Dreams of a Wild Heart Page 4

  “Hello. I’m Dr. Cecilia Bradford.”

  My buzz-o-meter went haywire for the second time as a new surge of energy hit me the moment I walked in. This, however, I recognized for what it was. This was the feeling I got when Carlos was involved with one of my patients, something I could never explain to anyone or they’d think I was crazy and take my medical license away.

  I could almost feel his presence in this room. Now I needed to find out who he wanted me to help this time and make sure I did everything I could to make things right.

  Atonement was a demanding bitch.

  Chapter Two

  A first glance at the mom and dad turned up nothing, but the moment I made eye contact with the little girl, it was like getting an electric shock to the brain. Like old photographs in ’70s color prints. I saw the pathetic, broken down house on the corner of a street. I heard the shouts and screams. I heard the cries of the mother and child. This was my little soccer player. She had a future if we could help her survive the present. She sat on one of the extra chairs in the room, her arms folded across her thin chest, her brown eyes big and frightened. She looked like she was about to cry. My hackles went way up.

  “Don’t be scared.” I smiled down at her. “We’ll take good care of your mom.”

  She nodded, but didn’t say anything, though her eyes remained glued to me.

  Bree came bustling in behind me, ready to provide whatever support I ordered for the patient. The young girl was the one Carlos wanted me to pay attention to in my dream, but her mother was the one on the table. A quick glance at my little soccer girl didn’t turn up any obvious bruising, so I looked back at her mother.

  “Sounds like someone got hurt?” My patient, Darla Walton, simply looked up at me, wide-eyed and silent. She was a small mouse of a woman with a scraggly pageboy haircut that she likely gave herself and deep lines around her eyes and mouth that spoke of having traveled several miles of bad road. She looked like a mixed bag of timidity, fear and melancholy, holding her arm to her body, her lips closed tightly.

  It was interesting to note how much could be said without actual words.

  “My wife fell down the stairs in our house. I think her arm is broke.” A receding hairline, a dirty T-shirt stretched to the max over a beer gut, and worn jeans framed the figure of the dad. His tone was brisk, his eyes hard. Even the way he gave the information ruffled my feathers. Like he was daring me to contradict him or something. His face had the red, blotchy discoloration associated with people suffering from alcoholism. Gin blossoms. Big red flags. Immediately, I didn’t like him and fought the grimace that wanted to spread on my face.

  “A broken arm? What’s your pain level now?” I approached the bed, putting my stethoscope around my neck. “On a scale of one to ten, ten being the most painful.”

  Her eyes went to her husband, hesitantly, as though looking to see if it was okay to speak. More red flags popped up, but I knew I couldn’t just go off the deep end without some kind of evidence other than I’d had a paranormal dream or that I just didn’t like the guy. I needed a moment to question her without her husband being present. I wondered how I could get him out of the room without arousing his suspicion.

  Again, the man answered shortly. “She’s doing all right. She hasn’t been saying much.”

  “Can you move your fingers?”

  Darla Walton shook her head, not meeting my eyes.

  “Hurts too much?”

  She nodded and whispered, “Yes.”

  I listened to her heart rate and breathing for a few seconds, giving the young girl a quick smile as I listened. Sounded normal. The entire time I was working on her mother, I could practically feel the little girl’s eyes on me, wanting something. Needing. What was wrong? Maybe I could see if she needed to go to the bathroom and walk her there, something like that? Would she have something to say that she didn’t feel safe saying now? Was there a time constraint?

  Delicately, I unwrapped Darla Walton’s arm. No bones obviously protruding. I did get her to respond with head nods when I asked if she still felt sensation where I ran my fingers over the skin of her hand. I quickly took notes on her chart. “Looks like we’ll need an X-ray.”

  And while the mom was gone, I’d have a chance to talk with the little girl. That was the way. I just had this strong sense that she needed something. It was making me feel anxious.

