The Cutting Edge Page 4

  Hearing the sounds of another car, Leslie once again glanced to her left. She watched as the car’s lights shined down the street. In an almost absentminded way, she observed the vehicle stop with its nose sticking just beyond a building’s wall and out into the alley. For a moment, all she heard was the soft, steady gurgle of the motor, then came the slamming of a car door. Judging the distance from where she sat to the car to be a hundred and fifty feet, she realized that if she could just pull herself up and walk those few steps, she might get some help.

  Setting her heels firmly against the ground, she used all of her strength to push her back up against the wall. Ever so slowly she lifted her body from the street, her shoulder blades rising brick by brick until she had fully straightened her knees. Almost erect, she took a deep breath and once again looked toward the car’s lights. Hearing a man’s distant voice, she strained to try to pick up the words he was saying. Remaining deathly silent, she listened, but he was too far away for her to understand. Figuring she couldn’t be seen or heard, she knew she had to get closer. Using her left shoulder as a pivot point, she painfully pushed her back away from the wall and leaned on her left arm as she faced the end of the alley. Steadying herself, she set her sights on the car as if it were a target and began her walk.

  Moving her right foot forward, she managed a small, unsteady step. The jarring this simple motion created caused a fresh round of pain to shoot through her jaw. Waiting for the searing sensations to fade to a milder throbbing, she forced her left foot to move six inches forward. Again she rested. Never before had Leslie exerted such effort. Never before had she pushed so hard. And never before had she accomplished so little. Twenty minutes after pulling herself off the pavement she was only twenty-five feet closer to the car.

  Propped against the wall, she once more heard a man’s voice, this time followed by the sounds of footsteps on a sidewalk. A moment later, a car door closed, and then the car jerked forward and began to move.

  “Wait!” Leslie tried to yell, but the word remained caught in her throat. Trying again, she managed a small noise, but it was nothing like the word her mind had ordered her mouth to say. No matter what she did, her lips wouldn’t or couldn’t form the needed shape. As she watched the car drive off into the night she realized she was hurt much worse than she imagined.

  Exhausted and weak, she rested against the wall for over five minutes, and then, knowing that making it to the end of the alley was her only hope, once more began to edge her way along the wall. With each step she grew weaker and the pain grew stronger. Tears, caused by both her mental frustration and the excruciating agony created by her wounds, mixed with blood dropped off her face and onto the ground, and still, she pushed on.

  It took her an hour to make it to a spot just thirty feet from the alley’s exit. From there she could see a little bit of the street, but there was absolutely no activity. No one had come by since the man in the car. Her mind and body were screaming at her to stop, sit down, rest, but like a marathon runner who could no longer feel her body, Leslie’s heart was driving her to reach the street. As the moments passed, it was her heart that was losing the argument. If she rested, she would not get back up. But did just letting life fade away really matter?

  Yes! Yes it did matter!

  Pushing and pivoting off the wall, she lifted her right foot forward four inches, but instead of landing on solid pavement, it found a hole. Suddenly off balance, she fell forward, her reactions too slowed by both fatigue and the loss of blood to get her hands up in time to cushion her fall. Her face struck the ground first. Ironically, she no longer felt any pain, only a numbing sense of defeat.

  Looking to her left, she methodically noted the fall placed her two yards from the wall she had been using as a crutch.

  “Six feet,” she whispered somehow believing that talking to herself might keep her from giving up. “Let me see, that is seventy-two inches. That’s like a jump—a long stride. Too long a stride. It’s over, Leslie. Either someone finds you here or you die. The wall is just too far away. Anyway, you don’t have the strength to stand up again.”

  For a few moments, she allowed herself to give up, and then, after looking back down the alley and realizing how far she had come and how hard she had struggled she began to question her own logic. Shaking the negative vibes, she lifted her eyes and stared at the street.

