The Jodi Picoult Collection #3 Read online

  Trixie glanced at her. “You don’t even know what happened.”

  “I know that no one deserves to be raped, no matter who she is and what she’s been doing,” Janice said. “Have you taken a shower yet?”

  Daniel wondered how on earth she could even think this. Trixie was still wearing the same torn blouse, had the same raccoon circles of mascara under her eyes. She had wanted to shower—that was why, when he’d found her, she was in the bathroom—but Daniel knew enough to keep her from doing it. Evidence. The word had swum in his mind like a shark.

  “What about the police?” Daniel heard, and he was stunned to realize he’d been the one to say it.

  Janice turned. “The hospital automatically reports any sexual assault of a minor to the police,” she said. “Whether or not Trixie wants to press charges is up to her.”

  She will press charges against that son of a bitch, Daniel thought, even if I have to talk her into it.

  And on the heels of that: If he forced Trixie to do something she didn’t want to, then how was he any different from Jason Underhill?

  As Janice outlined the specifics of the upcoming examination, Trixie shook her head and folded her arms around herself. “I want to go home,” she said, in the smallest of voices. “I’ve changed my mind.”

  “You need to see a doctor, Trixie. I’ll stay with you, the whole time.” She turned to Daniel. “Is there a Mrs. Stone . . .?”

  Excellent question, Daniel thought, before he could remember not to. “She’s on her way,” he said. Maybe this was not even a lie by now.

  Trixie grabbed onto his arm. “What about my father? Can he come in with me?”

  Janice looked from Daniel to Trixie and then back again. “It’s a pelvic exam,” she said delicately.

  The last time Daniel had seen Trixie naked, she had been eleven and about to take a bubble bath. He had walked into the bathroom, thinking she was only brushing her teeth, and together they had stared at her blossoming body in the reflection of the mirror. After that, he was careful to knock on doors, to draw an invisible curtain of distance around her for privacy.

  When he was a kid in Alaska, he had met Yu’pik Eskimos who hated him on sight, because he was a kass’aq. It didn’t matter that he was six or seven, that he hadn’t been the particular Caucasian who had cheated that person out of land or reneged on a job or any of a hundred other grievances. All they saw was that Daniel was white, and by association, he was a magnet for their anger. He imagined, now, what it would be like to be the only male in the room during a sexual assault examination.

  “Please, Daddy?”

  Behind the fear in Trixie’s eyes was the understanding that even with this stranger, she would be alone, and she couldn’t risk that again. So Daniel took a deep breath and headed down the hall between Trixie and Janice. Inside the room, there was a gurney; he helped Trixie climb onto it. The doctor entered almost immediately, a small woman wearing scrubs and a white coat. “Hi, Trixie,” she said, and if she seemed surprised to see a father in the room, instead of a mother, she said nothing. She came right up to Trixie and squeezed her hand. “You’re already being very brave. All I’m going to ask you to do is keep that up.”

  She handed a form to Daniel and asked him to sign it, explaining that because Trixie was a minor, a parent or guardian had to authorize the collection and release of information. She took Trixie’s blood pressure and pulse and made notes on her clipboard. Then she began to ask Trixie a series of questions.

  What’s your address?

  How old are you?

  What day did the assault occur? What approximate time?

  What was the gender of the perpetrator? The number of perpetrators?

  Daniel felt a line of sweat break out under the collar of his shirt.

  Have you douched, bathed, urinated, defecated since the assault?

  Have you vomited, eaten or drunk, changed clothes, brushed your teeth?

  He watched Trixie shake her head no to each of these. Each time before she spoke, she would glance at Daniel, as if he had the answer in his eyes.

  Have you had consensual intercourse in the last five days?

  Trixie froze, and this time, her gaze slid away from his. She murmured something inaudible. “Sorry,” the doctor said. “I didn’t quite get that?”

  “This was the first time,” Trixie repeated.

  Daniel felt the room swell and burst. He was vaguely aware of excusing himself, of Trixie’s face—a white oval that bled at the edges. He had to try twice before he could maneuver his fingers in a way that would open the latch of the door.

  Outside, he balled his hand into a fist and struck it against the cinder-block wall. He pummeled the cement again and again. He did this even as the tears came and a nurse led him away, to wash the blood off his knuckles and to bandage the scrapes on his palm. He did this until he knew Trixie wasn’t the only one hurting.

  • • •

  Trixie wasn’t where everyone thought she was. She might have physically been in the examination room, but mentally she was floating, hovering in the top left corner of the ceiling, watching the doctor and that other woman minister to the poor, sad, broken girl who used to be her.

  She wondered if they knew that their patient was a husk, a shell left behind by a snail because home didn’t fit anymore. You’d think someone who’d been to medical school would be able to hear through a stethoscope that somebody was empty inside. Trixie watched herself step onto a sheet of white paper with stiff, jerky movements. She listened as Dr. Roth asked her to remove her clothes, explaining that there might be evidence on the fabric that the detectives could use. “Will I get them back?” Trixie heard herself say.

  “I’m afraid not,” the doctor answered.

  “Your dad is going to run home and get you something to wear,” Janice added.

  Trixie stared down at her mother’s sheer blouse. She’s going to kill me, Trixie thought, and then she almost laughed—would her mother really be paying attention to the freaking blouse when she found out what had happened? With slow movements, Trixie mechanically unbuttoned the shirt and pulled it off. Too late, she remembered the Ace bandage around her wrist.

  “What happened there?” Dr. Roth asked, gently touching the metal pins holding the wrap in place.

  Trixie panicked. What would the doctor say if she knew Trixie had taken to carving her own arm up? Could she get thrown into a psych ward for that?

  “Trixie,” Dr. Roth said, “are there bruises under there?”

  She looked down at her feet. “They’re more like cuts.”

  When Dr. Roth began to unravel the bandage on her left wrist, Trixie didn’t fight her. She thought about what it would be like in an institution. If, in the aftermath of all this, it might not be such a bad thing to be sealed away from the real world and totally over-medicated.

  Dr. Roth’s gloved hands skimmed over a cut, one so new that Trixie could see the skin still knitting together. “Did he use a knife?”

  Trixie blinked. She was still so disconnected from her body that it took her a moment to understand what the doctor was implying, and another moment after that to understand that she had just been given a way out.

  “I . . . I don’t think so,” Trixie said. “I think he scratched me when I was fighting.”

  Dr. Roth wrote something down on her clipboard, as Trixie kept getting undressed. Her jeans came next, and then she stood shivering in her bra and panties. “Were you wearing that pair of underwear when it happened?” the doctor asked.

  Trixie shook her head. She’d put them on, along with a big fat sanitary napkin, once she saw that she was bleeding. “I wasn’t wearing underwear,” Trixie murmured, and immediately she realized how much that made her sound like a slut. She glanced down at the floor, at the see-through blouse. Was that why it had happened?

  “Low-rise jeans,” Janice commiserated, and Trixie nodded, grateful that she hadn’t been the one to have to explain.

  Trixie couldn’t