After Read online

  Devon looks up at him. His words come out muffled. Like he’s speaking to her underwater. She can feel her body tense. She squints.

  “I’m Police Detective Ron Woods. How you doing?”

  Devon’s head feels strange. She shakes it, looks at the man closely.

  She sees that he’s got some surfer-boy blond hair, cut short. Brown eyes. Tan face. Wearing some kind of thick fleece jacket from REI or something. What did her mom say earlier? That she’d met some guy outside who wasn’t bad-looking? Devon focuses on his smile. It’s his best feature—nice teeth. Nice and white.

  The man squats down to Devon’s level and puts out his hand, doing that routine greeting thing. He waits a second for Devon to take it, then drops his hand, unshook. “Feeling kinda crummy today, huh?”

  Devon just stares at him, her eyes dark and unblinking. She can’t process why he’s there, exactly. Why he’s looking at her. Is he just being Mr. Polite before he makes his move on her mom? Pretending he actually likes kids or something? Devon’s seen that routine before. Plenty of times.

  “Devon!” Her mom is beside the man now, and her smile is gone. “Sit up and show some respect! What are you trying to do, embarrass me?” Angry lines crease her face, but she makes a fake, nervous laugh. “Come on, answer him! He’s a police officer, for God’s sake!”

  Police officer. Devon’s eyes widen as the words register. Her eyes flit to the man near the door, the one in dark blue. Two police officers.

  “Hey! Are you listening to me?”

  Devon can’t move, can barely breathe.

  “Well?” Her mom steps forward, flicks this quick, embarrassed glance at the man, then glares back down at Devon. “Hey, I don’t care how sick you are”—her mom reaches down—“there’s no excuse for—” Her mom snatches the blanket. It flips up and away, like a flag blowing in the wind.

  Her mom jerks back. “Oh . . . my . . . God,” she whispers. The anger melts from her face. Her eyes are huge, her mouth open. “Oh my . . .”

  The man sucks in his breath, hard.

  Suddenly, Devon is very awake. Her eyes dart from his face to her mom’s. From her mom’s to his. Back and forth. The two faces are so different—one male, one female. One tan with light stubble, one pale with an end-of-the-day makeup residue. But the expressions are identical.

  Devon draws her knees up and presses her hands down, between her legs, covering herself.

  Her fingertips touch the fabric of her soccer sweats, and something else. Something warm. Sticky-slimy. And wet. Very wet.

  She looks down to where her hands are.

  And for the first time all morning she feels panic. Real-life, heart-pounding, want-to-run panic.

  They see it. They see it all.

  They see the blood.

  Her eyes zip around the room, frantic, looking for something, anything. A way out. A place to hide.

  And she’s screaming. “Give it back!” Devon reaches out for her mom, fingers desperately grasping for that blanket. “Give me the blanket, Mom! Please!” Devon crawls across the couch, crawls across the pillow she was lying on, the now wet and sticky pillow she had hoped would absorb all the mess. She collapses, still reaching. Reaching. Now feebly reaching. The pain in her gut is intense. Tears slide down her cheeks, trickle into her mouth. Her arm drops to the floor. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she whimpers. “I’m so sorry. . . .”

  The man’s head whips around toward the door. Toward the other officer waiting there. “An ambulance,” he shouts. “Now!”

  Devon can hear the crackle of a radio.

  “No! No way! What are you thinking?” Her mom’s voice is hysterical. “Are you . . . do you think she—” She lashes out at the man. Wild arms flailing, red nails clawing. “Look! She’s just home from school today. She’s sick. She is not pregnant! Okay? She doesn’t even have a boyfriend!”

  Boyfriend. His face, his eyes with those long eyelashes too pretty for a guy’s, materialize in her mind. His lips. She shakes it all back and away, deep inside. “No! Mom, don’t!” Devon’s voice is weak, quivering. She pushes herself up. “Please—”

  “Don’t you think I’d know if my own daughter’s pregnant? What kind of mother wouldn’t know her own daughter’s pregnant? What kind of mother . . . she’s so responsible . . . Do you hear me? Are you even goddamn listening to me?”

