Читать книгу Where Drowned Things Live - Susan Thistlethwaite - Страница 9

“Discipline” may be identified neither with an institution nor with an apparatus; it is a type of power, a modality for its exercise, comprising a whole set of instruments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets: it is a “physics” or an “anatomy” of power, a technology. And it may be taken over either by “specialized” institutions (the penitentiaries or “houses of correction” of the nineteenth century), or by institutions that use it as an essential instrument for a particular end (schools, hospitals), or by preexisting authorities that find in it a means of reinforcing or reorganizing their internal mechanisms of power.

Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish

I sat on the ground next to my rescuers’ car with my head between my knees, a tee shirt loaned by one of them pressed to the cut on my arm. Lots of commotion around me that I struggled to sort out. I seemed to see it through gauze.

A car squealed up and braked facing the kids’ dented Chevy.

I raised my head to look. The University had arrived in the person of its private police force (the second largest police force in Illinois, following the City of Chicago). The university cops had by and large seemed okay to me. Many of them were said to be moonlighters from the suburbs. I’d met a couple when we’d had a break-in at the departmental office last spring. Frost’s computer had been stolen while she was out to lunch. She hadn’t bothered to lock her office door. The officers pointed out this was not a good practice, though Frost had then given them such a glare they had departed without delay.

An African American woman in uniform pushed through the crowd of neighbors now gathering from other homes that backed on to the alley and maybe even a few from the pizza place on the corner. She knelt down beside me.

“I’m Officer Matthews, University Police. Do you need medical attention?” She had a short, brown fringe of hair peeking out from under the visor of her cap, large, warm brown eyes and skin the color of caramels. Her uniform trousers strained at the thigh and hip. She looked like a slightly plump kindergarten teacher, though a kindergarten teacher with a side arm. Maybe I should have stayed a cop, gotten a job policing the university rather than trying to teach at it.

“Ma’am, I asked you if you need medical attention.”

I made an effort to sit up straighter, look her in the eye.

“Yes, yes I think so. Yes I do. I was cut and I think it’s pretty deep. “

I stupidly lifted the arm my assailant had slashed and I felt the pain jar my whole side. I gasped and slumped back down against the car.

Matthews called over to another officer who was standing at the back of the car questioning my high school heroes.

“Mel, call for an ambulance. Now.”

She turned back to me.

“Ma’am, assistance is on the way. Name?”

Out came the notebook.

“Kristin Ginelli, 6756 S. Rosemont. That house over there.”

I used my head instead of my arm this time and just nodded toward my house. I realized I still had on my headband from class. I looked down. I still had on my white Tae Kwon Do uniform, though now splashes of blood were visible between the various patches on the front. I wondered what Officer Matthews though I was playing at, running around in a martial arts uniform with blood on it.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

Matthews was still squatting next to me, looking concerned. Maybe she wouldn’t hold my outfit against me.

“Male, above medium height, stocking mask and knife.”

I shuddered involuntarily. Matthews took off her own jacket and put it around my shoulders.

“Thanks. Anyway, I was taking some trash out to the cans and he just slashed at me. Just slashed down with the knife. He didn’t say anything. Just tried to knife me.”

“Is that how you sustained the injury?”

“No, not then. I . . . we struggled and I knocked him down, but he came at me again and tried to, tried to stab me, I guess, but I pulled away and the knife just got me on the arm.”

I nodded toward my tee shirt covered arm but didn’t move it.

“Then the kids pulled into the alley and he took off.”

“Race? Age?”

I struggled to remember if I’d seen his hands. Gloves, I thought.

“No, can’t get a fix on that. Gloves, dark alley. Age, I’m not sure. Not young. Older male build. Tall. About as tall as I am. Male. I’m sure of that. He was wearing a stocking mask.”

“Did he speak? Ask for money? Anything?

“He grunted twice. Once when I kicked him and once when I knocked him down but he never said a word. Not a word. One minute I’m at the cans, and the next minute this knife is swinging down at me.”

Matthews stopped writing for a minute, looked me in the eyes.

“You kicked him? Knocked him down?”

“Yes.”

I didn’t feel up to explaining.

“But you didn’t recognize him?”

“No.”

I knew what she was thinking. This was not your typical bash and grab robbery attempt like most the crime in Hyde Park. It didn’t even sound like an attempted sexual assault. I am not a rival gang member. What else was there? Was there a maniac running around in a stocking mask with a knife?

