CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Blood. Where did the blood come from? She pulled the prison gown away from her legs. It was coming from her. She was bleeding. She opened her mouth to call the guard.
And then she shut it.
Well, she thought, that would at least solve one of her problems. Hours passed.
“Get up, get up!” the guard screamed at her. “What did you do? There’s blood all over the bed.” She bet there was. She had felt it running out for all the time that went by before they came to get her for her exercise. The guard grabbed her prison phone off her belt and shouted into it. “Medical, medical in Cell 404.” She heard the sound of running feet and four medics ran into her cell through the door the guard had opened.
“Did she?” a tall medic asked the guard as the others lifted her to the gurney.
“I don’t know,” the guard retorted. “I don’t see anything she could have used. But she was just lying there letting it come.”
“Call for an ambulance,” the head medic instructed the guard. “The baby might be in danger. You know who she is. We can’t treat her here. She’s going to have to go to the hospital.”
Even the hospital was a nice change from prison, she had to admit, although they stopped the bleeding and assured her that her pregnancy was not immediately in danger. “Even a little bleeding looks like a lot if you let it go that way,” the nurse said reprovingly. “I know you’re in a tough spot,” she continued, glancing at the guard outside Lucy’s hospital room. “But you might have died from blood loss if it had been something serious, and no matter how bad things seem, it’s not worth losing your life. You’re so young; you have no idea what life will hold.”
Why do they say stuff like that, Lucy wondered. She had no intention of dying. If the bleeding had gotten worse, she would have called the guards. She was plunged into this grown up life against her will. She had trusted the wrong people and didn’t trust the right people. But she hadn’t lost yet. Time enough to figure out ways of killing herself if she was actually locked in Arthur’s house with a baby to raise. She shut her mouth. No point in pissing off a woman with a syringe. The last sound she remembered was the nurse’s soft shoes as she went out the door.
The light was still low, Lucy noticed through the barred window. At least there was a window. It must be morning. The hospital was so comforting after the horrible prison cell she might have just slept all day. She stretched her arms and rolled over.
Theodore Erickson was sitting in her hospital room.
“Ah, you’re up,” he said in his warm baritone voice. She stared. The black spots started gathering again. “What is it?” she asked faintly.
“Your mother,” he began, and paused. “Is . . . fine. Here is a picture of her. You can see the date on the Virginia paper she’s reading.”
God. Just like those hostage pictures they used to show from the old wars. But at least the new medicine was still working. As soon as the TV crews arrived, Lucy knew she’d be hearing from Arthur, and she’d been thinking hard about what to do when his messenger arrived. She was in Maryland, as Kelly had said. People would believe her if she told about the rape. She obviously had sex, she was pregnant. And someone had beaten her. Why would he have balked at forced sex? She brushed the clothes aside. She wasn’t in a place run by her rapist stepfather with no free press and no women’s shelters. If the court didn’t believe her ferals story, she could tell them who it really was. He only had mom to use to shut her up now. Seeing the picture reminded Lucy that she just couldn’t risk Mom, however little time she had left.
“What do you want with me?” she asked.
He made a little tent out of his fingers and looked at her over them.
“Your mother wants,” he said. “you to come home. We all want you to come home.”
“I’m pregnant. I don’t want to have a baby. Not now, maybe not ever. And even if I weren’t pregnant, I don’t want to go back and live with them.”
“But,” he said, “you are going to come home. One way or the other. Surely you don’t think that tool in the Courthouse is going to turn us down. The longer you fight this, the worse it will be for everyone.” He smiled what would have been a friendly smile if it weren’t completely weird for him to be smiling at her, when he was threatening to send her back to the man who raped her.
