Wrath White - The Resurrectionist

The policeman looked down at his patent leather cop shoes and shook his head, raising his arms in surrender.

“All right. I’ll take you down to the hospital.”

“I’ll get my purse.”

Sarah walked into the living room and snatched her purse off the couch. She walked past Josh without looking at him. She was still angry that he’d doubted her about the drugs. As she walked out the door she hoped that if Dale had really drugged her, he hadn’t used meth.

The ride to the hospital was loaded with tension as the police officer attempted to talk them out of it during the entire ride.

“You sure you want to do this, right? These examinations can be pretty invasive. I’ll have to call a rape counselor. That’s just procedure. And she’s going to ask you some pretty tough questions.”

“I’ll tell her everything I can remember.”

“They might have to ask you about your marriage. You know, to rule your husband out as the rapist.”

“My husband didn’t rape me.”

“I’m not saying that. I’m just trying to prepare you for some of the questions they might ask you.”

“It sounds to me like you’re trying to talk me out of it.”

“I’m taking you, aren’t I?”

They fell silent for the rest of the ride. Sarah was grateful for the break. She needed to think. She wanted to try to remember as much as she could.

Sarah still could not remember much of the previous night. She remembered changing the sheets. She remembered surfing the Internet and then putting the laptop down beside the bed and grabbing her gun. She remembered falling asleep with the gun clenched in both hands and held tight to her chest. And she remembered waking up when Josh walked in. Everything in between was completely gone. But she could remember the previous night clearly.

She remembered waking up and reaching out for her husband, only to feel that warm wetness and hearing him wheezing and gurgling as he drowned on his own blood. She remembered looking up and seeing Dale stab Josh again and again. And she remembered what he had done to her. She could not forget the image of his tiny penis thrusting between her blood-soaked breasts. The problem was that she could also remember waking up unmarred with no visible wounds or scars and seeing her husband…alive. It had to have been a dream. But then she’d started finding things, things that didn’t add up, things that supported her memories. The only thing that didn’t make sense was the fact that she and Josh were alive.

They arrived at the hospital with the police officer still visibly annoyed at being inconvenienced. There was a nurse waiting for him along with a victim advocate from the LVPD.

“We’ll take it from here,” the female detective said, and the young officer looked like he could just barely contain the urge to jump for joy.

“Have fun, guys,” the officer said, and saluted them with a flip of his hand as he turned and walked out the hospital’s sliding doors, weaving around a gurney that was being rushed in by some paramedics with a man on it screaming his head off and bleeding from a huge wound in his leg. The officer gave the bleeding man the same flippant salute as he strode out into the parking lot.

“Asshole,” Sarah and Josh said in unison as they watched him leave.

The female detective smiled at Sarah as she ushered them into a small examination room.

The victim’s advocate from the police department was a tall black woman in her late thirties with thick curves. She had a kind face with a scar in the corner of her mouth that ran from the right corner of her lip up to her nose.

“My name is Detective Trina Lassiter.”

“Sarah Lincoln.”

“Okay, Mrs. Lincoln, tell me what happened,” she said as she and the nurse pulled on a pair of latex gloves.

“I’m not really sure. I remember being attacked but I’m not sure it wasn’t a dream.”

The nurse just nodded without looking up.

“That’s normal. Your mind sometimes suppresses unpleasant memories,” the nurse, a Latino woman in her fifties, said.

The detective opened a big plastic bag and withdrew cotton swabs, Q-tips, and little plastic jars.

“When do you think this happened?” Lassiter asked.

“The memories are from two nights ago but I think something may have happened last night as well.”

The nurse finally looked up. She looked at Detective Lassiter and then they both looked back at Sarah.

“You think you’ve been raped twice?” Lassiter asked.

“At least. I think the neighbor is doing it. I think he might be drugging me.”

Detective Lassiter turned to the nurse who was still staring with her mouth open.

“Let’s get blood and urine samples. Check her for GHB and rufinol.”

She turned back to Sarah.

“Okay, let’s get your clothes off. Is this what you were wearing during the attacks?”

“No. They happened at night when I was sleeping. I was just wearing my underwear but somebody washed them.”

She related the entire incident, as much as she could remember including being stabbed and then waking up the next morning without a mark on her. She told the detective about the bloody sheets and then the missing sheets the next day. The tall black woman listened patiently.

“Okay. Okay, let’s just get you undressed.”

Sarah took off her clothes and slipped into the hospital gown. She put her legs into the stirrups and closed her eyes as the nurse swabbed the inside of her vagina and anus and then swabbed beneath her tongue and inside her cheeks, bagging each Q-tip and labeling it before placing them back into the plastic envelope. She winced as the nurse slid a syringe into the vein on the inside of her elbow and withdrew three vials of blood. Then she gave Sarah a cup and helped her into the bathroom to take a urine sample.

When she came out of the bathroom she could tell by the demeanor of the two women that something had changed.

“What did you find?”

“Nothing. We’ll send the samples to the lab but there’s no sign of vaginal bruising or tearing. No sign of rectal trauma either. It doesn’t look like you’ve been raped.”

Sarah just stared at them, trying to figure out what it all meant.

“But…? But those memories? Those fucked-up horrible memories? Am I going crazy?”

“I’m not saying that nothing happened. If you were drugged your muscles may have relaxed, making it easier for him to penetrate. You may have even had an involuntary reaction and been lubricated enough that he didn’t tear any tissue the way he would have if you weren’t lubricated. That’s normal and it doesn’t mean you enjoyed it or anything. The body just acts funny sometimes and there’s nothing we can do about it. You also said his penis was small. All of that may have contributed to the lack of evidence. A lubricated condom on a small penis could leave very little evidence of bruising or tearing.”

Sarah nodded in agreement, barely listening. She kept thinking about what the detective had said about her being lubricated. Had she subconsciously enjoyed it? Maybe all the porn she watched had fucked up her head. How could she have enjoyed being raped by that perverted little freak? The woman had said that it happens all the time and it didn’t mean that she was enjoying it or that the sex was voluntary but Sarah still questioned herself. She could only guess what Josh would say. He already thought she was a nymphomaniac. But there was, of course, another possibility. It might have all been in her head. She might have never been raped at all.

“Like I said, we’ll test the samples. It might be a good idea to get a semen sample from your husband too so we can exclude his semen.”

Sarah nodded. She didn’t want to talk anymore. She just wanted to go home.