  Her father had always told her she could climb any mountain by just taking one step at a time. He had used that as a motivating factor after she had broken her leg when she was six. It had sustained her during the days when she thought she would never get a good enough gig to pay the rent in New York. One day at a time, one step at a time, and one inch at time. That was the secret to success. And now, that mind-set would define her.

  “I can make it,” she vowed. “Even if I have to crawl, I can make it.”

  Pushing off the street with her right hand and foot, she managed to shove her body a half-foot closer to her goal. Repeating the motion, this time using her left side she picked up another six inches. For the next five minutes, she crawled along the surface covering a little more than the length of her body and in the process losing both her shoes. Exhausted to the point of once again drifting into unconsciousness, her fingers and toes now cut and bleeding from digging into the asphalt, she stopped and began to let the sweet relief of sleep flow through her system, but just as she was about to nod off, another vehicle pulled up to the curb beside the alley.

  Looking up, Leslie fixed her eyes on the car’s lighted taillights. Hearing a door open and then close, she listened to high heels striding steadily along the street and then the sidewalk. Sparked by these sounds and a newfound hope they created, she pushed forward with her right foot and then her left, once, twice, and then a third time. This burst of power propelled her fifteen feet down the alley and to within ten feet of the back of the car. Somehow, she’d covered more ground in forty-five seconds than she had the last thirty minutes.

  Resting for a moment, trying to find a second wind, she heard a woman’s voice.

  “Take my money will you, I’ll call that stupid paper just as soon as I get to work. They’re not going to rob me like this.” Then Leslie heard what sounded like a fist hitting metal. “That’ll show you,” the woman angrily shouted. “No machine gets the best of me.”

  Suddenly the sound of rapidly moving heels echoed off the concrete. Panicked, Leslie crawled another step closer to the car. Swallowing a large mixture of blood and saliva, she lifted her head and tried to yell. All that came out was a gurgle. Attempting to clear her throat, she repeated the futile action. Meanwhile, a car door opened, brake lights flashed, and the woman and the car roared off into the night.

  God, I was so close …

  And with those thoughts, the model eased her head back down to the dirty surface and slowly drifted off. Too tired to cry, she simply gave in to her fate.

  10

  It was another slow night and early morning for the two nurses as they pulled duty in Springfield Community Hospital’s Emergency Room. In their first five hours, they’d treated a woman who’d gotten her thumb caught in a bottle and a man who developed a rash after drinking a quart of grape juice. Otherwise nothing!

  “How’s the kid?” Marsha inquired.

  “Dawn’s fine now,” Meg replied. “Evidently, it was just a virus. By evening, she was a live wire again. There’s nothing like a kid to lift you up and pull you down all at the same time.”

  “Wait until she’s a teen,” the other woman warned. “There won’t be many ups at all. If you don’t believe me, ask my mother.”

  Checking an inventory chart, Nurse Meg Richards took a sip of a soft drink and sat down at the records desk. Her friend, five-foot three-inch, blue-eyed beauty who ran marathons as a hobby was Marsha Kolinek. Exhausted from boredom, she was leaning on the admitting counter, content to pass the predawn hours reading a newspaper the grape juice victim’s wife had left behind when that couple had gone home.
br />   “Did you read Dear Abby?” Marsha laughed. “I mean you won’t believe this one.”

  Shaking her head, Meg looked up from her work, eased back in her chair and waited for Marsha to give the blow by blow.

  “It seems there was this wife whose husband was a great guy through the week, but he wouldn’t take a bath or brush his teeth from the time he got home from work on Friday until he got up Monday morning. Anyway this woman was tired of putting up with the flake, so she wanted to know how she could get him to clean up his act. Abby said …”

  The ringing of a phone interrupted Marsha in mid-sentence.

  “Hold it there,” Meg grinned, reaching for the receiver. “I really do want to hear how this comes out. Springfield Community, ER, Nurse Richards.”

  Meg listened for a moment, smiled and said, “Nope. Nothing much going on here. If something doesn’t happen pretty soon, I might just find a bed and take a nap.”