Running around. Running around.

Suddenly a thought so vivid, so horrible popped into my mind that I jerked backwards and hit my head on the car door.

“Are you all right?”

I struggled to get up.

“No, no. Let me go. The back door—my house—I didn’t lock it. The perp. He could have gotten in. My six-year-old sons and a student couple are in there.”

I literally could not complete the thought. I needed to just go to the house. I managed to get to my feet, though I swayed.

“Mel! Mel! Get over here.”

Mel ran up, Matthew’s tone telling him it was time to spring.

“Ms. Ginelli here lives in that house.”

She pointed.

“She did not lock her back door. The perp could have gotten inside. Take two officers and go to the front and the back. There’s an adult couple . . . ”

She turned to me.

“Names?”

“Carol and Giles.”

“And two kids in the house. Ring. If there’s no answer, we’ll call for back up.”

“And a dog,” I managed. “A dog. Friendly.”

Mel sprinted away at a good clip toward the other campus cop cars that had pulled up. The city cops had not yet put in an appearance. I had to follow. I had to follow.

I started down the alley, struggling at every step, and Matthews stepped in front of me.

“You’re not going to be able to help. Mel’s good. He’ll let us know.”

She walked me toward one of the university police cars and gently took my arm to try to usher me inside. I just wearily shook my head and slumped back to the ground.

Mel had better be good.

The wait was excruciating. Matthews stood next to me. I was just struggling to my feet again when her radio crackled.

“Matthews? Billman here.”

Mel?

“Just checked the Ginelli residence. A couple answered the door. They let us in and we did a thorough check. The children were sleeping and the premises are clear. They said they’d lock up behind us. Oh, and the woman wants to know if Ms. Ginelli wants her to accompany her to the emergency room or stay here.”

I let out the breath I’d been holding for the last ten minutes and looked up at Matthews. She was raising a questioning eyebrow.

“No. Tell Carol, her name’s Carol, to stay with her husband and the children. If the kids wake up, they’ll want her there.”

Matthews nodded. She must have kids, I thought.

So, I’d let them fix my arm now. If the boys had been killed like Marco, I wouldn’t have wanted to go to an ER to stop the blood flow. In fact, I’d just have cut the other arm too and waited to bleed out.

* * * *

I’d been sitting for the better part of an hour in a little room that could easily double as a meat freezer. Matthews had dropped me off at the ER instead of making me wait for the ambulance, for which favor I was profoundly grateful.

A nurse had ushered me into this cubicle after making sure I passed that most important of medical tests, the valid insurance test. By coming up as a member in good standing of the university’s health plan, I was ushered in and given a blanket that seemed to be made of tissue paper.

After a few minutes, a young woman who identified herself as a medical student and who seemed about twelve-years-old had come in briefly, taken my temperature and blood pressure and then lifted the tee shirt on my arm to look at the cut. She had blanched and looked away. I bet medical school was kind of a trial when you can’t stand the sight of blood. She quickly had left and that had been that, for nearly an hour.

I knew the symptoms of shock well enough to know I was not in immediate danger of dying. At least I hoped not. I was still somewhat shocky, I thought, and I was having trouble regulating my body temperature. But still, I bet it was fifty degrees in this little white on white room. There was no thermostat that I could discover.

My head was beginning to clear and I was starting to get seriously annoyed. None of the other meat-lockers seemed occupied. Where were they all and when was someone older than twelve who could stand the sight of blood coming to see me? I gathered my tissue paper blanket around me and leaned out the door. The only person I could see was a woman in a flowered tunic, whom I took to be a nurse, sitting at a computer down the hall. She had a magazine open on her lap. I called out.

“Nurse!”

She turned her head toward me and amazingly enough her helmet of blond, teased hair did not seem to move with it. She looked darkly at me over pink plastic reading glasses while placing a finger in the magazine I’d so rudely interrupted her reading.

“Yes?”

This nurse could give Frost lessons in the art of freezing someone over with just a word or a glance.

“When will the doctor be here? I’ve been waiting nearly an hour.”

I tried to keep the annoyance out my voice, but I’m pretty sure I did not succeed. I wondered if nursey would turn down the temperature even more just to punish me for wanting medical services in a hospital.

“I’ll check.”