“Why don’t you just let go of this ridiculous argument that you didn’t come for an abortion and just come home?” he continued. “Art Atreides is really unhappy with you. And he’s actually the only thing that’s keeping them away from your brother. People in Virginia can’t figure out how you got away unless your brother helped you. He goes to Baltimore all the time. How else did you get out? He’d be an accessory to murder if he helped you come here for an abortion,” Erickson continued in the same level tone. “That might even mean the firing squad. And he certainly wouldn’t be running to Baltimore all the time, whatever he’s doing there. I doubt they’ll be letting him go any more anyway until you come home and Arthur simmers down.”
“Oh, this is all so messy,” he said prissily. “Come with me now. The doctors say you’re fine. I’ll drive you to Richmond and we can put this whole runaway thing behind us. I brought you some clothes.” He reached into his briefcase.
“I like the picture of mom,” she said to Erickson, not moving a muscle to obey him. “Tell Arthur to send you one with the day’s newspaper every day now. The day I stop seeing a picture showing she’s alive is the day I tell the world who the father of my child is. And how I got pregnant in a city that watches its daughters so closely and marries us so young.”
“Oh, please,” said Erickson, surprisingly unsurprised at her defiance. “I’m not bringing you anything. Everyone knows it was the chauffeur. You were in the garage all the time. And a month ago he left. Just disappeared without a trace.”
Ah, Evan was gone. They must have been hot on his trail for him to walk away from his access to Arthur’s computer. He even held her down for a beating to stay on it.
WWKD? What Would Kelly Do, Lucy asked herself. She had never had an older woman to inspire her to think about herself before. She certainly wouldn’t give up. Black women don’t graduate from Harvard Law School because they are tempted to give up. “Well,” Lucy said, remembering her conversation with Kelly about how they treat rape in a blue state, “it will be his word against mine. We’re not in Virginia. My word might mean something here.” She rearranged her covers delicately. “The Rescue people were certainly interested in my scars. I didn’t let them use me because I was worried about Mom. But now I have something to use that would really hurt Arthur, too. Who’s the dad?”
“Lucy,” Erickson said in a markedly different tone. Lucy wondered if he really knew about Arthur. Maybe she wasn’t the first girl Arthur had tried. “Arthur doesn’t want a circus. It’s not good for him and it’s not good for your mother. That’s why he didn’t raise the alarm when you ran away. But the feds have the case now, and the Boy Wonder in the White House is not going to let it go. He wants to teach the blue states a lesson. That they cannot shelter runaways, like they’ve been doing with those lunatic Rescue people everywhere. You’re the lesson. Arthur could not stop it now if he wanted to. That’s why I’m here to ask you to go quietly with me.”
Lunatic rescue people? Like the ones who got her out of Virginia? And mobbed the law firm? “I’m not going QUIETLY,” she screamed at him. She was a client, not some helpless girl child who could be raped at will. If she had to grow up, she might as well get some respect. “I have lawyers! I’m not going at all. Pictures, Erickson, of mom. Every day.”
“Erickson, what in the world are you doing here?” She could hear Larry shouting through the closed hospital door. “Let me go!” he yelled at the guard. He kicked open the door. Erickson nodded at the guard and he let go.
“I saw your car outside. You know you can’t meet with my client without me there! The Bill of Rights may not apply in Virginia, but my client is a federal prisoner here. Get out! Get out right now. And nothing she said to you can be used in that hearing and you know that.”
“I’m a friend of the family,” Erickson said warmly, standing up. “I was just making sure she was OK. Her mother,” he paused, “asked me to look in on her. I’ll be going now, but if Lucy has anything she wants me to pass along to her family she can just ask the guards to contact me.”
“What the . . . ??” Larry said. “What did you say to him?” He closed her door.
“Nothing,” Lucy said. “He tried to use my mother to convince me to go back without a trial. Says we’re going to lose anyway.”
The door opened again and her nurse appeared. “Can you talk to her while she walks around a bit?” she asked. “We really need to get her up and walking around before they take her back.”
Lucy swung her legs over the bed and the nurse helped her into a little robe.
“I’m her lawyer,” Larry said. “Can I walk her around alone?”
The guard stood up.
“I guess not,” the nurse said.
