Hazel should have listened to me. If she had, none of this would’ve happened. This is all her fucking fault. She pushed me to my breaking point, and now I’ll never be able to show my face in this area again. I’ve lost almost everything. And if they catch me, I’ll lose the last thing I have left. Freedom. She’s taken it all.
When I get to the turnaround spot, I grab my stuff from the passenger seat. My phone vibrates, and I pull it from the cup holder. I’ll have to get rid of this too. I notice several missed calls and texts from my parents and Dustin. I shuffle as much info as I can from my phone to my memory card before removing it and putting it in my pocket. Tapping the text button on the screen, I see the previews of the messages. The cops are searching for me. Everyone knows. Damn, that was fast. What was I supposed to expect in a small town like Trinity?
Taking over Snap is imperative now. I’ll no longer have access to Daddy’s money. Making one last phone call, I set up the meeting to get into RCC. Before taking off on the ATV, I say goodbye to the cushy life I knew and throw my phone in the muddy creek water, severingthe last of my ties to the prettier side of my life.
The faker side is more like it.
I pull back the tarp and settle on the four-wheeler. Let them wonder what happened to me. It’s not like they cared to know me anyway.
CHAPTER 2
CADY
THEpast ten hours have been a goddamn nightmare. The police held us outside Hazel’s house for questioning. I understood they needed to establish a timeline and collect as much information as they could, but they could have easily followed us to the hospital and asked us there. Watching detectives scour Hazel’s apartment and bring her bloody belongings out in giant baggies was too much after everything I already saw. I needed to be with my best friend.
After being asked the same questions twenty different ways over and over, I lost my shit. He threatened to arrest me if I called him a fucking pig again and didn’t calm down. I shut down. I dropped to the ground and cried, wondering what Hazel was going through. She had been through enough already. I didn’t want her to be alone in the hospital enduring their torture too.
We told the cops who did this. One of the detectives laughed, as if we told a funny joke or something. That’s the small-town mentality. Because Phil’s family is big shit, he couldn’t possibly do something like this. Not one of the Jenkins. Pffft. Living in this small town, I’velearned those with money have more secrets to hide than anyone else. The only reason no one hears of their transgressions is because they pay for silence. Not everyone can afford to have their secrets swept under the rug.
Forensics collected fingerprints, and the cops eyed Erick and Bobby as if they were the culprits. I’ve never seen Erick want to hurt someone as badly as he did when the cops asked all of us to come to the police station to give our prints for comparison. Fucking seriously? We called them! Why would we stick around to be arrested? Fortunately, our prints were on file. That was the only time I was thankful for that public intox. Only after radioing the station, and confirming our records were indeed on file, did the cops let us go. They told us not to go too far. We all let them know exactly where we would be, in the shittiest way possible, before jumping in my POS car and heading to the hospital.
An hour after Hazel was admitted, I rushed in searching for my friend, but they refused to let me see her. They asked me who her next of kin was, because she didn’t have one listed. I told them she didn’t have any living relatives, and that I was her emergency contact. Because they couldn’t verify that at the moment, they wouldn’t let me in to see her or give me any updates on her condition. My vision turned red as I imagined wrapping that bitch’s stethoscope around her neck and hanging her with it.
Erick and Bobby sat me down in the waiting room between them, their arms wrapped tight around myshoulders for support. Maybe it was to keep me from committing murder. I don’t know. But as the anger subsided, I remembered the night I brought Hazel to the ER for food poisoning. We thought she had appendicitis. Turned out, she just ate some under-cooked chicken. The point is, that night I filled out her paperwork while she upchucked on everything. I listed myself as her emergency contact for the visit. If I could get the nurse to pull that record, maybe she would let me in to see her.
I ran over to the desk and asked the woman to pull it up. She did as I asked and there I was, listed as her emergency contact. She updated the information in the system, so it wouldn’t be questioned by anyone else, and directed us toward the ICU waiting room. The nurse also told me that they may not let me in right away because of the nature of what happened, but at least I could speak to the doctor and find out how she was. What was left of my heart almost shattered completely.
