Sanctuary, page 2
I watched as an RN started prepping Nishia for the central line. “Other than her name, I have zero information on her. She was dumped at Sanctuary’s gates less than thirty minutes ago. From a quick exam, I determined she most likely has a broken nose, jaw, and ankle. Possibly her ribs too. She’s been raped, and from the fresh blood all over her thighs and…other areas, it wasn’t long ago.”
“She was just dumped?” Dr. Sandoval questioned with raised, graying brows. “Her abusers just dropped her at your door?”
“I’m aware it smells fishy, Doc. I’ll deal with the reasons why they tossed her at my gate like a bag of trash later. Right now, I’m more worried about what kind of head injury she sustained. She had a seizure right before the EMTs arrived.”
“We will examine her for any trafficking marks,” she assured me. “As well as have a rape kit done, which we will turn over to Sheriff Davis when he arrives.”
Nodding, I stood outside the trauma bay while the doctor returned to the nurses already taking care of Nishia.
“No tattoos to show she’s being trafficked,” one of the nurses said loud enough for me to hear. “But there’s this spot on the back of her left arm that looks bad. It’s red, has heat to it, and there is an obvious lump beneath the surface of the skin.”
Dr. Sandoval made a displeased noise and picked up a scalpel. Slicing Nishia’s arm made her whimper, but her eyes didn’t even flicker.
“Numb her up if you’re going to go exploring!” I snapped.
“Stay quiet, or go out to the waiting room until I get her stable,” she returned without lifting her attention from what she was doing. Picking up a pair of tweezers, she dug around in the opening she’d just made before pulling out what looked like a microchip.
“Turn this over to the sheriff as well,” she instructed the nurse, who was doing nothing but collecting evidence from Nishia’s body. Already, she’d cut all of Nishia’s fingernails and put them in an envelope. “Since we’ve got the central line in, let’s start her on fluids. I’ll do the rape kit now while we wait on radiology to get her X-rays and CT done.”
The curtain was drawn, and I started to scrub my fingers through my scruff when I realized my hands were still covered in Nishia’s blood. Seeing a sink behind the nurses station, I walked over to wash the crimson off my skin just as the sliding doors opened and Ben stomped in with my mother right behind him.
“Give me an update,” Mom commanded, her gray-streaked red hair in disarray. She had on pajama pants, what looked like one of my father’s white T-shirts, and a jacket. Briefly, her gaze flickered over my bare chest and then my shoeless feet.
Grabbing a few paper towels, I dried my hands as I gave her all the information I knew. By the time I was done, Dr. Sandoval pushed the curtain back and came out holding a plastic bag. “Rape kit is done. Poor girl was torn so badly I had to place a few stitches.”
While she gave her report to Ben, a tech wheeled Nishia out of the trauma bay. The guy barely got a few feet down the corridor before I was following him. I didn’t normally get so involved in this part of a victim’s care, but something in my gut wouldn’t allow me to let this girl out of my sight. Even when the curtain had been drawn while the doctor did the kit, I’d had a sensation like my skin was too tight over my muscles because my eyes weren’t on her.
I stayed with her while the CT scan was performed, standing just outside the door while the machine took the images needed of her from head to toe. X-rays were done—again, from head to toe.
As I followed the tech back to the ER, I heard Dr. Sandoval speaking to Ben and Mom. The results had already been sent to her, and they were discussing all the damage done to Nishia’s body.
“The ankle will need surgery to fix. I think she’s going to need a few screws to correct this break, but we need to get ortho’s opinion on that. Ribs are fractured in three places, but completely broken here and here,” she said, pointing to the screen the others were looking at. “There’s a fracture in her right wrist, here and here. Again, ortho needs to consult on that, as well as the jaw. It’s broken here, and she’s going to need it surgically repaired, which means it will be wired shut until it heals.”
“Bastards,” Mom hissed to herself as she balled her hands at her sides.
