Karen Reynolds
Copyright© 2025 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 3
The doctor spoke up in the silence that followed.
“The young man slid a knife in your chest,” she said quietly. “A millimeter to one side, and you’d have had a superficial wound that I could have closed with four stitches, maybe five. A millimeter the other way, and you’d have died in the hallway. The blade nicked an artery, just a little.
“Your teacher saved your life. She knew what had happened and got the ambulance rolling right away and kept what pressure she could on the injury.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” the detective said. “If we could stay on task here, I can finish my interview, and Miss Reynolds can get some more sleep.”
I realized she was right; I was feeling awfully tired, and my eyes were heavy. “Why did Carla Lopez start the fight, Miss Reynolds?”
I looked her in the eye. “Earlier, before PE, she was giving a freshman girl a hard time in the locker room. Teasing her, pushing her around. I told Carla to stop. Then in PE, well, Carla’s team just couldn’t seem to come together. We made a couple of good shots, and Carla was angry.”
“Did you hit Miss Lopez in PE?”
“I didn’t mean to. I jumped up and spiked the ball.” I almost blurted out how much I wanted to be tall like Katie, but I remembered at the last second that I wasn’t going to say anything about Katie. “I didn’t even know it. I certainly didn’t try to hit her with the ball. It just happened. Later, someone told me about it.” That seemed safe enough.
“Anything else?”
I tried to shake my head, but I felt giddy and dizzy, and had to stop for a minute. It felt like I’d run a long way. “No, I didn’t see Carla again until after school.” I saw the policewoman’s eyes on mine, and I knew someone had told her about the comment in the shower. “Maybe I made a stupid comment in the shower about how she should tell the truth to Raul about how she got the bruise. It wasn’t much.” I was panting, the world was all weird again; things were fading in and out.
“No, it wasn’t. Thank you for your cooperation, Miss Reynolds. I may need to come back and ask you a few more questions. In the meantime, I wish you a quick recovery.” The detective said, and turned to my parents. “That’s all I have for now. I’d like to talk to you both outside. We can let Karen rest.”
I sagged back on the bed, sweating and shaky. The doctor came and looked down at me. “I hope that wasn’t too tiring.”
I shook my head, afraid to talk. “Doctor?” She looked at me. “I don’t feel too good.”
Startled, she used the back of her hand on my forehead, and then she was pushing the button on the side of the bed.
I was tired and sweating buckets, my breathing sounded like the rasp of steam escaping a pipe. Then I started to shiver, confused I looked at the bustle of people in the room. Where had they come from? The doctor saw my eyes on her, and she smiled, “Sleep, Karen. You need to sleep.” She did something to the IV tube, and a second later, I was asleep.
I remembered the dreams this time; unlike before. Awful, horrible dreams, people trying to hurt me: hitting me, stabbing me, shooting at me. I tried to fight them off, but always I’d end up on the ground, watching the scene fade away until it would repeat; each different, yet all the same.
I was more aware of my surroundings when I awoke next time, but everything was surreal, and I could never tell when it was real or would change to a dream.
When real lucidity returned I felt like my body was made of lead; I weighed a million pounds.
It was dark, and my mouth was so dry; I fumbled for the bell push and finally got it. A minute later a nurse was there, and I realized my parents had been sleeping on chairs in the room. “Drink,” I said weakly, and the nurse gave me a small cup with just a little water. I sloshed it around my mouth for a long minute, savoring it, before swallowing. “More.” The nurse looked at me for a second, then gave me a little more. This time I drank it straight down.
My mother and father were standing, hollow-eyed, looking at me. How long had it been? Had they been there all of the time? What about their jobs?
Mom took my hand and held on tightly again, Dad simply stood there, looking pale.
“I’m fine,” I said weakly. “Just thirsty.”
“No more,” the nurse volunteered. I tried to smile at her, but I suppose I looked like a gargoyle. I certainly felt like one. All shriveled and gnarly. The doctor showed up a few seconds later; it looked like she had been sleeping too.
She checked me over, including the bandage. There was a long tube coming out of it that hadn’t been there before, filled with yucky-looking black goop. “Well,” I asked, “how am I?”
“Still with us,” the doctor replied drily. She looked at a monitor showing my pulse and respiration. This was a different room than before, I realized. More like the one I’d first woken up in. “Getting better, I hope.”
I nodded. “You won’t be offended if I say I want to get out of here more than you can imagine?”
The doctor shook her head, smiling. “I don’t blame you. There’s nothing like a bout of post-op infection to round out a hospital visit. Lucky for you, it was just gram-negative bacteria, not staph. Even so, I had to go back in and clean it up; not good.”
After that, it was better. After a day, I was able to sit up, and for the first time, I found it had been almost a week since I’d told Carla, “Put a cork in it.” The next day, I was moved back into a regular room. My father vanished for a few hours in the afternoon; I was surprised he’d been able to stay away so long from work. I learned later they’d put the case he was trying on hold. He was an administrative law judge; cases took years sometimes. I guess a week or two delay just made the lawyers richer.
The third day I was awake, Coach Murray came in, late in the evening. I saw her and wanted to jump up and down. “Thank you for coming,” I said with all the composure I could muster. My last memory of her came back to me, and I flushed.
“You okay, Karen?” She asked, and I nodded, tongue-tied.
“Thank you, Coach. For everything.” I finally managed.
