Chapter 23

The once attractive woman was hospitalized for a week. The lacerations were, not in themselves, life threatening, but the total blood loss had been severe. Angilee had almost bled to death. As it was, the doctors has sewn up her wounds, but when it was discovered she was a streetwalker with no health insurance, there was no mention of plastic surgery. The extent of her wounds were so severe that even with surgery, there would have been some scaring, but without the expensive reconstructive series of operations, her face and body would reman hideously disfigured.

Jean stopped in to see her and then again when Angilee was discharged to help her get home.

"Here, take this," said Jean, slipping two fifty dollar bills into Angilee's hand. "I don't know when I'll see you again. Carlos knows I came to see you in the hospital. He said if I saw you again, I'd be sorry."

With that her friend was gone.

Angilee managed to avoid mirrors until after the stitches were taken out, but finally she could stand it no longer and faced herself in the mirror. Instead of an attractive thirty-three year old, the face which stared back at her was ugly, even repulsive. Her facial wounds had left multiple widely fragmented scars which gave her the look of something from a B grade horror flick. Angilee gasped. She had known it would be bad, but nothing had prepared her for what she now saw. One side of her face sagged where the knife had cut facial muscle. Her eye and corner of her mouth were drawn which only added to the horrific effect of the scaring. She pulled open her robe and starred at what had been the nipples on her breasts. There were now only misshapen nodules on each breast. She knew her labial lips would also have suffered the same disfigurement. She cried for hours.

Jean had food brought to her, even paid her next month's rent, but Angilee knew Jean could not afford this type of expense indefinitely, so as soon as she was feeling able, Angilee returned to the streets. She was laughed off the usual corners by the other prostitutes. She wore her hair longer now to conceal her face as much as possible and worked only the corners in the most run down part of town where the men didn't care what the woman looked like as long as she could suck or fuck them to orgasm. Angilee was now turning tricks for ten, sometimes five dollars. Her Johns were the men the other streetwalkers wanted nothing of, perverts, druggies and sickos. Twice she was beaten, but perhaps most painful were the times when the men caught sight of her face, either recoiling or laughing as if she were a circus sideshow freak.

One afternoon there was a knock at the door of her apartment. Making sure her hair was pulled down on both sides of her face, Angilee opened the door a crack to see a slightly attractive, dark haired woman, about twenty-five to thirty.

"Angilee Simmons?" the woman asked.

"Yes."

"I'm Rebecca Walker from the Sun Times. I'd like to talk with you."