  Devon quickly turns to the man. She wants him to understand. It’s so simple, really. If he can understand, then maybe he’ll go away. Her mom will stop screaming, and then both of them could go to sleep, finally get some rest. “I just had . . . a really . . . bloody . . . period,” Devon stammers.

  The man is nodding at her. He does understand.

  “I . . . I didn’t know what to do!” Devon continues, her voice growing earnest. “I tried . . . but the tampons, they couldn’t stop it . . . way too much blood. I haven’t had one in forever. . . . Please . . . ”

  “No! Get out of here!” Devon’s mom lunges at the man, grabbing his shoulders from behind, her long nails digging into his jacket. “Get the hell out of here! Are you hearing me?”

  The other man, the one in the uniform, appears suddenly, pulling Devon’s mom off of the first man. Lifting her up from under the arms, he drags her far away from him and Devon and the mess on the couch.

  “Don’t . . . you . . . touch me!”

  “Mom . . . I’m sorry . . . ” Devon whispers. “Don’t be mad.”

  “I’m going to report you! You . . . I’m going to press charges!” Devon’s mom is raging from a distance now; she’s in the kitchen, shrieking and throwing things. “I know my rights! I said, get your filthy hands off me!”

  Devon squeezes her eyes shut, moves trembling fingers up to rub at her temples. Water, she thinks, I need water. She hadn’t drunk for hours. Hadn’t drunk all night.

  “Devon,” the man says. “Devon? Will you look at me? Hey, right here.”

  Devon opens her dark eyes, looks at him.

  The man gently pulls her hands away from her head. “That’s a girl.” Then he cups Devon’s face in his hands. They’re big, strong hands. He leans closer. His eyes are intense, reaching deep into hers. “Okay, now, listen to me. Calm down and listen. Can you do that for me?”

  His voice is steady. Soothing. Like the rain. Devon feels a wave of heat wash over her body. She closes her eyes again, then opens them. Everything’s outlined in silvery white. Hyper-bright.

  “This is important, okay? Concentrate on what I’m saying to you. . . .”

  Devon tries to do what he said, tries to concentrate, but she can feel herself slipping under, losing him. Metallic flecks flurry around the corners of her vision, closing in. She hears her mom, shrill and sharp, still screaming . . . something about reports. About a boss.

  “‘You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. . . .’”

  The man’s words flow over her. She feels apart from it all—his words, her mom’s hysteria, her pounding heart. She watches his lips move. His nice, white teeth. She breathes in and out. . . .

  And her world goes black.

  chapter two

  The wheels of the gurney hit the pavement, and Devon is jarred awake. The heavy ambulance doors slam, startling her. She opens her eyes, a flash of sunlight burns her retinas, blinding her for an instant. Then, slowly, a face emerges from the blankness, sort of floating above her. It’s a young man’s face—dark short hair, dark eyes. Those eyes are on her, watching.

  “She’s coming around.” Devon hears him say this to someone other than herself. “Let’s move.”

  The wheels scrape across concrete and the gurney rocks, though Devon isn’t fully conscious of anything—the gurney beneath her or the ambulance parked nearby. She is only aware of those dark eyes above her and a vague knowledge of moving forward through a shady courtyard. And a tremendous sleepiness pressing through her.

  Sliding glass doors open, drawing her att
ention. She raises her head slightly, peers down the length of her body toward her feet. She notices the other person there then, the other person who the dark-eyed man had just spoken to, another man with his back to her. He’s guiding them forward through the sliding glass doors and into a hallway. White and cool and bright.

  The man speaks over his shoulder to the dark-eyed man. “Where do they want her—trauma side or OB? Did they say?”

  Before the dark-eyed man supplies an answer a woman appears at Devon’s side, and the gurney stops. She’s wearing sky blue scrubs and one of those doctor things around her neck—a stethoscope—and a frown, an irritated, weary one. The skin of her face is that permanent sort of gray from being too tired too often.

  Quick talking shoots back and forth between the woman and the dark-eyed man like the give and go on the soccer field before a goal.

  “She’s fifteen,” the dark-eyed man says. “Adolescent pediatrics?”

  “But she’s hemorrhaged.”

  “Right, they don’t normally handle that—”

  Devon can’t keep up. She drops her head, rests her cheek on her shoulder.

