Nightchild

Chapter 43

"He can't stand to talk about all this. He feels his own amount of guilt. And worse, he knows it could as easily of been me. It haunts him. He was the oldest. He was the driver. He feels responsible."

"I understand. He's a good man," Nate remarked sincerely.

"The best!" Connie agreed. "He'd have to be to put up with me all these years."

"I doubt it's been too difficult," Nate said warmly, making her blush again.

"Now, back to Blythe," Connie said hurriedly and rushed into an oration of what had occurred when his wife was in the hospital. "As soon as she was strong enough, Blythe had been moved to a Dallas hospital where Angus was sure she'd get the best care. There, she was barraged with questions from her parent, the police, the doctors, and shrinks. Reporters loomed like vultures outside her room. She remembered nothing and refused to acknowledge it had happened at all.

"One day a psychiatrist came in while I was visiting and asked me to leave. Blythe got furious and said she'd get up and walk out herself if I had to go, that she had nothing to say to him anyway. By then, she'd started having the nightmares and the shrink tried to get her to talk about them...about the rape. She told him he was crazy, that nothing like that had ever occurred. He got angry, asked her where she supposed the cuts on her body had come from. She simply looked him in the eyes and in a cold, completely rational voice told him she'd been in an automobile accident, that he should know that. She didn't blink an eyelash and acted as if he were out of his mind.

"The sound of her voice sent goose bumps all over me. Her conviction had been so strong. The psychiatrist was taken aback. He started to speak then thought better of it and shaking his head, stomped out. It was the beginning of Blythe's denial stage and it went on for several more days."

"What happened? What made her snap out of it?" Nate asked, his face drawn and tired as if he dreaded hearing more.

"A couple of things," Connie sighed. She hated telling him as much as he must hearing it, but she went on. "Angus had made certain the local papers didn't run any stories about his baby...hell, he owned the one in Ringwald. But he wasn't liked and had no control in neighboring towns. She'd been in the hospital for several weeks, her father wanting to make sure the scars on her body showed as little as possible, even if he was unable to do anything about the emotional scars.

"When Blythe was finally ready to leave, she was showering, getting ready for her parents to come pick her up. There was a young nurse, originally from Ringwald. She had been on Blythe's floor when she was first moved there. She'd been rough an unfriendly, too nosy. Angus noticed it and had her transferred to another floor."

"And the nurse left a newspaper article about Blythe," Nate interjected.

Connie was surprised. "She told you?"

He nodded. "That she saw it? Yeah, but that's all. How bad was it?"

"The worst! Her picture was on the front page. She was laid out on a gurney, covered with a blanket, blood caked in her hair, smeared on her face. The story gave a detailed, though simulated, account of how she'd struggled, how he'd beaten her, taken his knife to rip her clothes off then slit into her flesh, how the cuts on her hands and arms indicated she'd been awake during the attack and tried to fight off the assailant. The article was horrible. It had to be like reliving the whole thing, except she couldn't remember living it in the first place.

"I'd gone with her parents to pick her up. They were checking her out, signing paperwork, so I went on in and saw the newspaper in her hands, the photograph staring back at her. I was shocked...no, outraged. I tried to tear the paper away from her but she wouldn't loosen her grip. It was deathlike. She glanced up for an instant with the most awful expression then turned back to the newspaper. I sat in a chair and cried as she read the article out loud. Believe me, it insinuated as much as possible without being slanderous.