“We need to spread her legs. I hate to fucking do this to her, but I need to check for internal bleeding. I have a suspicion they may have shoved things up inside her and could have perforated something inside.”
Blade nods, and Roadblock swallows hard, looking pale and sweaty. This is probably the first time any of us has ever hesitated to spread a woman's legs.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter. I take a deep breath, wet a fresh cloth, and slowly start cleaning the blood and dirt from the insides of her thighs, working my way up to her center.
Roadblock sees what I see, and rage contorts his face. She has more bite marks on the insides of her thighs, and many of them broke the skin. I grit my teeth and continue cleaning.
“Hold her open for me. I need to take a look." I grab my little flashlight and look at this poor girl's entrance, and it's pretty messed up. She's got some nasty tears at her opening along with a lot of blood, so I can’t see very far past her lips.
“I need to feel up inside now, check for perforations.” I hesitate, feeling like I’m violating her too.
“Do it, man. We need to know to help her. I agree there’s way too much blood for what I would assume was normal rape. Fuck, there is no such thing as normal rape, but I think we are on the same page. Something was used to cause serious damage," Blade says, the rational one for a change.
I blow out another deep breath and carefully slide my finger inside, feeling for any fresh blood, tears, or perforations that would require a surgeon.
“I feel a lot of swelling and some small tears, but I don’t think she’ll need surgery. If it was any worse than this, she’d have bled out,” I say, feeling some relief.
“Each of you grab a leg and bend it up toward her chest.” After I see what I’m dealing with, I clean around her severely torn asshole. Once I wash the blood away, I don’t see any fresh blood oozing out. But she’s so swollen I don’t even think I could get a pinkie in to check her with lube. Fuck, they messed her up bad. Sick mother fuckers.
When she's cleaned of dirt and blood, I start working on all of her wounds. Roadblock helps roll her so I can clean the bear claw gashes on her hip and thigh and stitch them up. After I stitch the worst of it, I bandage those areas and cover some other open wounds and gashes from being beaten half to death. I lift her head and sift through her hair to see if she has any open wounds on her scalp, and I find a small one above her temple and clean that out. “This is gonna need a few stitches too.” I pick up the sutures, quickly put three stitches in her head, and then rub antibiotic ointment on it.
I sit back on my knees. “Okay, let’s cover her up and get her warm. I’m gonna go make a list of what we need. “You good with hanging here and being her giant heater?” I ask Roadblock.
“Fuck yeah. I ain’t leaving.”
I nod and step out of the room with Blade right behind me. I run my fingers through my hair and then pull it hard. I feel so fucking helpless right now. I'm all twisted up. Part of me wants to go Rambo and kill people. The other part wants to climb up next to her and hold her and never let her go. And all these crazy emotions have me crawling out of my skin.
“How’s she doing?” Checkmate asks with a concerned expression as he gets to the top of the stairs from the basement.
“I need a minute, and then I’ll write the supply list.” I walk out on the back deck for a cigarette from the pack Checkmate leaves out here for his nightly smoke. I rarely smoke anymore, but after this? Yeah, I need one along with half a bottle of whiskey.
Both Checkmate and Blade come out after about ten minutes of giving me alone time. "Just saw you smoking, and we could use one too," Checkmate says. They light up, and we all lean against the rail with somber faces and soak up the nicotine. "I called old man Craig to let him know I cut through his fence and there were two dead grizzlies. I told him he could have the meat all to himself since we had to get our buddy, who may have broken his ankle, out to a hospital or we would have field dressed them and taken some meat. Figured it’d help cover our tracks so he won’t suspect that we found anyone," Blade says.
“Good thinking, man,” I agree.
Chapter Three
Homicide
"What's taking them so fucking long? They should have been back my now," Roadblock says as he paces my bedroom. I look at my watch, and it’s after eleven hundred hours. The clinic closes at 8 p.m., but we wanted to make sure no one was there and the sleepy town was all asleep. Hopefully, they didn't run into trouble and get back soon.
About twenty minutes later, the jeep pulls in the driveway, and Roadblock rushes out of the room. He runs back in with Blade and Checkmate on his heels, carrying a huge duffle bag.
"Everything go okay?" I ask.
"Yeah, just grabbed some extra things, not on the list, is all. I grabbed pain pills but also anti-inflammatories and got both in liquid form too. I grabbed syringes since she can’t swallow pills ’cause she’s passed the fuck out.”
“Smart thinking. Fuck! I didn’t even think of that. Way to step up, man.”
"It's all good. Glad to help," Checkmate says.
I start an IV and then attach the saline and adjust the drip. “Someone hold the bag, and someone else go grab me the coat rack.”
I hang the bag on the coat rack and dose her with anti-Inflammatory plus a strong broad-spectrum antibiotic, non-penicillin based in case of allergy, and also a dose of morphine into the IV port.
“All right, she’s dosed up. Should be able to rest comfortably for now. Let’s go grab some grub and let her rest. I’m starving. It's all up to her now. We've done all we can," I say and walk out of the room.
We all grab a few sandwiches, some chips, and a beer and crash in the family room.
"You think she’s gonna make it?” Checkmate asks hesitantly after he's wolfed down two sandwiches.
I look out the window, trying to gather my thoughts, when Roadblock surprises me and speaks up.
“I think she’ll make it, but the true test is how she survives mentally. She’s been raped, and they hurt her real bad. She has more human bite marks on her body than I could count.” He pauses and looks down for a minute before he continues.
“She’s covered in boot prints from being kicked and stomped. She has deep wounds on her wrists and ankles from being tied up, most likely spread eagle, while being raped,” he growls out. “She has wounds from a grizzly's claws on her hip and thigh that were pretty deep and needed to be stitched up along with scrapes all over her body and…..” He looks at me with a pained expression on his face, and I know what has him choked up.
“They raped her with something, and her ass is so tore up and swollen I wasn’t able to feel inside to make sure she wasn’t perforated by some tool or… I don’t know what, but at least there weren't any perforations that I could find in her vaginal canal that would require a surgeon.”
"Jesus fuck," Checkmate growls out.
“Fucking monsters,” Blade says, shaking his head and looking haunted.
“Where are you planning on sleeping tonight?” Checkmate asks.