Chapter 32

It was Monday afternoon, a little over two weeks since Mary had been raped. This was her first time out since she'd come home last Thursday.

John was driving, I was in the front passenger seat. Mom and Jill were on either side of my sister. We were going to see Dr. Bartlett, the doctor who examined Jill and prescribed the pill for her.

The reason Mom was in the back seat instead of me was simple. Mary would freak out if a male was near her for any period of time. She would talk to me if I was across the room from her. If I got within five feet, she'd get extremely nervous and start to cry unless I got away quick.

We pulled into the lot next to Dr. Bartlett's building. Mary kept looking back at John and me as we followed the three of them to the elevators. John and I stayed in one of the back corners. The women were in the opposite corner up front. Mary constantly checked behind her as we went up to the fifth floor.

There was one woman waiting to see the doctor when we arrived. John and I stood in a corner of the waiting room while they sat on a couch on the far side of the room. A nurse called Mary's name after about five minutes and the three of them followed her inside.

Dr. Bartlett was out in less than five minutes. She signalled John and they went into the hallway behind the receptionist and were whispering about something. He was back outside within half a minute.

The three of them came out about 20 minutes later. Mary looked worse now than before going in. Mom and Jill had to support her and she seemed to be having difficulty walking.

When we got home, they helped Mary into her room and into bed. Jill and John said their goodbyes as Mom got the heating pad from the hall closet and took it into Mary. She slept straight through the evening until Tuesday morning.

Mary had a pretty rough time in the hospital. First, she had some major injuries that needed to be taken care of. I didn't ask how they were able to stitch the tears in her rectum and colon and don't really want to know. It couldn't have been comfortable.

There is a drug protocol that's still labeled as experimental in this country. There was a thorough test of it in Australia and it appears to drop the risk of getting HIV to almost zero if done soon enough after exposure. Hellacious amounts of drugs are given to the patient repetitively for several days. The theory is it kills off the virus before it has a chance to take hold. The body goes through hell while this is being done, but it's better than the alternative. Mary was also given some antibiotics to take care of another problem the doctors were aware she had. Or had a good chance of having.

There is an STD that is particularly violent if not handled with antibiotics within 24 hours of exposure. Unfortunately, it's not detectable until after that 24 hour time period. The only way you can save the person from a lifetime of hell, provided it doesn't kill her, is to know that a partner has the infection.

We found out that one of the guys who raped her was infected. No, he didn't volunteer to provide blood for testing. And his lawyer would never have approved it. But what neither he nor his lawyer were aware of is that Dr. Asshole can be a devious son of a bitch when he takes something personally.

All five of Mary and Charlie's assailants had some kind of damage. Though they had been overpowered, both Charlie and Mary left their marks on each of them. One had skin torn off his face in a pattern that matched Mary's fingernails. One's penis was scraped consistent with Mary's teeth before three of them were knocked out of her mouth. All had some kind of scratch. One wasn't going to be indulging in much sexual activity because he had two crushed testicles. John happened to be involved in their examinations. And he made sure to give each of them a shot, "just in case." What none of them realized is that when you deliver an injection into a vein, it is just a matter of lifting up on the plunger a bit to get a blood sample. There was testing being done on their blood before they were led out of the emergency room by the police. Somehow, even the one with the crushed testicles was pronounced OK to travel.

So, if you watch TV, you have some ideas of how they found these five assholes. No, it wasn't a plaster cast of tire treads, not a DNA match of the skin under Mary's nails, not a video camera at the gas station or even a witness. Well, not a witness who wasn't directly involved in it.

As they were transferring Charlie from the gurney to the bed in ICU, he grabbed the nurse's sleeve. She was all set to push his hand away but he was insistent. He said three things. "Gary Wallace. Party. Druggies." He then lost consciousness. Which, according to his doctor, he should never have found. He should have been out till the middle of next week after what they shot him up with in surgery.

Fortunately, the nurse had enough sense to go to John and tell him that Charlie seemed to be trying to tell her something. John had a card from the cops who had been in earlier and they were back within ten minutes. The nurse told them what she'd been told. Efforts to get Charlie awake were useless.

Gary Wallace is a senior at Highpoint. He's on the track team, so Charlie was invited to the party he had at his house that Friday night. The game was so one sided that when Charlie asked Mary if she wanted to go to a party, she agreed. They got there and there were about 20 kids having fun, playing CDs and stuffing themselves. Gary's parents observed without making a nuisance of themselves. No booze, no drugs, just a bunch of kids having fun. It could happen.