Second Chance Too

I was on the floor of what had to be a grocery store, lying in a pool of blood that, likewise, had to have belonged to the boy who’d just died, and judging from the head pain, he died from a head injury perpetrated on him by the psychopath that was now attacking me.

There was another excruciating blow to my head. The crazy woman used a steel frying pan taken off the shelf where there were several other sizes and manufacturers to choose from, including Pyrex, Corning Ware, and an unidentified brand made of plastic, and smashed it into my skull. She was completely out of control and dangerous, but the body I was just thrust into was so injured from the first blows that I couldn’t seem to find the strength to move out of the way. “You stupid, worthless, pathetic, trash ... You have never been anything but trouble. We didn’t want you. We couldn’t afford you and if I’d had the money, I would have aborted you!!!! The very least you could do is die.”

I had no trouble hearing her voice as she shrieked at me. The screaming was accompanied by a series of vicious kicks to my head and shoulders. I had seen the frying pan flying from her hand after she hit me in the head hard and it slipped out of her hand because it had so much of my blood on it. When she lost her grip, she resorted to her fists and feet. I felt several ribs go from her insane attack. For a moment I wondered if the beating would result in a quick death in this body.

Using what little bit of strength, I did have, I tried to roll into a ball to cover up. The hard edges of her shoes cut the boy’s thin skin wherever they landed. I could feel her fist and then her foot as it struck the already bloody wound on the side of my head. There was plenty of blood and her continued attacks made it even worse. She had somehow managed to open several new gashes just above the temple of my new body.

Seeing how I covered my head to escape her blows, she turned her attention to kicking my exposed ribs and stomach. It was obvious that those chest hits had done some serious damage because every breath was accompanied by sharp, stabbing pain. Without an easy route to my chest, I was positive she was trying for a crotch shot, but it was hard due to the fetal ball I rolled myself into as she re-aimed her kicks. Through the pain, the haze of blood, and the screaming lunatic kicking me, I heard other voices, but something was clearly wrong with my hearing because they came to me from what sounded like very far away. One of the voices was a voice of authority and his words were almost clear.

“You!!!! Stop hurting that boy. Step away from him NOW, or I will be forced to hurt you!” I risked a peek and saw it was a uniformed police officer. I was never so happy to see a police officer as I was at that moment. My brain screamed for me to try and get away, but my body was far too damaged to do more than squeeze myself into a ball and try to avoid more abuse.

The words and tone of voice did nothing to slow down my attacker. She hit me with two more, vicious blows to the back of my head before I felt her body hit the floor near me. Striking a solid surface that hard would knock the wind out of anyone, and the officer used her momentary loss of control to quickly handcuff and drag her away from me for safety’s sake. Her screaming increased in volume and in the variety and frequency of disgusting, filthy language she hurled at me and the officer. That woman seemed to know every dirty word in the English language and strung them together in a remarkably imaginative manner.

Shortly another officer showed up and took charge of the crazy woman. That freed the first officer to get a good look at my injuries. He snatched up his walkie-talkie when he saw the amount of blood coming from under me.

“Headquarters ... This is Six-Four Seven. I need an ambulance for a severely injured child with multiple head injuries at the scene. Be advised that we have a white female in custody for assault. Six-Four-Five is handling custody of the prisoner. I will be staying with the victim.” I could almost hear every word, but found I had to rely partially on lip reading to be certain.

The radio response was almost instant, but I couldn’t hear well enough to make out what was said. The officer knelt beside me and started talking. For me, it was like one of those cheesy, old movies where the characters are speaking in Japanese, but the film was overdubbed in English. The sounds I could hear bore no relationship to the officer’s lips.

The officer tried mightily to communicate, but I looked at him in silence because I really couldn’t make out what he was saying and the deafness got worse by the minute, instead of clearing up. Eventually, I tried to show him by hand motions that I couldn’t hear, and when I cupped my hands over my ears, he figured out that I was having trouble. The violence perpetrated against the boy’s body resulted in near deafness and severe respiratory distress.