  “Why don’t I roll you out to X-ray?” Bree’s bedside manner was gentle, her dark eyes sympathetic. “Then we’ll come right back.”

  “Why do we need to do that? Why can’t you just wrap up her arm and send us home?” the husband said sharply.

  Taking a moment to find my patience, I said as simply as I could, “I need to see what kind of break she’s got.”

  “It’s a broken bone. That’s what it is. Throw a fucking cast on it and let’s get the hell out of here. We’ve been here for hours already.” He was a junkyard dog, trying to intimidate us with his loud barking.

  The little girl seemed pale, looking back and forth between me and her dad with trepidation. I gave her a reassuring smile and took a step toward her to ruffle her hair. She was holding her stomach, and now that I was closer, I could see a dark purple band around her upper arm about the size of a man’s finger.

  My blood began to simmer. This was clearly the dad’s work. I gentled my tone and addressed the girl. “Honey, are you okay?”

  Her eyes were round and scared. They flashed to her father quickly before coming back to me. Sweat filmed her face and neck. She shook her head hesitantly.

  “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

  Mr. Beer Gut snarled, “She’s fine. She’s not the one on the goddamn table.”

  The little girl and I ignored her father. Yes, his wife had a broken arm, but that I could see. What was more worrisome was what might be wrong with the little girl, which was something I couldn’t see. This was how Carlos worked his magic, helping me to pick up on signs I might have missed.

  Her breaths were shorter, like she was laboring. “I’m Jolene.”

  “Jolene, did you get hurt today?”

  The dad was livid. “What the hell is going on here? We’ve been waiting for hours and now we have to wait longer while you dick around with my wife and play patty-cake with the kid? Do I need to get someone else to help us?”

  “There are actually two bones in her forearm, and they may be out of alignment,” Bree was explaining to the man, earning kudos for keeping her cool and giving me a chance to talk with the little girl. “If it doesn’t heal properly, she might not get full motion back.”

  “I don’t give a fuck. Slap on the plaster so we can get the fuck out of here.”

  Bastard. “Mr. Walton, if you can’t handle yourself appropriately, you’ll be asked to leave. She needs an X-ray, and we’ll determine from the film what our next steps will be. Bree, take her.” Part of me wanted to be able to eighty-six his ass from my trauma ward.

  “My stomach hurts,” the little girl whispered. She was starting to pant. Definitely something wrong.

  “Jolene,” the mom whispered. The little girl looked at her mom, who shook her head.

  “It’s all right,” I stated in a calm voice, not sure what the exchange was all about. “That’s why we’re here, right? To take care of people who are sick or hurt. Your stomach hurts, sweetheart? Where?”

  Dad jumped in. “She’s fine. She ate some crap food.” To the little girl, he snapped, “Hush up and sit still. We’re here to take care of your mother.”

  “Did you eat bad food?” I asked, kneeling beside her so I could make eye contact. I rubbed her arm gently and held one of her hands to comfort her.

  She cast a quick, fearful look to her father, and it was then I saw the fire in her eyes. Along with the fear, she was angry, condemning. “I haven’t eaten any
thing since breakfast.”

  “She’s lying. That’s what she does. She’s a stupid kid. What does she know?” He was becoming infuriated that I wasn’t listening to him and came toward us in a threatening manner, his teeth clenched, his eyes squinty. Jolene gasped, and I quickly stood in front of her.

  He got nose to nose with me. I kept eye contact, but peripherally watched for him to take a swing as I calculated my next move. Mixed martial arts training had been a great way of getting in shape and releasing stress over the last several years. I had a purple belt in jujitsu with another year to go for my brown belt and continued with Muay Thai training for the hell of it. I wanted a chance to knock his block off for being such a pathetic piece of humanity.

  “Back off before I call for security.” My voice was grim. A heavy dose of alcohol assaulted my nose now that he was close up, trying to intimidate me. I stood my ground. On some level, he saw I was fearless, which wasn’t something he knew how to deal with.