  The nurse turned back to her coworker. “Seems it’s just as quiet up on the maternity wing. Just another night when nothing is happening or, in other words, it’s fall in Springfield. Now, what was Abby’s answer?”

  11

  Leslie Rhoads was pulled partially back to consciousness by a rush of cool air. Accompanying the breeze was a steady pitty-pat rhythm. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she noted both sensations, but, for a few moments, neither could yank her out of her mental hideaway. She was simply too far gone. Yet her eyes shot open and her mind jump-started when a blinding flash of lightning followed by a deafening blast of thunder rolled across the night sky and echoed up and down the alley where she lay.

  Steadying her nerves, Leslie pulled her throbbing head off its resting place, rolled it to one side, and looked up the street. Noting how close the end of the alley was she resolved to try one more time to crawl forward. Rejuvenated by the rain, she pushed off with the right side of her body. The now wet surface acted as a lubricant allowing her to slide more easily. The harder the rain came down, the easier it was to crawl. Within five minutes Leslie had pushed herself to the gutter that separated the alley from the sidewalk. Her body split the gutter’s rushing water into two distinctive streams, but as the rain fell harder and the water grew deeper, it soon was splashing off the sidewalk and into her nose and mouth. She almost laughed; she’d gotten this far just to drown.

  Grabbing the bottom of a stop sign pole, she rolled herself onto her back. Closing her eyes, she let the cool rain pour down over her face, content that she had done all she could do.

  “Well, Lord,” she prayed as another round of lightning and thunder filled the heavens, “This is as far as I can go. It’s up to you now.” Within seconds, she fell back into a deep sleep.

  12

  Fifteen minutes later another car rolled up to the curb. The driver left the vehicle running, quickly jumped out of the driver’s side, dashed in front of the hood, hurtled a mud puddle, and raced under a storefront canopy. Shaking the rain from his arm, he dug under his coat and into his pants pocket. Retrieving three coins, he dropped them into the slot of a newspaper machine. When nothing happened, he fiercely jerked the machine’s handle and let out an oath. Finding another trio of quarters, he repeated his actions with the same result.

  After severely scolding the machine, he pulled his coat collar back around his neck and started to make a dash back to his car, but a flash of lightning illuminated something just to his left. His curiosity aroused, he edged toward the corner near the alley, staying under the canopy. Straining in the darkness to see through the heavy rain, the man waited for another lightning flash to verify what he thought he’d spied just seconds before. He didn’t have to wait long. Soon another round of light filled the skies.

  “My God!” he exclaimed, recognizing the form as a body. Too shocked to move, he just stared as another, this time more constant, blur of electricity lit up the darkness. Taking in the ghastly sight a final time, and then glancing around to see if anyone else was in the area, he rushed back to the front of his car, hopped in the driver’s side, slammed the door, threw the vehicle in drive, and rushed away into the night.

  Alone and unaware, Leslie lay in an ever-deepening stream of water, the rain pelting her face, mixing with blood and rolling down into the street. For now, the pain and the confusion were gone and her soul reached out to welcome a blissful release from her struggle—even if it was death.

  13

  The ringing of the ER desk phone caused Meg to glance up from the newspaper want ads. As she answered she was greeted by a loud humming, followed by some type of electrical interference. Hence, she could barely hear a gruff male voice.

  “This is Joe Messa of the Springfield Police. I just found a woman in an alley, the victim of some type of assault. She’s barely alive. My partner and I felt she was too far gone to wait for an ambulance. So we loaded her in the patrol car. We’re about three minutes from you at this moment.”

  Noting the concern in her coworker’s face, Marsha got up from her chair and inquired, “What’s going down?”

  Covering the receiver with her hand, Meg answered, “The cops just picked up a woman. They must be talking on a radio/phone patch—it’s really hard to understand him.”

  Picking up a pen and paper, Meg turned back to the phone. Stretching, Marsha walked over to a point beside the records desk.

  “Officer,” Meg’s voice was now coolly professional, “What kind of injuries have you observed?”

