“All right. Fine. I’ll be in the ICU waiting room.” Rob hung up on him.
As Thomas got up and headed for the shower, he knew he needed to get over to the hospital even sooner. Rob wasn’t the kind of guy who would tolerate being kept from the woman he loved very long. The last thing he wanted was to have the guy arrested.
When she finally calmed down, the nurse asked her if she wanted a drink of water. She nodded, and another nurse brought it. Her throat still hurt, the cold water setting off a coughing spell that made her ribs and stomach explode with agony.
She felt like passing out, but held on until the pain abated a little.
The second nurse took the cup from her while the first propped her up with some pillows. It took her three tries to get her swollen tongue to actually form coherent words.
“…name.”
The woman smiled. “I’m Nancy Russell. I’m the ICU nursing supervisor tonight.”
She shook her head.
Nancy Russell looked at the other woman. “That’s Linda Kelly. She’s your other nurse.”
She shook her head again, licked her lips, and tried again. It hurt so much to talk, she had to make it count this time. “My name.”
Nancy and Linda looked at each other. Nancy nodded toward the door. “Tell Dr. Singh we probably need someone from neuro. Stat.”
Chapter Two
Thomas looked over the report one more time before leaving for the hospital.
Laura Spaulding, thirty-two, single but engaged. Last Friday evening, March third, the neighbor couple next to her condo heard something around 11:00 p.m. and the wife called 911.
The husband went over and knocked, then rushed in through the unlocked door when he heard the struggle, scaring the attacker off. The attacker—presumably a male based on the neighbor’s description, even though he didn’t see his face—ran through the back door. All they knew was an approximate height, and that the man’s hair was a lighter shade than her fiancé’s, and his build slimmer.
When the responding officers arrived they found Laura on the living room floor, unconscious. The neighbor had removed a rope that the attacker had wrapped around her neck. She’d been beaten nearly unrecognizable, choked, kicked, but not raped.
Probably only because her neighbor, Tom Edwards, had intervened. Very brutal. Potentially fatal, if not for the interruption.
She remained unconscious over four days. Mild cranial swelling, but it subsided on its own without surgery and it was too soon to tell how much, if any, brain damage had occurred. Cracked ribs. Lacerations, severe bruising. Whoever did this had it in for her in a bad way. It appeared to be more than just a random attack.
This looked like a rage-filled vendetta.
Her fiancé, Rob Carlton, had immediately been ruled out as a suspect. A county paramedic, at the time of the attack he’d been working a bad multi-car wreck on I-75, on the other side of the county, with at least ten other firemen and three Florida state troopers, not to mention several deputies, as witnesses. He’d also been caught in videos made by three cruiser dash cams on the scene, so there was no possibility anyone had lied to cover for him.
He was innocent.
Rob had spent the first forty-eight hours camped out either at her bedside in the ICU, or in the nurse’s lounge, curled up in a chair.
Thomas never met Rob before this, but deputies who had all universally said he seemed to be a nice guy, devoted to Laura. They’d been together for two years, engaged for six months.
The condo on her other side was vacant, the snowbird owners already back in Ohio for the summer. Two of the condos in the other building were also vacated by their snowbird owners, and the third was occupied by an elderly couple in their eighties, who’d been awakened by a deputy knocking on their door that night.
They were immediately ruled out as suspects, considering the husband needed a walker to get around and the wife had bad arthritis.
He’d also ruled out her coworkers and employees. No one had motive to hurt her, and everyone had alibis. The universal reaction to the attack was shock and anger, with more than one person expressing an interest in helping to save the state of Florida the expense of a trial when the perpetrator was caught.
One man, Steve Moss, an old family friend of Laura’s as well as a coworker, had offered Thomas the use of a wood chipper to take care of the attacker.
Thomas wondered if he’d be forced to deal with prosecuting a vigilante by the time this case was over.
Searches of her laptop, phone, iPad, and office computers also revealed nothing that would lead to a suspect.
Rob was already pacing in the ICU waiting room when Thomas arrived. In silence, they made their way past carts of breakfast trays to the ICU unit main desk. Laura’s door was closed, the shades drawn. A female deputy sat outside in a chair by the door.
The officer, Corporal Dayton, stood when they approached.
“How is she?” Thomas asked.
Dayton shook her head. “Still freaked out. I hate to say this, sir, but you can’t go in there without me. She’s terrified of men. It took the nurses twenty minutes to talk her into letting a male doctor examine her with me in the room.”
“Has she talked?”
“Only to ask a few questions. Her name, where she is, who we are.” She looked at Rob. “I’m sorry, Rob, but she apparently doesn’t remember anything.”
A chill settled over Rob as he stared at Dayton. He’d crossed paths with her many times during the course of his duties. “You mean Laura doesn’t remember the attack?”
Dayton shook her head. “Anything. I heard the doctors say she has total amnesia. She didn’t know her own name. The staff had to tell her.” She nodded toward a doctor in blue scrubs and a white coat walking down the hall in their direction. In his hand he carried a chart.
Rob had gotten to know Dr. Singh quite well over the past few days. He was young, but good, based on his reputation.
“How is she?” Rob asked him.
Dr. Singh looked grim. “Fragile. Right now she appears to have total amnesia. We don’t know if it’s related to the physical or emotional trauma of the attack.” He glanced at the deputy. “And thank you for sending a female deputy. That helped.”
“Can I go talk to Laura?” Thomas asked.
Singh pursed his lips. “One at a time. I reserve the right to end it if she reacts badly. She’s overwhelmed right now.”
“Rob, you’d better wait out here,” Thomas said.
Helpless anger rolled through him. “She’s my fiancée!”
“Look,” Thomas said. “All you’re going to do is scare her. I know that’s hard to hear. I have to talk to her. The guy who did this is still out there. I’ll see how she is and we’ll go from there.” He hit below the belt. “If you love her, you’ll listen to me.”
“How dare you—”
“If we’re going to catch who did this, I need to talk to her.”
“He’s right, Rob,” the doctor agreed. “Let him talk to her.”
Heartsick, Rob walked over to the nurses’ station and leaned against it for support. “All right.” He wasn’t used to not being in charge.
Not when it came to Laura.
She was his life, his love.
His heart and soul.
His submissive, and soon to be his slave, once they got married.
Thomas nodded to the deputy. She slowly opened the door and went in ahead of him.
Dr. Singh put his arm around Rob’s shoulders. “Are you okay?”
Rob shook his head. “I thought the end of this nightmare would be when she woke up.”
“You have to focus on her and her needs. You can’t get upset in front of her. She needs as much stability and strength as she can get right now. I don’t want to sound callous, but if you can’t hold it together, you need to stay out here. She’s scared and confused and the last thing she needs is someone stirring things up.”