  And that is when she sees them. Black straps, three of them. One across her chest, pinning her arms to her sides. Another across her thighs. The last one across her shins, near her ankles.

  Thoughts start to pull together in Devon’s mind, and an uneasiness creeps over her.

  The woman points behind herself, down a hallway to the left. “One of the OB exam rooms around the corner on the end. I’ll call Dr. Klein to examine her.”

  The gurney rolls again, away from the sliding glass doors. On the right sits a large blue desk with phones and monitors and people bustling, people in scrubs—green, blue, white, multicolored. On the left the gurney passes partitions, curtains from ceiling to floor separating them. Inside one, Devon glimpses a woman sitting in a chair, holding a wad of gauze to her head, crying.

  Devon turns her eyes away, looks instead at her own arm. A clear tube is there, jabbed into her wrist and taped in place. She follows the tube upward to where it ends at a small bag of clear liquid, hanging from a metal hook way above her head. Almost level with the man’s dark eyes.

  Something clicks in Devon’s mind, and she knows exactly where she is. She’s watched hundreds of scenes just like this one from her spot on the couch at home. People scurrying, wearing scrubs, stethoscopes around their necks, charts under their arms, tension in the air.

  Panic spikes through Devon’s brain, panic so startling she can’t contain it. They’ll know. All of them, they’ll know! She whips her head from side to side, bucking against the straps holding her down. “NO!” she hears her own voice yelling. “No! Let me out of here!”

  The gurney rolls faster. It makes an abrupt right turn, rushes down another hall. The man at Devon’s feet is running. The dark-eyed man looks down at Devon once, his eyes wide with alarm.

  “I want out of here! Take me home!”

  The gurney flies through a doorway and halts abruptly. The dark-eyed man yells at the other man to slam down the brakes. Then he leans over Devon, panting softly. “You’ve got to calm down,” she hears him say. “You need help, and we’re here to do that. We’re not going to hurt you. . . . ”

  “No!” Devon squirms under the straps. “Let me out!”

  A squat woman in light green scrubs rushes into the room, a taller one in white right on her heels. One of them yanks a green curtain across the door, then each takes a side of the gurney.

  Devon is trapped, bodies on all sides.

  “Don’t touch me!” Devon kicks, struggling to free her feet so she can run. “Let me go! I want to go home!” A sharp pain rips through her, deep between her legs and across her gut. She opens her mouth and gasps with the sheer violence of it, and for one long heart-stopping moment she’s absolutely silent.

  Then her scream rolls out of the room and floods the hallway outside.

  “That’s enough of that!” the tall woman in white shouts into Devon’s face.

  This woman is serious; she’s someone important, Devon can tell. Devon bites down on her lip, cutting off her scream.

  “You need to get control of yourself,” the woman continues, pulling back from Devon slightly, her voice a little less harsh. “You are accomplishing nothing with your behavior. Except, perhaps, arousing my ire.” The woman nods at the other in green, then turns her full attention back on Devon. “Now. I know this is a little scary, so we’re going to give you a mild sedative to help you relax.”

  Devon shrinks into the gurney; her eyes shift to the woman in green moving closer. Between the woman’s plump hands is a long needle, pointed upward. A tiny spray squirts from its tip.

  “No,” Devon whimpers. “No . . .”

  The woman in green smiles down at Devon. Her face is round and pleasant featured, but her eyes are wary. “I’m not sticking you, sweetie. This goes directly into the IV.” She disappears behind Devon, reaching for the clear bag above her. “You’re going to feel amazing in a few seconds.”

  Almost immediately, a coolness snakes up Devon’s arm, then across her chest. She wilts into the gurney, the pain in her groin, the fear in her mind, melting away.

  The woman in white seats herself on a stool, leans toward Devon. She lets out a small puff of breath. “Much better, huh?”

  Devon says nothing, just stares at the woman, sort of mesmerized by her, by her glasses in particular—tiny rectangles of thick black plastic. Tacky on some people, but on this woman, they work. The white she is wearing, Devon realizes, is actually a white lab coat over layers of stuff—a black sweater and a white blouse under that—as if she had bundled up for the snow, which is rarely necessary along Puget Sound unless you are skiing at Snoqualmie Pass or climbing Mount Rainier. This woman has an interesting, intelligent face—not young and not old. And her blonde hair is pulled back into a hastily formed ponytail, escaped wisps falling everywhere.