“All of these injuries are serious, of course, but the most worrisome is the skull fracture. That’s most likely why she had a seizure.” Dr. Sandoval squeezed her temples. “She’s got some bleeding, and I need neurology in here to consult on that. If it doesn’t stop on its own soon, we will have to go in.”
I continued to listen to the doctor as I waited for the tech to get the bed back into place, while a nurse bustled around getting Nishia hooked back up to all the monitors. The woman kept giving me nervous glances, but I stayed out of her way, so she couldn’t tell me to leave. Not that she would have. Like most people in Creswell Springs, the nurses did their best to avoid interacting with me as much as possible.
Once she was done, the nurse made a quick exit, and I moved closer to the bed. I had no idea how old Nishia was. From her small size, she could have been anywhere from fifteen to thirty. With all the damage done to her face, I had no way to determine whether she was a teen or a grown woman, but she’d been through a nightmare that some grown men wouldn’t be able to survive.
Picking up one of her small hands, I carefully wrapped my fingers around hers. “You’re safe now, little one,” I murmured. “Rest peacefully. I won’t let anyone hurt you again.”
CHAPTER THREE
nishia
My nightmare was never-ending.
Shadows all around me.
Scary shadows.
Malevolent.
Shadows that hurt me.
Holding me down.
Screaming at me.
Whispering threats in my ear.
Pain.
Shadows that floated around in the darkness like gray ghosts.
So much pain that it drowned out the fear of the wraithlike entities who closed in on me. Their laughter made me shiver, their scent so foul it made my stomach turn. Sweat and body odor mixed with stale cigarette smoke and nicotine. The metallic taste of blood on my tongue was welcome compared to the smell of the shadows.
I tried to open my mouth so I didn’t have to breathe through my nose, but my jaw hurt too badly.
There was no part of my body that didn’t hurt. Hair didn’t have nerves, but when the shadows pulled, I wondered if whoever had taught me that useless fact as a kid was wrong after all. I tried not to cry out, but that only made the shadows angrier. Part of me wanted to piss them off, but each day, I grew weaker, and I was starting to give in. Let those stupid shadows have their fun, give them the tears and the whimpers—the brokenness they found so amusing.
The shadows pressed in closer, and I struggled, unable to breathe as the darkness turned the floating figures more corporeal and I fought to breathe.
Shadows.
Pain.
Darkness.
Agony.
Please, I don’t want this.
I’m scared.
I want to go home.
I want…
No!
Home wasn’t safe.
The shadows took me straight from my bed in the middle of the night, and no one stopped them. Vaguely, I remembered a different shadow standing in the doorway of my bedroom. Still. Emotionless. Not a word was spoken as the terrifying shadows tied my hands and feet together and carried me from my room, past the motionless shadow that could have easily been a statue.
But, no. I knew that shadow. Loved her. Would have given my life for hers.
As she should have fought and risked her own life for mine.
Instead of just standing there with blank eyes, letting the shadows take me. As if I didn’t matter. My worth was no longer useful to her. Her next fix was more important.
Was she high when they took me? Did she know what the malevolent shadows would do to me?
Soul-crushing pain sliced through my head, and the pressure in my chest made it hard to breathe. The shadows were back to laughing. Scary. Manic. The smells were becoming too much. My pain level had reached a new high, one that no human could possibly experience for so long and still survive.
Pain and shadows.
Darkness and agony.
Fear that tore at the threads of my sanity.
Don’t give in.
Don’t let them win.
Stay strong.
But the fear was winning.
The pain making it impossible not to cry.
The darkness was too much.
And those fucking shadows wouldn’t stop laughing.
“Easy, sweetheart,” a deep voice murmured beyond the shadows, pushing the malevolent creatures back—a little. “You’re safe now. I’ve got you.”
I wanted to believe the voice so desperately. Just the sound of that dark timbre, slightly raspy, incredibly soothing, was enough to stop the shadows from laughing like hysterical hyenas. The voice drove them back, made it a little easier to breathe. The fear no longer threatened to swallow me whole.
