Existing (32 page)

“What
do you make of the lacerations on her back?”

The doctor with the dark hair and thin moustache flicks through her notes. “They’ve been there about two weeks, healing sufficiently with no sign of infection.”

“What do you think caused them?”

He wrinkles his face up
, which makes the hair above his top lip curl at the sides. “I’m not sure. If I had to guess, I would say some sort of fork or prongs.”

The younger of the two doctors scribbles something onto his paper.
“And the injuries to her face and chest?”

“Those are more difficult. Some were caused before the car accident, but some of them are the direct result of the accident.”

“How do you know some of them were already there?”

“Two reasons.”

The young doctor frowns and flicks through his notes. “Ah, the people that called the ambulance mentioned that she was already bruised before the car hit her.”

Th
e dark-haired doctor nods. “Yes, but you’re a doctor. Think like one.”

He stares down at Rois
in’s face and frowns. “The colors?”

“Exactly.
Remember the theories of Langlois and Gresham?”

“Yes, it’s the
hemoglobin breakdown.”

“Good,” smiles the doctor with the moustache. “So what do you think has been happening to little Roisin here?”

“Abusive boyfriend?” He rubs the back of his neck. He looks tired. He sighs and looks back to the other doctor, “Or abusive Father?”

“Easy conclusion to make, but you’re a doctor so you can only deal with facts. You’ll
report the injuries to the police, but that’s it. Let them figure it out.”

“Do we just tell her Father
about her current injuries?”

The older doctor bites the end of his pen and nods. “You answer his questions,
only when he asks them.”

“Okay.”

I stare open-mouthed at the two of them as they finally give up staring at my daughter and walk out of the room. I look at the pale green curtains that encircle her bed and let my eyes drop onto her face. I thought this morning’s bruises were horrific, but staring at her face now is like looking at a stranger. I don’t think I would be able to tell it was her if I hadn’t followed her every move in this smelly hospital.

I
stare at the lines on the floor for what feels like forever before looking up again to find Lance and Hallie standing at the bottom of her bed, talking to the younger doctor. “She’ll have symptoms of concussion, but we won’t be able to tell just how serious it is until we wake her up. The swelling of her brain alone wouldn’t have been enough to put her into a coma, but with her other injuries and the pain she would have been in because of these, we decided to do what was best for her brain.”

“Other injuries?
” Lance asks with a shaky voice.

“Yes, h
er spleen ruptured but we’ve been able to repair it without having to remove it. She has three fractured ribs and a collapsed lung. Her kneecap is swollen, but we haven’t yet been able to x-ray it so we don’t know if it’s broken. We needed to stabilize her and concentrate on the swelling of her brain, since that’s the most serious of all her injuries. We’ve had to ventilate her to regulate her breathing, which is the tube that you can see going into her throat. It looks much worse than it is, but I assure you she won’t be feeling any pain. As you can see, she has several cuts and bruises to her skin also.”

Lance looks ill. He’s pale, has dark circles under his eyes
, and is shaking uncontrollably. Hallie is almost smiling, which makes me want to punch her eyes out.

“Ho
w long will she be in a coma?” he asks.

The young doctor flicks through his notes and takes a deep breath. “We need to constantly monitor her brain and we’ll scan her every day. The initial resu
lts were very positive. We hope to wake her up in two or three days’ time if the swelling and bruising have subsided sufficiently.”

“Oh God,” Lance finally whispers. He rushes to the bed and takes Roisin’s hand in his. “I’m so sorry
, Rose.”

Tears stream down his face as his hands grasp around Roisin’s tiny wrists. He sniffs and wipes his nos
e. “Will she suffer any long-term damage?”

“It’s hard to say.” The doctor glances at Hallie and I see him frown when he takes in her carefree expression. “If the swelling and the bruising subside quickly
, then the best we can hope for is normal brain activity. She may have a few concussion symptoms, maybe the occasional headache.”

“And the worst?”
Lance breathes.

“It’s hard to say.”

“Please,” Lance begs. “I need to know.”

The Doctor sighs. “Just remember this is the
absolute worst case scenario, okay?”

Lance and I nod at the same time.

“She may suffer from severe fatigue, short-term memory loss, regular migraines, and there may be some change to her personality.”

“Shit,” sobs Lance. Tears fall quickly down his face. He’s so upset that he doesn’t hear the doctor saying goodbye. I watch the doc
tor move slowly across the room and watch him glance quickly at Hallie again.

Lance sobs for ten whole minutes
, which irritates Hallie so much that she leaves to get a coffee. I stand next to Lance and place my hand on his shoulder. I can feel his pain. Seeing your child, battered and bruised and lying in a hospital bed is one of the worst things a parent can see.

“I’m so sorry,” he cries, “I should have stopped you.
I should have explained...”

The beeps continue to sound out around us. I move to sit on the chair opposite and stare into my
husband’s turquoise, sad eyes.

“I love you,” he whispers to Rose. “Please don’t leave me too.”

I narrow my eyes at him. I’m not sure what exactly it is that I blame him for, but I blame him for something. He should never have had an affair, but he’s been good to Roisin over the years. He’s cared for her in the only way that he knows how. He’s just made a few bad choices, Hallie being one of them.

Right on cue
, Hallie pushes the curtain aside and wordlessly hands Lance a coffee. He takes it without even looking at her.

