Fern took a ragged breath, fingers working those pyramids on the blanket. Her gaze firmly averted from Ava.
“No, but I really am not sure putting it off is helpful, either,” Fern said. “I have to start getting better.”
“You are doing wonderfully. No pressure. It’s just as you recover and start to regain your strength, your mind will relive a lot of what happened. I want to give you a chance to talk about it. It’s always better to get things out.”
Fern toyed with a strand of her hair and then closed her eyes. “I didn’t eat the food at first. They offered me a granola bar, and I threw it at them.”
“Bet they weren’t expecting that.”
“No. One of them hit me. I remember that. Then there was the needle, which sort of sent me into a spiral.”
“They injected you with drugs?”
“Yes.”
Ava sat forward. “Oh that’s a lot. What about this tattoo?”
Fern touched the side of her neck. “I can’t remember getting it, but I probably always had it.”
“When did you discover it?” Ava asked, taking careful notes. She had a feeling Chay would want to know about this.
“I had a nightmare two days ago. Things are getting tangled in my head. I was a heavy drinker as a teenager, and a lot of my memories of that time are fuzzy…like it might be a dream and not real,” Fern said.
Ava jotted that down. She kept her gaze on her notebook, because at this moment she was so angry on Fern’s behalf. These men had reintroduced something that Fern had taken steps to move past. She’d had so much trauma already. None of it seemed fair.
But then, when had life ever been fair?
Ava went over and squeezed the other woman’s shoulder gently. She wanted to hug her but didn’t want to cross the patient/doctor boundaries. The tattoo was a rose with a dollar sign. It wasn’t the typical teenage one as far as Ava could tell. It might not mean anything, but she thought she’d mention it to Chay.
Why had Fern been taken? It was hard to understand it exactly, but she knew that Chay would figure it out.
“Is it okay if I mention this to Officer Benally? This might help in his investigation,” Ava said.
“That’s fine. I don’t want to show it to anyone,” Fern said.
“You won’t have to,” Ava promised. No one was going to make this woman do that. Not while Ava was around. “I promise you. If they want to ask you more questions—”
“I don’t have answers for him.”
Ava did hug her that time. “You don’t have to.”
Ava turned the conversation from the past to the present. “So, no sun today…how do you feel about that?”
“Good. I wasn’t going to be able to go outside, and now I don’t have to disappoint you.”
“I would never be disappointed. You are so brave. We only need to go outside when you are ready.”
“Maybe never,” Fern said.
“You’ll get there. You’ve come a long way. Don’t doubt yourself, lady—you are the bravest woman I know.”
Chay found a quiet corner of the cafeteria and got Gracie sitting in a high chair playing with one of her toys while he reviewed some information that had come in overnight from one of the other police stations he’d contacted.
Not much there, Chay thought disappointingly. He heard someone walking toward them. Ava.
She took a seat across from him after kissing Gracie on the head. “Hey, you two. Got a minute?”
“I think she has all the time in the world, and I always have time for you,” Chay said. Still feeling a little uneasy at how much he liked her but knowing that he wasn’t going to back down from it. Guilt gnawed at him for last night.