“I’m an officer of the Court,” Larry said to the guard. “She’s not going anywhere. Just let me talk to my client in private. She needs to walk around and I have trial prep to do if we’re going to go to hearing next week.”
“I’ll stay a little behind,” the guard conceded.
They started down the hall. A big tower of food trays stood outside the next room down. “I’m hungry,” Lucy said.
“We’ll stop at the nurses’ station and ask if you can have solid food,” Larry offered. “Meanwhile tell me exactly what Erickson said.”
“Can we just stop there first?” Lucy asked.
“Sure.” They headed toward the pod at the center of the hospital floor.
The nurses were all gathered around the computers. Actually, all of the people – doctors, nurses -- at the pod were staring at the machine. Lucy could hear sounds of shouting coming from the screens. It actually sounded like her name. “They’re outside!” someone said in an incredulous voice. “They’re all over the hospital lawn.”
“I thought I heard something when I was in Mrs. Smith’s room. But we’re so high.”
Lucy and Larry walked around behind the desk. “What’s going on? Holy shit, look at this,” Lucy exclaimed.
There were a thousand people on the hospital lawn. Dozens of them were dressed like the Red State girls, in long flouncy dresses. The sweet gowns had blood red stripes down their backs. Jane Larson was passing out leaflets. “Free Lucy,” she said to the mike. “We will not be sex slaves.”
“Get outta there,” Lucy’s guard snarled, coming up behind her at the computer screen. “Go back to your room. Now.”
“Jesus,” Larry said. “I wonder how they knew you were here. That asshole Commissioner issued a gag order on everything pertaining to this trial; someone must have leaked to the Rescue. Of course someone at the State must have leaked to the feds, or we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place,” he remembered. A leak, Lucy thought smugly, remembering her conversation with Erickson, for “lunatics,” the Maryland Rescuers were doing a pretty good job.
They went back to her room, but in all the excitement about finding Erickson in her room the guard had neglected to take Larry’s cell phone. In an instant they had the demonstration up again. They were afraid to play the sound, so they didn’t hear the sirens until ten or twelve federal marshals started pouring out of their cars. And, across from them, a big line of Maryland County sheriffs, in blue. One of the sheriffs, a man in a wheelchair, rolled up to the protest leader and asked her for the mike.
“Turn it up!” Lucy demanded. Larry put the sound on his phone on low.
“I am,” the Sheriff said, “Sheriff John Brown of Baltimore County.” The crowd went wild. “Sheriff John, Sheriff John!” “This is a state hospital,” he continued. “The federal marshals have no jurisdiction here.” He turned to one of the marshals. “Sir, I am asking you to leave these premises. The Baltimore County sheriff’s department will be responsible for keeping the peace here.”
“We are protecting a federal prisoner,” the marshal responded. “We are not going anywhere.”
Sheriff Brown nodded at his men in blue, and they quickly formed a circle around the protesters. News trucks and helicopters swarmed into sight. “I guess it’s going to be a long night,” Brown said.
Lucy’s door opened. “Get dressed,” the guard said. “I just got orders to get you ready to go back to jail. You’re not sick.” He handed her a clean pink prison dress to put on.
They’re afraid, Lucy realized. They think the mob will seal me in here, just like Kelly thought about the law firm. Then let them try to take me back to that hell hole.
“You can’t take her out without the doctor’s permission,” Larry protested. He ran down the hall to the station. “Nurse? We need to contact the doctor right away. It’s an emergency.” He autodialed his phone. “Josh! Get emergency papers ready. They’re trying to take Lucy out of the hospital by force.”
Three men in federal uniforms stepped off the elevator and walked down the hall to Lucy’s room. “Get out of here,” the first marshal said to Larry. “She’s going back to jail. He turned to his colleagues. “Take her to the basement exit. There’s a van waiting. You can go out the side door of the garage.”
Two of them picked her up and forced her into a wheel chair. A slim Asian woman in a doctor’s white coat, running, was the last thing Lucy saw as the elevator doors closed.