We made our way up to ICU, and I talked to the nurse at the desk. She said Hazel wasn’t allowed visitors until the doctor spoke to her family, and those visitors had to adhere to the hours set in place. I relayed the same information to her as I did the nurse down in emergency and she summoned the doctor. We were placed in a private consultation room the size of a fucking tuna can. My pacing consisted of step-wall-turn, step-wall-turn. It was enough to make me want to bang my head against them every time I approached them. The few minutes we waited felt like fucking decades before the doctor walked through the door.
He questioned Erick and Bobby’s presence, but I told him I wanted them there. He just nodded his head and continued. They ran every type of x-ray, scan, and blood test they had on her. No broken bones that needed to be set, but her shoulder was out of socket, and they had to put it back in place. We grimaced when he told us that. I could only imagine how much it hurt with the bruises that covered her, but he ensured me she was heavily sedated, and they were handling her with great care.
What shocked all of us the most was that she only needed a few stitches here and there. With all the blood I figured she’d have more than that. He said the majority of the blood had come from her nose and mouth. There were abrasions on her skin that added to it, but they weren’t deep enough to stitch and would heal on their own. He couldn’t promise they wouldn’t scar, though.
The doctor’s eyes had bounced around the room before he announced that there were signs of sexual assault, so a rape kit was being processed for the police. My stomach lurched when he said rape kit. Like being brutally beaten wasn’t bad enough, that sick fuck had to invade her body too. I assumed he had, knowing that he raped her before. But, this time, I was hoping that was one atrocity she didn’t have to endure. Pictures were taken for evidence when she got here, as well, and they would take more tomorrow when the bruising will be more prominent.
They are keeping her in ICU until all of her tests come back to confirm there is no internal damage. More tests will be ran in the morning, and if they are clear, they may send her home. He said she’ll be in a great deal of discomfort from thebruising, but that can be managed with pain medication.
I asked him if we could see her, and he said he would only allow me back to check on her. I could have twenty minutes with her, then I needed to let her rest until visiting hours started at eight. The boys went to the attached waiting room, and I followed the doctor into the ICU.
As we walked past the other rooms, I glanced through the glass seeing other patients hooked up to machines. It was hard seeing them like that, and I was so thankful that Hazel wasn’t in worse condition than she was. As bad as it was finding her the way I did, I couldn’t handle seeing her hooked up to ventilators and life support machines. That would’ve been more than I could take.
When we got to Hazel’s room, I froze outside the glass walls and stared at her. The doctor stood beside me and did the same.
“Your friend is a very lucky woman,” he said, as he watched her prone form.
“How is thislucky?” I spat, crossing my arms over my chest and facing him.
“Because, had her throat been squeezed a fraction harder at any other angle, she’d be dead.” His eyes were full of empathy, and I knew he’d seen many others who didn’t walk away from their attacks.
“Do me a favor, Doc,” I said to him, my voice softer than it was before. “Don’t saythatto her.”
I didn’t wait for his response. I pushed open the door and went straight to Hazel’s side, taking her hand in bothof mine. They cleaned her up the best they could while they assessed her injuries. Before, I couldn’t tell if she had been cut or stabbed with all the blood that covered her. Now, she looked more like herself. Well, almost like herself.
Her face was a little swollen and turning different shades of purple, but, physically, she would heal. It was her mental state that had me concerned. Hazel hadn’t quite accepted the fact that Phil had done this to her once already. How was she going to process this attack on top of it?
I couldn’t bear the thought of Hazel becoming a shell of a person. Her vibrant outlook on life is what everyone loves about her. She would hate for anyone to show her pity. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. She’s going to be on the front page of the local papers. And when they discover that Phil was the one who did this to her, it will probably go national.
His family stretches far and wide, filling all branches of legal and political seats. This shit is going to blow up, and Hazel will be stuck in the middle of it, suffering through it all over again. How can they put a victim through that when it should be the perpetrator who should bear the heat of the public eye?
