Fifteen
JENNA
“You’re allowed to say no any time you want,” Darla assures Mila as the minivan pulls away, jostling us down the driveway. “If you don’t want them to touch you, tell them. If you want to ask questions first, do it.”
The sheriff’s department returned shortly after two in the afternoon to bundle us up for our group medical. Tall green pines flash by the window as the vehicle picks up speed, dirt spraying out behind it.
Two motorbikes hang back from the filth, escorting the van.
Loki and the guy with the lion’s mane of hair.
Apparently, Chaos didn’t feel comfortable packing us off with law enforcement without a chaperone.
Why? I’m not sure. Does he think they’d throw us behind bars the first chance they’d get?
Drop us off on the roadside with nothing but the clothes on our backs and well wishes for a better future?
Use us as bait?
Turn us against them?
Regardless, it keeps me on edge as the van makes its way into Temperance, pulling into the hospital car park a short while later under threatening gray clouds.
The reverberance of the bikes rattles the vehicle’s interior when they pull up behind, engines loud before they’re cut off.
I drag a deep breath through my nose as the side door slides open, cold air rushing around my ankles.
“This way, ladies.” The deputy who came out this morning, Keller, assists Mila from the van.
She steps off the running board on shaky legs, eyes wide while she takes in the unconventional building before us.
An aged brick construction, the hospital appears more like an old homestead than a medical establishment.
It’s only the newer, contemporary levels behind, visible over the tiled roofline, which give away the property’s true purpose.
That and the large signage dotted amongst tidy hedgerows and shrubbery indicating where to find the various departments.
“Come on.” I take Mila by the arm and coax her inside. “Their job is to help us.”
We’re ushered straight through the waiting room to a pre-prepared corner of the triage area; six cubicles sectioned off from the surrounding patients by heavily patterned curtains.
Our male chaperones are held back in the waiting room—deputies included.
I help Mila onto one of the beds, Nandi immediately resuming her reclined position on another.
Darla hesitates between, eyeing the four spare beds, hand clutching The Kid’s.
“You okay?” I ask once I’ve finished settling Mila under a heavy knit blanket, warm from the heated cupboard.
Darla eyes a nurse who flits in to drop off a stack of supplies, buzzing back out as quickly as she entered. “You’ll think I’m silly.”
“You sure about that?” I lift an eyebrow to tease her and attempt to lighten the mood. “Try me.”
She exhales out her nose, oblivious to the way The Kid cranes her neck to watch her.
“Of everything we’ve done since leaving that place, this is the thing that makes it the most real.
” She snaps out of her daze and promptly lifts The Kid onto a bed opposite Kathy.
“This is the thing that makes me realize how serious it all is.”
“Having a hood shoved over your head didn’t make it feel serious?” Nandi asks, eyes closed.
I toss my middle finger her way, immediately blanching when I notice The Kid watching. “Sorry.”
The girl smiles.
“Maybe it’s the connection to the real world?” Darla muses. “Until now, everything was so… surreal. Unfamiliar. But being here…” She sighs, glancing my way. “It puts it into context.”
“Makes sense to me,” I say quietly, excluding Nandi from the conversation.
It’s how I felt seeing Mary-Beth’s face; a slap to the senses. A jolt back to the real world.
I suppress the shiver aching to travel my spine and turn for one of the remaining beds. Nurses return in a group—three of them for the six of us. One seems to be a trainee.
They ask the usual questions. What’s our family history? Do we have any pre-existing medical conditions? When did we last menstruate?
I clench my jaw when they ask the kid if she knows what a period is. They don’t even know her age.
The nurses take our vitals: weight, heart rate, and blood pressure. Mila’s, after they find a smaller cuff for her undersized arm.
They ask when we last had intercourse. Was it consensual?
They ask if we experienced sexual assault in our time with the men. At the houses. After being shipped.
I keep my eyes on The Kid the whole time, Darla on the bed next to her, holding her hand.
It’s Nandi who takes me by surprise, refusing to answer the question.
They check her reaction times and balance, and shine a light in her eyes.