Callused fingers stroked over my palm tenderly. So, so tenderly. It was a stark contrast to the pain the shadows enjoyed inflicting. I ached to move closer, to have that rough skin ease the pain throughout the rest of my body. When the touch faded, I whimpered and tried to beg for it to return, but I couldn’t open my mouth.
Please.
Don’t leave me.
Please.
Come back.
Protect me.
Don’t let them hurt me again.
That rough touch returned, stroking across my forehead. “I’m not leaving you, Nishia. And I swear to you, no one will ever hurt you again, little one.”
I struggled to see who the voice belonged to, but the darkness around the shadows was too deep, too thick. Frustrated, I strained, trying to force my eyes to cooperate, but I didn’t have superstrength, let alone supersight. I needed my glasses, but they were back in my room…
At home.
With her.
“We’ll get you new glasses,” the voice promised. “Just as soon as you open your eyes.”
Open my eyes?
They weren’t open?
But…the darkness.
The shadows.
“Don’t go back to sleep, sweetheart. Stay with me. I know it hurts to speak, but I need to hear your voice. I need…” His voice trailed off, and I whimpered again, wanting it back.
Don’t stop talking.
I need it.
You’re the only one who doesn’t hurt me.
“Open your eyes, Nishia.” The voice grew deeper, more insistent. “Look at me. Let me see those pretty blue eyes.”
One of the shadows began to laugh again. The figure didn’t think I had the strength to open my eyes. I was weak. A disappointment. Nothing. Only good for one use.
To pay off her drug dealer.
Anger and frustration mixed together, and I fought the darkness. My need to look at the person responsible for that deep voice that eased the pressure in my chest outweighed the fear. The pain increased in the back of my head, shooting throughout my entire body, but I kept fighting.
She always said I was too stubborn for my own good.
Fuck.
I used to love it when she would tease me about it.
Saying I was just like her.
No!
I was nothing like her.
I’d worked my entire life to ensure I didn’t become her.
I studied. Got the scholarships. The acceptance letters. The awards. I wasn’t going to be stuck in a low-income apartment, living off assistance, and sucking cock for my next fix. Drugs were a part of her life. Not mine. I loved her, but I knew her failings. Her addictions. And I wouldn’t allow them to become mine. I wouldn’t be her.
I had a future. Goals. My life was planned out.
But she’d stolen it all from me.
For what?
Probably an 8 ball of coke and a few grams of heroin. Maybe an ounce or two of meth.
I hoped that junkie bitch overdosed on it.
“Give me a name, little one,” the voice urged quietly. “Tell me who did this to you.”
Mom.
My fucking mother did this to me. She stood by while the shadows stole me away. She watched with blank eyes as they carried me out of the apartment, hog-tied and tossed over some foul-smelling bastard’s shoulder. I didn’t doubt for a minute that she was high at the time. When she was sober, which was rare, things were okay. But when she was stoned, she was every kid’s worst nightmare.
No. That was wrong.
The shadows had proven what a lie that was.
They had been anyone’s worst nightmare.
But it became my reality.
And now, I needed to open my fucking eyes so I could get away from the hell they had trapped me in.
The hell that was inside my own mind.
With a scream, I grabbed for the first thing my fingers could latch on to and forced my lashes to lift.
CHAPTER FOUR
nishia
The lights hurt my eyes after being in the dark for so long. Blinking, I quickly glanced around, making sure the shadows were actually gone. Every movement I made hurt, and I saw stars for a moment before I was able to focus. The awful fluorescent lighting overhead. The machines to one side. A chair to the other.
And sitting in that chair was a man with tangled dark-blond hair that fell forward as he leaned over my hand that he was still holding. His lips were pressed to my knuckles, but his eyes were on my face. I took all of him in. The thick, scruffy beard on his jaw, the straight nose with a small gold hoop in the right nostril. The brief flash of dark ink on his neck that disappeared down into a longsleeved shirt that stretched tight over his shoulders and chest.
After everything the shadows had put me through, I should have been terrified of him. But all I felt was an oddly calming peace in his presence.
