and took a couple of slow deep breaths. The air she sucked into her lungs couldn’t satisfy her, however, didn’t soothe the way it should’ve. She ran her dry tongue over her cracked lips, tried to swallow.

A man walked past her in the parking lot. There she stood, bleeding, clothes in tatters, and he didn’t even ask if she needed help, didn’t act alarmed, as if she didn’t exist. She glared at his back and sighed. Something was severely wrong with people in this area. Were they demented? No one seemed to care about a woman covered in blood standing mostly naked in the road. She walked across the parking lot without pause, head held high, shoulders back. This would not be the end of her, she decided. She had made it to town without anyone’s help. What was one more person passing by?

Despite her resolve to be strong, her bottom lip quivered. She wouldn’t cry. “You’re a big girl. You can do this.” Back straight, she marched to the glass doors. A yellow sticker cautioned her they were automatic. She walked into them, bumped her nose and breasts against the glass, then bounced back.

“What the fuck,” she said, rubbing her nose, which throbbed like a rotten tooth. A nurse came up behind her, walked right past her. Camilla raised her hand, a warning for the nurse on her lips when the double doors slid open and the nurse walked through. Camilla slid inside, shadowing the nurse, a quick glance over her shoulder at the closing doors. They were smeared with a bloody face and body print.

Suppressing a shudder, the confidence she’d felt moments before seeping from her gut like air from a balloon, she went to the nurse’s station. Avoiding eye contact with the patients waiting in the emergency room lobby wouldn’t be easy, but she thought she might be able to manage it if she kept her head down. Her nakedness screamed at her, begging Camilla to hide it, cover it up with her torn shirt. If there was a hole somewhere, she would’ve slid down it like a snake grateful for the dark confines.

At the front desk, she glanced at the closest nurse typing on her computer, leaned in so that she could whisper to the harried woman.

“Excuse me,” she squeaked. The nurse didn’t look up. She cleared her throat and tried again. “I need help,” she said, louder this time. The nurse still didn’t seem to notice. “Hello!” She snapped her fingers in the nurse’s face, the need for discretion morphing into a need to be noticed, no matter the scene she was about to cause. The nurse sighed and whipped around, scowling, lips tight.

“Mary, do you have the file on Brian Clark? He’s the one came in with the broken foot.”

“Hey, bitch! I need some help here.”

Still, no one acknowledged her.

“Mommy,” a little girl to Camilla’s right whined. “Mommy, what’s wrong with that lady?” The little girl, her eyes large and teary in her pudgy cheeks, her black hair hanging lank and tangled around her face, pointed a chubby finger at Camilla. “She’s bleeding, Mommy. What’s wrong with her? Look.”

“Don’t point, Britney. That’s rude.” The mother pushed her daughter’s hand down but Britney still stared at Camilla.

“Someone help me!” Camilla called out to anyone who would listen. As she swung around to face the waiting room, searching for the first person to acknowledge her, her shirt fell open again. She gathered the cloth around herself, picked at it with shaking hands.

“Help her!” Britney yelled, tears spilling down her cheeks as her chest hitched with sobs. Her mother held the little girl’s finger wrapped in gauze. “Mommy, she’s scared. Someone help her.” The little girl buried her face in her mother’s chest and curled her body in pushing against her breasts as if she were trying to force her way back inside, where she wouldn’t have to look at something like Camilla’s abused body anymore.

Nurses ran in to see why Britney was yelling. They tried to calm her down. She pointed in Camilla’s direction again and gibbered. The nurses turned and stared past Camilla at an old woman hunched in a chair with an oxygen mask over her face. They cooed to the little girl and told her that the old woman needed the mask to breathe.

“That’s not the lady I’m talking about,” she wailed. “She’s right behind you.” The mother licked her lips and darted wide-eyed glances around the room as she rocked the trembling ball that was her daughter. The nurses looked around the room, apparently not seeing the bloody woman frightening the little girl.

“I’m right here, you fucking idiots,” Camilla whispered, unable to put any force in her words. She sank to her knees. No one but the little girl looked at her. A nurse brought the child a mild sedative and she relaxed against her mother, the stained bandage on her finger now bright red. One of the nurses walked past Camilla and knocked her over, never turning to see who she’d bumped into.

Camilla allowed herself to fall back welcoming the cool tile against her cheek. She drifted. Her eyes fluttered shut and all went dark.

*  *  *

A nurse walked through the door and called a patient’s name. She looked into the lobby to see who would stand. Then she screamed. Her pale skin turned whiter as she swayed. She stared at the bloody woman sprawled on the lobby floor.

“What’s going on?” the head nurse bellowed. She rushed around the corner, saw the body and gasped. She stood for a moment with her hand cupped over her mouth. “Someone call the doctor,” she yelled, then turned and ran through double doors. Moments later, she returned with a stretcher. Two orderlies helped lift the body. The doctor arrived out of breath and checked for a pulse. Other patients shrank away, hugging their arms, cupping their mouths, clutching each other. No one understood why they hadn’t seen the body there before. They stared at the discarded heap of flesh.