The scene, the scents, the beeping, all of it, sent Adele into another spasm of existential dread. For some reason, she thought of Robert. She thought of his coughing, his age. Perhaps she should run an extra couple hours tomorrow. Yes, that would help clear her mind.
They finally came to a stop in front of an open glass door. A man was waiting for them. He had a stethoscope jammed unceremoniously into the pocket of his blue scrubs, and had a name tag pinned to his chest.
“Dr. Samuel,” said Agent Marshall, “we spoke on the phone earlier.”
The doctor was an older fellow, with a pure white beard and crinkling eyes. But where the truck driver’s eyes had lines from smiling, Dr. Samuel’s lines were those of a worrier.
“I don’t have much time,” he said, without exchanging pleasantries. “How can I help?”
The doctor spoke nearly perfect English. John’s expression brightened at this, and he replied in heavily accented English of his own. “You’re in charge of Amanda Johnson’s case?”
The doctor nodded once. He didn’t volunteer anything else, waiting, one foot in the room, one foot out.
Within, Adele spotted the crumpled form of the victim lying on a bed. The room was dark, the lights off. Three different screens displayed the girl’s vitals, with numbers and flashing lights pulsing. The girl lay motionless beneath two blankets. The ventilator seemed a foreign contraption—some invading device. The tubes and metal and blinking lights all only served to deepen Adele’s anxiety. The girl seemed so small, like someone caught in a giant bear trap, or cocooned by tubes and metal and a glass coffin the size of a hospital.
Adele shivered and looked away, refusing to stare any longer. “Is there anything you can tell us?” Adele said through tight lips. “Is she going to make a recovery?”
The doctor spoke in quick, clipped tones. It sounded like he was annoyed with them, but Adele suspected he was annoyed with everything. “The poor girl had the run of it,” he said. “Spent hours in that forest. Here,” he said. “See for yourself.”
He pulled a clipboard from a slot next to the door and extended it to Adele. She glanced down, flipping through large photos, her eyes narrowing with each one.
First, she saw the girl’s feet. Deep cuts all along, flesh peeled off, dirt beneath the toenails and in the wounds. Two of the toenails were missing completely, and a couple of the toes had a bluish tinge to them.
“Frostbite?” Adele said.
“Almost,” said Dr. Samuel. “Those cuts, see them? From running through the forest barefoot. Harsh terrain, whatever had her scared kept her going despite the pain.”
Adele nodded. “And the rest of her?”
The doctor pulled off the top picture, flipping it over the back of the board. He pointed at the next one. “Other bruises and small cuts along her body, here and here.”
Adele glimpsed scrapes above a belly button, and more bruises along the top of the girl’s chest.
“But here,” he said, “these are old wounds. Old scars.”
“How old?” Adele asked, quickly.
The doctor shook his head. “In her state, it’s hard to tell. We’re still looking into it. We don’t think it’s relevant to her current situation though.”
“Five months old?” Adele.
But the doctor shook his head. “Longer. This, though,” he said, quietly, “is about within that timeframe.”
He flipped to the final photo, which displayed the top of the girl’s head, with some of the hair shaved back.
“What is that?” John asked.
Adele, though, just looked. There was the faintest of scars over a jutting flap of flesh. It had healed, but poorly.
“That’s five months old?” said Adele.
“Five months without treatment or hospital. Five months of someone picking at it. Yes. You can see how the scar tissue has spread, and how the wound never fully sealed.”
Adele turned slightly toward John and Agent Marshall, raising her eyebrows. “Five months ago. You think this is how the assailant subdued her?”
Dr. Samuel cleared his throat. “It was a blow to the back of the head. It could very well have knocked her unconscious if that’s what you’re wondering.”
Adele pressed her lips tightly together, thinking. She looked up at the doctor’s wrinkled countenance. “Anything else?”
“I found some other injuries. Signs of abuse. A broken arm, poorly set. Marks consistent with bruises from punching. I also saw scrapes across the girl’s back from an animal or long fingernails.”
“Perhaps one of the others kidnapped by the psycho?” said John, quietly. “She said there were others.”
Adele paused, considering this troubling notion, then addressed the doctor again. “What are the chances of her being able to speak with us?”
The doctor still stood with one foot in the doorway, one out, shaking his head. “Not good. Chances of recovering at all are slim. Like I said, she was out in that forest for hours, running through the trees. The cuts aren’t the only thing we need to worry about; the cold itself took its toll on her lungs. She was hypothermic when she came in.”
“She’s sedated?”
“For some of the pain. But not much. She’s in a coma. On a ventilator.”
Adele glanced back into the room, and it took her a moment, but then she spotted the air compressing machine, a white, beige plastic thing with many buttons.
“The girl only stayed on her feet that long because she was made of tough stuff,” said the doctor. “Most people couldn’t have made it that far in the forest. Especially not for that long. Adrenaline kept her going. She’s lucky she found the highway when she did. If not, she would’ve died in some hole in that woods.”
Adele frowned. “That’s a morbid thought.”
“And yet true. Look, I have other patients. If there’s nothing else,” Dr. Samuel said, trailing off.
Adele glanced at her companions, but they remained quiet. The investigators bid farewell to the doctor and watched him leave, striding down the hall with lengthy steps that countered his aged looks.
Adele turned to Marshall. “You have the phone number for the girl’s parents?”
Marshall didn’t miss a beat. “In the US? With the time difference, it’s late enough in the day that you should be able to get them on the phone.”
Adele nodded in gratitude, and waited as Marshall flipped through her notebook, looking for the appropriate details.
The doorway the doctor had been standing in was still swinging shut, slowed by a spring mechanism above the frame. As the door closed, it cut off the line of sight into the room with the ventilator, and Amanda Johnson.
“Let’s find a break room so I can make that call,” said Adele, her mouth in a grim line once more.
***
Adele heard the quiet ringing of the phone. It felt strangely soothing—the cool metal pressed against her cheek, the quiet chirp like a nursery rhyme. She sat with one of her knees bumping against John’s long leg. He slouched in his chair, arms crossed, his eyes fixed on her.
Agent Marshall was once again standing. Adele wondered if the young agent ever tired. Marshall had shut the break room’s door behind her and closed the blinds for privacy.