  “Herb!” the mother protested, seeing the snarl on his face. Please don’t, was her helpless, pasted-on expression, deepening the grooves around her mouth and between her eyebrows.

  It took a moment, and I struggled not to grimace over his musty I-haven’t-washed-in-a-few-days mixed with the alcohol, but he decided to back down. His smile was slow in coming. He held up both hands in mock surrender as he backed up a couple of steps. “Do whatever. I’m not paying for it, though.”

  The little girl moaned wretchedly, bending over her stomach.

  “Why does she have bruising on her arm?”

  He shrugged in a blatant show of give-a-shit, still smiling. “She’s a stupid kid. I don’t watch her all the time.”

  My smile was equally sweet. “Did she fall down the stairs, too?”

  His eyes narrowed. “She’s fine. Nothing happened to her, and my wife fell down the stairs.”

  “We don’t have any stairs,” the little girl said firmly.

  The dad looked at his daughter, his wrath making him forget where he was. “You little shit!”

  He went for her then, and without having to think too hard on it, I snagged his arm, tripped him so he belly flopped hard, and shoved his elbow halfway up his back, mashing his face into the ground with my knee.

  “Goddamn bitch! What the hell do you think you’re doing to me?”

  He spewed profanity loud enough to bring the rest of the department to a standstill. There was a sense of satisfaction in making him hurt, even just a little. With some glee, I bent down and whispered, “How does it feel?”

  “What the hell is going on?” Kevin snatched open the curtain, getting an eyeful of me sitting on a grown man and contorting his arm into an unnatural position. I couldn’t help looking to see if the Viking with blue-green eyes was somehow magically still with him. Deep sigh. Nope.

  “I need security,” I stated calmly. Kevin got on the phone and paged for help.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” the little girl moaned.

  “It’s okay, honey. Right into here.” Bree gave her a plastic container in the nick of time. She emptied the contents of her stomach. Then she cried as Bree pulled the tray away. One glance at the contents had Bree showing it to me. “Dr. Bradford.”

  I looked and saw dark swirls of fluid mixed in with food and bile. I looked to Darla with accusation and fury. “That’s blood. Why in the hell does she have blood in her vomit?”

  “I-I don’t know. Oh, Jolene,” the mother whispered pathetically, the hand from her good arm trembling against her lips. She watched with horror as Bree helped her little girl clean up. Then Darla Walton ducked her head with shame.

  And that was it. That was all she was going to say. This little girl had no one sticking up for her. I knew damned well why... If she was kicked or punched by a grown man in her stomach and abdomen, blood vessels could rupture. The good news was, this kind of injury could usually take care of itself, but we still needed confirmation.

  “Bree, can you set her up with a bed?” My anger doubled seeing the blood. Giving him one for his daughter, I jammed his arm extra hard. To my satisfaction, he cried out, and in a lighthearted tone I sing-songed, “Oops. Sorry.”

  “Sure thing.” Bree nodded.

  “C’mon, sweetheart,” Kevin said to Jolene. “Let’s take care of you.” A wheelchair was brought in, but her eyes clung to me as she was wheeled out, tears still streaming down her face.

  “Don’t worry, Jolene. I’ll come see you in just a few minutes. Okay?” I gave her a reassuring smile.

  She nodded with some relief.

  “Get the fuck off me!” the dad growled.

  “When the cops get here.” Unfortunately, prison sentences for domestic violence were notoriously short. It would take Darla leaving this man to achieve some degree of safety and good health for herself and Jolene, but that would mean she’d have to come clean. Was her daughter worth enough to her to leave this man? And what could I do if she stuck to her story? In abuse cases, fear of the unknown, the future, often overcame what was right.

  It wasn’t long before the dad was cuffed and taken into custody. I got my few minutes that I’d wanted with Darla while the cops were busy questioning Bree. I wondered if she was going to talk to me about this.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her gently.