He was beautiful, in a scary, don’t-fuck-with-me kind of way, and I had the sudden urge to crawl into his lap and beg him not to let the shadows return.
This close, I could see him fairly easily, but if he had been by the door, he would have only been a blur without my glasses.
Another sharp pain ricocheted through my head, and I whined. As soon as the sound left me, I pressed my lips together, embarrassed to show weakness.
Green eyes scanned my face. “Finally,” he whispered, relief thick in his voice. “I thought I’d lost you a few times, little one.”
“I’m a grown woman. Stop calling me little.” When my lips barely moved, I tried to open my mouth, only to realize my jaw was stuck. Fresh pain throbbed in my face. Shifting my tongue around in my mouth, I realized it was stuck behind my teeth.
Because there were bars holding them shut.
I didn’t need a mirror to see what I looked like or to understand what had happened. Someone had broken my jaw. Something similar had happened to my mother when I was twelve. Her dealer had taken his pound of flesh for the bill she owed. The fucker had broken her jaw so badly she’d needed it wired shut. For months, I’d turned all her food into smoothies so she could drink her meals through a straw.
She’d been swollen and bruised for weeks. And because she couldn’t afford to go back to the hospital to get the wires out, she’d gone to some back-alley quack, who had more or less tortured her when he’d taken the bars and wires out for free.
No wonder my face hurt so badly.
“You’re a tiny little thing,” he argued, and I thought his lips twitched. But it happened so quickly before his face turned neutral again that I was sure it was a play of the overhead lighting. “Like a delicate little fairy. You remind me of that dark-haired water fairy from Tinker Bell that my cousins would force us to watch when they were younger. What was her name…?”
He frowned in concentration and then snapped his fingers when the answer came to him. “Silvermist. Yeah, that’s her name. Pretty, long black hair. Although your eyes are blue rather than the soft brown she has. Don’t tell River or Nova. They were die-hard Tinker Bell and Fawn fans, but I always liked Silvermist the most. She was sweet and quirky.”
“I don’t know who River or Nova are, but I’m neither sweet nor quirky.” My words came out slowly and a little slurred. It was difficult to speak when my tongue was trapped behind my teeth, but he seemed to understand me just fine.
He shrugged. “Jury is still out on that, sweetheart.”
“Ugh. If I’d known you were going to be this annoying, I would have stayed with the shadows.”
It was a lie. No way in hell I would have willingly gone back to that dark, barren wasteland, with those lunatics for company. And if my head hadn’t been hurting so badly, I might have found his annoying qualities endearing. But there was a pounding in my skull that found even the way he was breathing irritating. “Can you breathe a little softer?”
“Breathe softer?” he repeated, his lips doing that quick tilt up before going neutral again, making me wonder if I was going insane or if he really had almost smiled. He was already too beautiful to be real, but what would he look like if he actually smiled? I felt an odd flutter in my chest as I began to crave the sight. “This is how I always breathe.”
“Like an asthmatic bear?”
“That headache sure is making you cranky. Hold on a sec, and I’ll get someone to come give you something for the pain.”
He started to stand, but suddenly, it was me holding on to his hand. “No! Don’t go. I didn’t mean to insult you. Please…don’t leave.”
Straightening to his full height, he allowed me to keep my grip on his fingers while he reached for something over my head with his free hand. “Just pushing the call button, sweetheart,” he murmured before slowly sinking back into the chair. “I promised I wasn’t going to leave you, and I meant it. Be at ease, little one.”
“I…” Nervously, I shifted my gaze from his face to our hands. “Don’t call me little.”
“Are you thirsty? Hungry? You’ve been out for several days, so you must be starving.” He leaned back enough to pull a phone from his jeans pocket. “Hospital food is disgusting. Let me text my aunt and get you some chicken noodle soup from Aggie’s. My cousin Kingston is a hell of a cook, and they always have soup on the menu. You can drink the broth through a straw, or I can feed you.”