What was happening was that I couldn’t hear and could barely breathe.

He gave orders to what appeared to be the store manager and he ran off to do something for the officer. Instead of lying in a pool of my own blood, I tried to sit up to see if that would lessen the excruciating pain in my chest but couldn’t quite make it. When I was high enough off the floor for people see under me, they saw a wide pool of blood that my head was adding to by the second. When the manager came back, he had his hands full of first aid supplies and the officer tried to apply pressure to my bleeding ears and head.

Seeing someone try to help me set off the woman all over again, and she started screaming, cursing, and kicking trying to get at me to finish what she started. The officer restraining her apparently had enough, because he hit her with a very sharp blow to the solar plexus, using four straight fingers. That had to hurt because she finally shut up.

Being in a strange place and doing so in the middle of a deadly assault wasn’t enough. To make sure I had as much to deal with as possible, I had to do so nearly deaf and almost suffocating from rib cage damage. Sounds were replaced by a loud silence, or a faint vacuum as total deafness descended upon me. There was a sound in my head. It was almost a ringing, but not a ringing at the same time. The silence deepened as the minutes ticked away.

I saw everyone except the officer trying to help me, turn and look down the aisle. When I turned to see what was happening, I was pleased to know it was the ambulance crew. As they neared us, the woman who hurt me took advantage of the momentary distraction and lunged out of the grip of the officer. She quickly stormed down the aisle crashing into me, kicking and slashing with both feet. Twice her foot connected with my body. At least once the impact brought a scream from me, but I never heard it.

Her renewed attack seemed to be the final straw, because the officer trying to hold me up out of the pool of my own blood, grabbed her foot and snatched it off the floor causing her to tumble hard onto the vinyl tile. When she tried kicking him, he kicked back, and it was lights out for her. Her body had hit the floor very hard, and none of the witnesses seemed to care.

The pain in my head increased from the added blows of the woman’s hard-heeled shoes. It got so painful that I tried to squeeze my head with both hands to help it go away, but it was no use. Several people offered to give witness statements to back up the officer’s complaints and one apparently knew the woman quite well. He rattled off information about our names and address at a pace the second officer could write while keeping one foot on my attacker’s hip. I knew that because I watched as he wrote down what was being said on a notepad produced from a breast pocket, I read it all because I couldn’t hear any of it.

The ambulance attendants immediately went to work on my head. When one accidentally touched my hurt side, I nearly crumpled back into the blood puddle. That got them checking me for broken ribs and other damage. The specter of internal and vital organ damage raised its head about then and they changed tactics. From then on, they handled me very carefully. The whole ordeal was becoming too much for me to process. Between mind-blowing pain and blood loss, I felt myself going away.

The paramedics tried very hard to keep me awake. They talked non-stop, which would have done some good had I been able to hear anything they said. Out of courtesy or misplaced curiosity, I tried to remain conscious, but it was a lost cause. Between the severe concussion, reduced oxygen flow, and significant blood loss I was too damaged to remain conscious.

Several hours must have passed before I came awake. Though not yet fully conscious, I became aware of my surroundings and tried mightily to listen for clues. The damage to my eardrums must have been bad because I still couldn’t hear anything clearly enough to know what was being said around me.

When I raised my hand to touch my head where it hurt, another hand gently took it and laid it back on my chest. I turned to see who was with me and saw a nurse who smiled so softly that I smiled back without thinking. Her smile framed a face that wasn’t young, or old. She must have been in her early thirties. The body that went with the smile was soft and round and just about perfect in my humble opinion.

She was speaking but I couldn’t hear a single word. An occasional sound made it through my busted ear drums but nothing of substance. Instead of responding, I just stared blankly until she figured it out. When she understood that I awoke still unable to hear she bolted for the door and down the hall.