“What was she doing in the street with no shoes on anyway?”
she asks.

Lance winces. “I have no idea.”

“Why were you upset when we came into the house?”

“It doesn’t matter,
” he says dismissively.

“Was it Roisin? Did she say something to you to upset you? Was it that fucking ghost again?”

“Hallie,” he snaps. “Leave it.”

She huffs and sits down in the chair I’ve just vacated. “How much longer are we staying here?”

He snaps his head up and frowns. “I’m staying until she wakes up. You can go.”

“She’s in a medically-
induced coma. She won’t wake up until they say she will.”

“I don’t care,” he says through gritted teeth. “I’m staying.”

She folds her arms across her chest and laughs. “Well, what about your other daughter?”

He sighs and pushes his hand through his hair.
“Just fuck off, Hallie. Did you even look at Roisin’s face at all?”

She freezes in shock at his words before turning and looking at Roisi
n’s face and shrugs. “She was run over because she was standing in the middle of the road. What else did you expect her face to look like?”

“Leave,” he says coldly.

“What?”

“Go. Just go
, Hallie. Go and look after my other daughter, if you’re so concerned about her. I guess there’s always a first time for everything.”

She taps her foot impatiently against the linoleum floor and shakes her head angrily.
“What’s gotten into you, Lance?”

“You
! Now go before I say something I might regret.”

Her mouth drops open
, but she doesn’t say anything else. She picks her bag up from off the floor and strides out of the room.

He drops his head onto the bed when she’s gone and sobs into the sheets.

I angrily rub the tears from my face and look up at my Mother. “What’s going to happen now?”

“We leave it to them,” she
says. “It’s the only thing we can do.”

“What if it’s too late?” I whisper.

“It isn’t,” she assures me. “Rose will wake up soon and when she does, they’ll be asking her about it.”

Another heavy tear slips down my face, but I don’t bother to try and stop it. It snakes all the way down my cheek until it settles in the corner of my mouth. I didn’t think I’d ever cry again. The last time I cried
, I didn’t think I’d ever stop and I promised myself that nothing would ever be worth my tears again. A knock on the door makes both of us snap our heads up.

“I’ll get it,” says my Mother, rising from her seat.

I silently nod. I hear the wind howling through the hallway when she opens the door and her faint voice as it trickles through to me.

“Cabe,” she says, walking back into the kitchen. “It’s for you.”

I sniff and look up at her. “Who is it?”

She shrugs. “It’s a boy. He says he really needs to talk to you.”

It can’t be Riley because she knows him. I wipe my face and take a deep breath as I walk down the darkened hallway. When I get to the door, I’m surprised to find Ashley standing there, completely soaked.

“Hi,” he says, shivering from the cold.

“Hi,” I reply.

“I need to talk to you,” he says.

I nod. “I need to talk to you too, and I need to get out of this house.”

Even though he’s clearly freezing
, he nods his head.

“Mom,” I call, “I’m just going for a walk on the beach with Ashley.”

“Okay,” she replies. I can hear the uncertainty and the concern in her voice, but I need to get out. She’ll understand. I pull the door shut behind me and walk around the side of my house, nodding at Ashley to follow me.

I pull my coat around me, but revel in the feeling of the cold, wet wind as it whi
ps against my face. I walk across the sand until I get to the shore and listen in the darkness to the waves that crash angrily on the shore.

“I just went to Rose’s
house to see her, just like we talked about, but there wasn’t anyone home,” he tells me.

I can feel the tears streaking down my face again, but I know he won’t be able to see them in the darkness. I take a deep breath and look out at the strip of moonlight that streaks a path over the sea
, reminding me of where I was kissing Rose just twelve hours ago. I try to compose myself. “She’s in the hospital.”

“What?” he says. “What happened?”

“It was my fault,” I whisper. When he doesn’t say anything, I take a deep breath and tell him everything.

“Shit,” he whispers. “This is bad. This is really bad.”

“I know.”

“It wasn’t your fault though, Cabe. You can’t go blaming yourself for this.”

“I shouldn’t have called out to her.”

“The fault lies with the p
erson that made her run from home like that,” he finally says, breaking the silence. “She wouldn’t have been in the road with no shoes on and covered in bruised if there wasn’t a reason for it.”

I nod. “I’ve thought about that, but it still feels like it’s my fault.”

“She doesn’t need your guilt, Cabe.”

“I know,” I say quickly.

He sucks in a quick breath and shoves his hands into the pocket of his jeans. “What exactly has she told you?”

I shrug. “Not much. I just know what I’ve seen.”

“And what have you seen?” he pushes.

“The black eye on her second day at school
, and then a few days later when we were swimming, I saw these crazy scratches all over her back. One weekend I saw more black eyes and now this.”

“So she hasn’t actually told you anything?” he asks. “Have you asked her?”

“Of course I have,” I spit defensively. “I’ve thought it about it nonstop since I saw that first black eye. She either tells a very good story or she gets all pissed off at me and tells me to basically shut up and leave her alone.”

“She
told me,” he says. “The night at the party when I locked her in the laundry room.”

I can’t stop my head from spinning around to him in shock. Why would she tell Ashley and not me?
“And?” I ask. “Who is it?”

“She wouldn’t tell me that
, but she did admit that it was
someone
.”

“Shit,” I breathe. “I mean, I know
what we thought, but actually hearing that someone is doing those things to her is just-“