  For a moment static again filled the receiver, then the man’s voice, now a little clearer came back, “A … there’s a whole lot of blood. She’s been cut and probably beaten, but I don’t know how. To put it mildly, she’s a mess!”

  “Where are the cuts?” Meg asked as she began to make some notes on the pad.

  “Well, there was blood everywhere, down her clothes, just everywhere. Her face is bad. Hands and feet, too! Can’t tell about much of anything else. She’s barely breathing.”

  “Is she conscious?” Meg calmly asked.

  “Naw,” came the muffled reply. “She’s not. At first I thought she was dead. But she’s breathing and there’s a weak pulse.”

  “OK, sir,” Meg acknowledged, “Get her in here as fast as you can. We’ll be ready.”

  Even before the officer cut her off, Meg hit the page line of the phone and issued a calm but urgent request. “Dr. Robert Craig, please come to ER. This is an emergency. Dr. Craig to ER! This is an emergency!”

  Dropping the phone in to the cradle, she took a single deep breath and jumped up from her chair. Glancing over to the other nurse she cautioned, “Let’s get ready for a bleeder. We’ll probably need a blood type, transfusion, x-rays—a complete work-up. If the cop knows what he’s talking about, it looks like we’ve got a touch-and-go here. We may need to call in some backup.”

  Pausing for a moment as she heard the thunder from the now passing storm she added, “Let’s hope the cop’s wrong.”

  Marsha hurried across the hall in to ER 1 and started getting the equipment ready for any and every situation. Meanwhile Meg rolled a stretcher to the ER’s swinging outside doors.

  “Meg,” Marsha’s voice rang out. “What have the EMTs done?”

  “Not a thing,” Meg hollered back, “The cops thought she was too close to dying to wait on a unit to get there. They’re bringing her in their squad car. So we are going in blind!”

  Talking as fast as he was walking, a young man rushed around the corner and charged into the room. “What have we got?”

  Still looking out the door, Meg replied, “A woman—evidently beaten or cut up pretty badly—barely breathing. She was found in an alley … at least that’s what the cops who are bringing her told me. They seem to think her face has been severely lacerated. That’s all we know.”

  Grabbing the phone, the doctor alerted the lab to be ready to quickly analyze any and all tests that might have to be done and then ordered in two more nurses. Within seconds, Beth Rogers and Jan Greer arrived and were helping Ma
rsha ready ER 1.

  “They’re here,” Meg alerted the team as the fully lighted patrol car rounded a corner and pulled into the parking lot. “Let’s get her in.”

  Charging out into the rain, Meg, Marsha, and Dr. Craig, guided the stretcher to the patrol car’s back door. Pushing a cop out of the way, the physician jerked the back door open and leaned over the back seat. Pulling a flashlight from his pocket, Craig quickly surveyed the woman’s obvious injuries then checked her pulse. Looking over his shoulder he barked at the nurses, “We’re gonna lose her if we don’t move quickly. She’s lost an incredible amount of blood. Let’s go.”

  Pulling her from the car, the three loaded the woman onto the gurney, pushed her past the two cops, up the ramp, and through the swinging doors. Letting go of the rolling stretcher as soon as it was inside, the doctor wiped the raindrops from his forehead and took another quick look at his patient, this time in room light.

  “Get her into Number 1,” Craig’s head unconsciously leaning in the direction of the room. “Beth, get me a blood type and lots of plasma. We’re going to need it in a hurry. Jan, find out what you can from the cops. They may have seen something that can help us. Meg, try to clean her up and see if we can find out how badly she’s still bleeding. Marsha, get me her vitals.”

  Pushing her through a curtain and into the readied room, Meg grabbed the necessary cloths and gently began to wash the blood that had caked over the woman’s entire face. Tossing cloth after cloth in a can, Meg finally exposed the first gash. “You poor baby.” Just as she did, she heard Craig walk into the room.

  “Doctor, if they are all like this, they’re deep and uneven. This one goes clear through the cheek. The gum even has a deep gash. Look at this hole.”