  Surprisingly, her eyes went flinty on me, and she snapped, “I’m fine,” but it was all bravado. I could see the tears welling up. Her life was about to change, maybe, and she was not okay with that. So it was going to go like that. Still, I had to try. There was a little girl counting on me to help her.

  “You aren’t fine. You have a broken arm.” My pointing out the obvious only made her close up. I gentled my tone, trying not to let my monstrous frustration out of its cage. “Your daughter is now a victim. There was blood in her vomit, Darla. She was hit or kicked hard enough in her abdomen that she has suffered blunt force trauma from your husband. Is that what you want for her?”

  “She’s fine. She just ate some bad food.” Darla repeated her husband’s line of bullshit, desperate to believe everything that was happening was perfectly normal. Her eyes pleaded with me to agree. “We were eating some fast food, you know? And she got something bad. It was just bad.”

  “She did not eat bad food.”

  “She did. She’ll just be fine when we get home and she gets rest.”

  “I’m a doctor, Darla. She did not eat bad food. Bad food doesn’t make you vomit blood, and it does not cause abdominal trauma. What was she trying to do, protect you? Keep him from hurting you?”

  “No.” But her eyes were saying yes the way they looked down to avoid mine.

  “I bet I’m right. I bet she put herself in front of you, and this is how you repay that love.” I searched my mind for a way to convince her that she could be the hero in her daughter’s life. I tried to give her facts. “Did you know that every year, approximately one million women need medical attention for domestic violence and more than 16,000 of them die from domestic abuse? I’ve seen this before. You aren’t the only one going through this, and you have a child to consider. Why is this okay with you?”

  “I fell.” Tears trickled down her face, but I couldn’t feel pity.

  “There is a little girl in the other room who deserves better. You need to act like her mother and take care of her!”

  With her healthy hand, she wiped tears from her face. “Yeah, well I think you need to mind your own business. That’s what I think. You don’t understand.”

  “I don’t and I won’t. Not when a little girl is caught in the middle. When you have a child, you no longer have the right to lie to yourself. I can see I’m getting nowhere, but you should know he’s never going to stop hitting. Never. And it’s going to get worse. This will never stop until you make it stop.”

  Darla couldn’
t hold my stare and looked down to pick at the white sheet.

  The police officer entered the room at that point, and I opted to step out. She’d lost her spirit, her sense of self, or else had it beaten out of her. Was there ever an appropriate time to shout “fuck!” in an ER? Probably not.

  I checked in with a few patients, ordered tests for Jolene, tried to stay available to see the outcome of the questioning with the police, but was only given the disappointing news I’d expected. The officer came out of Darla’s room shaking his head.

  “Mom is still claiming she fell,” Officer Todd stated in a heavy tone. He joined me at the nurse’s station. “Says that her husband didn’t do anything. If we get the same story from the little girl, we have to let him go.”

  “Damn it.”

  “I know, doc. I know.” He tapped his pad against his palm. “I see this every day. Most of our calls are domestic abuse calls. I don’t know why.”

  “I don’t either. I’ll take you to Jolene.”

  A CT scan of Jolene’s abdomen showed that her stomach was empty of blood, that there had been a bleed in her liver, but it had stopped, and she wouldn’t need surgery, which was a blessing. The small pocket of blood that was lost from her liver would eventually reabsorb into her system. Just a small amount of blood would be transfused as a result, and lots of rest was needed. It was clear that she’d received blunt force trauma to her midsection. Maybe a few hard kicks in the side? Made me wish I’d broken the guy’s arm when I had him locked up on the floor in a hold. She was back in her room when we knocked.

  “Jolene, there’s a police officer who wants to talk to you. You feel up for that?” I moved to the side of the bed.

  Her eyes were back to looking scared.

  “This is Officer Todd. He’s really nice, and he just wants you to tell him what happened with your dad.”

  “Will you stay with me?”