And no matter what we answered when they asked if anything physical happened, we’re ushered one-by-one into a side room to do a full swab.
Even The Kid.
I want to vomit.
It’s while Darla and The Kid are undergoing testing that I lock gazes with Nandi. She watches me with a kind of despair mixed with distaste. “What?”
“You never flinched.”
“When?”
Mila pretends not to listen, yet her gaze is stuck to a single spotted tile on the ceiling. Kathy lies curled on her side with the blanket tucked around her ears, disassociated.
“When they asked if you’d been abused,” Nandi hisses. “If those fucks touched you.”
“I had no reason to,” I say idly. They didn’t assault me. Didn’t try.
After crossing paths with Mary-Beth, I find myself wondering why.
“Why did you flinch?” I fire back. “Why didn’t you answer them?”
“Because if I said yes, then they’d ask me to detail how, and I don’t feel like talking about it.”
I narrow my eyes on her a little, stunned that this bullheaded woman would shy away from seeking justice now, of all times. “Even if it means a harsher penalty for them?”
She snorts. “They’re up for trafficking charges already, Jenna. I don’t think what I have to say matters much.”
“Then you think wrong.”
“And what would you know about it?” she snaps, pushing up on the bed with her elbows. “What makes you an expert, huh?”
More than she’d know. I shrug. “I just think that one crime doesn’t excuse another, you know?”
“No. I don’t know.” She rolls to give me her back, slamming back down on the bed with a huff, muttering under her breath, “Don’t even know why I bother with your dumb ass.”
The side-room door opens, and The Kid walks out, followed by Darla. I connect eyes with the older woman, swallowing hard at the resigned sadness in her gaze.
We’re victims. And yet, right now, it feels as though we’re cattle at the sale yards being probed, assessed, weighed, and judged.
I can’t wait to leave.
“Is this done?” I ask the first nurse who passes by.
She turns her head my way, tight ponytail severe against her harsh features. “Not yet, sweetheart. The psychologist needs to come have a quick word with you all before we let you go.”
“Excuse me?” Nandi rolls over, pushing onto one elbow. “I don’t want no shrink.”
“You don’t get a choice,” Ponytail says, tidying away the monitoring equipment. “It’s part of the process if you’d like assistance.”
“Then I’ll go without.” Nandi swings her legs off the bed and drops to the floor, straightening her baggy T-shirt. “I’ll wait for you lot out in the waiting room.”
“Sit down,” I urge in a tired tone. “None of us want to go through this, but some of us need to.” I gesture to Kathy with my eyes.
Nandi looks at the catatonic woman, then at me, exhaling heavily. “Fine. But I won’t be saying anything. They’re wasting their time.”
“Take the goddamn help that’s offered,” Darla bites. “While you don’t have to pay for it.”
Nandi widens her eyes and sits the fuck down, shocked by Darla’s sass. I hide my smile, the amusement fading fast when I catch sight of The Kid sitting beyond Darla on the bed diagonal from mine, feet swinging as she stares at the floor.
Where did she come from? Why won’t she talk? Surely she’d say something if it meant she gets to go home. Doesn’t she miss her parents?
“Hey,” I whisper, catching the arm of a nurse who clears up the discarded packaging from the supplies used. “What happens to The Kid now?”
She glances over her shoulder at the young girl. “I’m not sure.” Her small smile is genuine when she turns back my way. “It’ll all depend on if they can contact family or if there’s space in a home.”
“She’s not going to a home,” I snap, a little too loud given how Darla looks my way.
“It’s protocol,” is all I’m told before the woman departs after her colleagues.
It’s wrong, is what it is.
I fix my attention on The Kid again. On her wavy, dark blonde hair. On the slight dimple on one cheek. Her gently flared nose. The almost invisible peak to the top of her ear. Fairy-like.
The memory of her smile pops into my mind. Familiar.
A softer version of someone I used to know.
Holy shit. My mouth drops open. Skin flushes. Blood draining to my toes. No.
Darla frowns. “What?”
I think I know where she came from.