  “Well, just so you know who you’re dealing with,” the woman says, “I’m Dr. Klein.”

  Devon says nothing.

  The woman in green moves around from behind Devon. “And I’m Cheryl. Nurse.” Cheryl bends down and removes the straps holding Devon to the gurney. “Now that you’re all nice and quiet, I think we can get rid of these.” She smiles down at Devon, as if to add, Right? But instead she only says, “They were necessary for your transportation over here in the ambulance.”

  “We’re going to take your vital signs next,” Dr. Klein says then. “That would be your blood pressure, pulse, and temperature.”

  “You’ve had a physical before, haven’t you?” Cheryl moves to Devon’s left, holding up a blood pressure gauge and carefully straps it around Devon’s biceps. “For school or sports or something?”

  Devon nods slowly, watching Cheryl work. She feels the band tighten, squeezing, her pulse pumping hard against the pressure. Her brain feels tingly. Devon shuts her eyes and stops her mind from traveling back to that last physical, the one she had back in September for soccer.

  “Well, good,” Cheryl says. “Then this is nothing you haven’t seen before.”

  There’s a space of quiet between them, then Dr. Klein says, “So. What happened today?”

  Devon doesn’t respond right away. Then she shakes her head and whispers, “Nothing.”

  “Nothing,” Dr. Klein repeats, letting the word sort of marinate in the silence. She takes a deep breath. “Well, that’s not what I heard.”

  Devon opens her eyes. She feels the fear building back up inside her despite the artificial calm from the sedative. What has she heard? The nurse sticks a thermometer in Devon’s ear, but Devon shrugs it away before it beeps.

  “I’ve heard,” Dr. Klein says steadily, “that you’ve lost a lot of blood.” She indicates somewhere below Devon’s waist. “No, I can see that you’ve lost a lot of blood. Your blood pressure is dangerously low, your pulse is dangerously accelerated. We don’t know about your temperature, because you didn’t allo
w us take it just now, but your skin feels hot to the touch and clammy. You passed out before the paramedics even arrived at your house.” Dr. Klein raises her eyebrows, little curves above those thick black rectangles. “That’s not ‘nothing.’ You are in bad shape, Devon.”

  Devon? How does she know her name? Devon’s heart hammers in her chest, echoes through her ears.

  “The blood seems to be coming from your vaginal area.” Dr. Klein pauses. “Can you tell me about that?”

  Devon’s eyes dart around the room, looking for the two men who’d brought her to this place. They are nowhere. The man with the dark eyes, he left her. She looks over toward the door, toward the green curtain pulled across it. And her mom? Where is she?

  “Devon?” Dr. Klein presses. “Can you help me out here? Shed some light on this for me?”

  Devon shakes her head fast. “No. I . . . don’t . . . can’t . . .”

  Dr. Klein presses her lips together. “Okay.” She reaches into a pocket of her white coat and thwaps a latex glove over each hand. “Cheryl and I”—Dr. Klein stands and Cheryl moves closer—“are going to pull your sweatpants off now.” Dr. Klein nods at Cheryl quickly. “Very carefully—”

  Two sets of hands reach for Devon’s waistband.

  “No! Please!” Devon is breathing hard and fast. “I don’t want—”

  “I’m just going to take a little peek to see what’s going on—”

  “No!” Devon pushes herself up on her elbows, pulling her legs in protectively. “Don’t touch me. . . . Don’t . . . ”

  “We’re not going to hurt you, Devon,” Dr. Klein says, sliding around the gurney to Devon’s right side. “We just need to look—”

  “No! You can’t . . . you can’t make me do this. . . .”

  Dr. Klein leans closer. “Listen to me, Devon. You are in an examination room at Tacoma General Hospital’s ER. You were brought here in an ambulance. I am Dr. Laura Klein, the physician on duty. I don’t care about why you’re here. I don’t care about what part you may or may not have played in being here. That’s history. It’s done, it’s over, and no one can change it. All I care about is your health. And you’re in very dangerous shape right now, in danger of possibly bleeding to death. Do you hear what I’m telling you?”