“I’m sorry about this, Karen. Really sorry. Should have checked my six, seen him coming.” She grimaced, saw the question on my face. “I should have looked around. I should have known Raul would be close. I appreciate what you did.”
“Katie did more.” I said, “she was the one who shouted and tripped him.”
Coach Murray nodded. “I know. She was very brave.”
Something about the way she said those words made me scared. “Katie?”
Coach gusted a sigh. “These people are like primitive tribes, running in packs. The day after you were stabbed, someone shot her from a passing car. She’s dead, Karen.”
The world stopped. There was an awful roaring in my ears, a silence in my soul; in the whole world. The world seemed oddly gray; no color. What had I done? A few words, a hard-hit volleyball. Results so out of proportion with causes!
Coach Murray looked at my mother and father, and I knew then that they had known, but they hadn’t known why it would be important to me. Was it important? Someone I’d talked to a few minutes? Two dozen words, if that? Someone I’d felt a physical attraction towards, even if she might never have felt the same in return?
Coach Murray waved at the door to my room. “You can’t see them from your bed, Karen, but there are two policemen in the hall. When I go out, I have the redoubtable Detective Katzenberg at my side or one of her detectives. Your parents have police at your house; someone tried to firebomb it the other day. They have guards, too.”
My father cleared his throat. “We preferred not to burden Karen with the details of all this, just yet.”
Coach Murray shook her head, but my father went on. “When she is stronger, then it would have been time.”
“No,” Coach Murray said, “you underestimate Karen. And do her no service at all. I was there, Judge Reynolds. In the time it took me to push through the kids, Gomez hit Karen five or six times. She’d hit her before I got there, too. Karen was still standing; only after the last few blows did she sag, and then just to her knees. Karen is a tough young lady. Tough. And when that young man came at me with a knife, she managed to stand and face him.”
Coach Murray stopped, and I saw her throat work. “She didn’t think, she just acted.”
I could hardly think; I was torn between wanting to cry and wanting to hurt someone, really, really bad. “You got that right,” I said. “Didn’t think at all.” I meant it in damning terms; they all laughed.
“Earlier, in PE, Karen was different. I’ve seen her for nearly a year, Judge. There was something different about her that day. I can’t explain it; I saw it sometimes in the army. Someone who has found herself. She played well, better than well. I’d been going to ask her if she’d give some thought to coming out for the volleyball team. Katherine Diamond asked me about it the next day, at varsity volleyball practice. She was team captain, a very tough competitor. It was she who tripped Rodriguez, shouted a warning.”
Coach Murray looked down at me. “I guess you won’t come out for the team this year. Maybe next?”
I nodded. “Coach?” I asked quietly. “Would you say something to Katie’s parents for me? I didn’t mean for this to happen, I’m so sorry.” It was all I could do to talk; my throat seemed swollen and I thought I was going to choke.
She surprised me, leaning down and kissing my forehead. “Karen, the only person who will ever blame you for what has happened will be yourself. Don’t do it. Yes, I’ll tell them. When you get better, it would be good if you told them too.” I nodded, as vigorously as I could manage.
She turned to my parents. “Thank you for letting me see Karen.” And she was gone.
“What’s been going on?” I asked quietly. “Please, tell me.”
“We didn’t want to worry you, Karen.” Mom said.
“Just tell me!” I said, impatient, angry.
My father shrugged. “That boy, Raul, belongs to a gang; they tried to kill everyone involved. They tried to kill your PE teacher; she shot one of them with his own gun. That was the same night they killed the other girl. They tried to burn our house, but the neighbors saw them and called the police. A couple of days ago there was a battle. Ten of them attacked your teacher’s house. Three policemen were wounded, one died. Six of the ten gang members were killed, the rest wounded. The police have rounded up everyone known to be in the gang and put them in jail. But they think there are others they don’t know about.”
Knowing someone had killed Katie had been devastating; that others had died made it a nightmare. Eight people dead for “Put a cork in it, Carla?” I closed my eyes and felt the tears flowing down my cheeks. I opened my eyes and saw my parents looking pale again.
“Could I be alone for a few minutes?” I struggled to get the words out. They left, and I turned my face to the wall. Oh God! How could this have happened? The tears came in a stream, and I felt so lonely and scared.
After some interminable time, I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Care to talk?” I rolled over; it was the doctor.
“I didn’t agree with your parents about not telling you about ... things.” She shrugged slightly. “It’s been hard to keep the policemen out of sight of your door. They’d be happier in here.”
“Not!” I said abruptly, thinking about the indignities I suffered, not the least from the bedpan.
She smiled for an instant. “I didn’t think so. But it will be easier for everyone now that you know.” She was silent. “There are some other things.”
My heart went flip-flop. And she shook her head. “No, not anything like what you’ve heard so far.
“This is not only local news; it’s national. The President and his wife called your parents to wish you well; you’ll probably hear from the President yourself when you’re better. All the regular networks and the cable people are here in force. We have the whole wing on this floor sealed off; that’s the only reason you haven’t had reporters crawling all over. That and your parents have flatly denied requests for interviews for both themselves and you.” She grimaced. “At dinner yesterday in the cafeteria, I was offered five thousand dollars to let a reporter in for an exclusive. By someone who looked like one of the busboys. One of these times, they’ll get through. I thought you’d like a little warning.”
“Thank you,” I replied, mustering my dignity.
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