She turned toward the desk the computer was sitting on and picked up an in-house phone. She dialed a number and waited. And waited. And so I waited.

Finally, without having spoken to anyone, she hung up.

“I will let you know as soon as someone is available.”

And astonishingly, she turned back to her magazine.

I went back to the examining table and sat down. I thought about the assault. To be mugged for your purse or wallet is bad, but it’s reasonable. You have some money, some credit cards. Your car keys. Somebody else wants them. There was a certain kind of rotten logic to that.

Sexual assault is brutal, but even sexual assault has a logic. Some guy who has trouble with women wants to control them, see their fear. That also makes terrible sense.

But to have someone try to pierce you from stem to stern at random and with no warning is disconcerting in the extreme. What possible reason could he have had to lunge at me with clearly lethal intent? There seemed to be no motive. There are plenty of drive-by shootings in Chicago, but I’d never heard of a run-by knifing. Maybe there was such a thing, but I doubted it.

I went over and over every detail of the struggle in my mind, racing through the images like running a video at triple speed. One frame racing by might contain a useable image. But nothing would stick. Possibly because I had lost blood, was exhausted, in pain and freezing to death.

I’d had enough. Walking out was no good. I needed the arm sewed up.

Just then I remembered I knew a surgeon. I served on a university committee with him, a committee that oversaw all human science research to make sure it was compliant with current ethical regulations.

What was his name?

Tom. Tom Grayson.

I picked up the in-house phone on the wall of the cubicle and asked for paging. I asked to page Dr. Grayson and even though it was nearly midnight, he was listed as ‘in, on call.’ I gave the page operator the extension on the wall phone.

I jumped when the phone rang almost immediately.

“This is Dr. Grayson answering a page,” said the voice on the other end.

I explained in rough outline the events of the evening, ending with my current frustration and location.

“You’re in the ER? What number is the examining room?”

I told Tom to hang on and I opened the door to look.

“Four.”

“You just caught me cutting through the ER on my way to the parking garage. I’m just about fifty feet away from you. I’ll be there in a couple of seconds.”

I sat back down on the examining table and further shredded the crinkly paper I’d been sitting on for the last hour.

The door opened and Grayson came in. Followed closely by the big hair nurse who had blown me off. I felt a moment of pure satisfaction when I saw her annoyed look. She clearly did not approve of patients who procured their own doctors.

“Kristin!” Tom said, “I’m so glad I was still in the hospital.”

Grayson was tall, probably 6’ 4” if he would stand up straight, but he always seemed to be leaning over slightly, the better to listen. His too long, sandy colored hair was falling over his forehead and his blue eyes met mine with warmth. I’d noticed in the committee meetings that he had very long eyelashes. They were so long they brushed the inside of the lenses of his glasses and he was forever polishing them. I realized with a jolt I’d been aware of him as more than a fellow committee member. I gave myself a mental shake and decided not to go there. I’d also noticed that he almost always looked tired, and now, at midnight, he looked even more so. I felt somewhat guilty keeping him from heading home. But I was oh so glad to see him.

“Like I told you on the phone, I was mugged this evening and the assailant cut my arm.”

I gestured toward the tee shirt covered arm with my other hand. It had begun to feel fairly repetitious to keep gesturing to my injury without getting any help for it.

Grayson leaned forward and lifted the shirt. We both looked down at the blood encrusted, jagged cut. It really looked awful.

“How long have you been here without someone cleaning this?” Tom asked, real anger in his voice.

I glanced over his left shoulder to where helmet hair nurse was standing, glaring at me.

“More than an hour now. I’m sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to get it taken care of.”

“Nurse.” Grayson’s voice could have cut glass.

“Get a full set up in here. We need to wash this wound out thoroughly. It looks bad enough that I want to give Professor Ginelli a dose of IV antibiotics.”

Helmet hair nurse looked a little sick when Grayson called me “Professor.” One thing universities thrive on, it’s hierarchy and I’d just moved up a whole bunch on that ladder.

Tom turned to the nurse and gave her further instructions in medical-ese. I didn’t even try to sort out what it meant. Now that he was here, I was really fading.

Tom turned back to me and seemed to see I was a little woozy.

“Let’s get you lying down here, and warmer.”

Blankets and pillows were obtained from a locker across the hall. Real blankets. And my head and feet were elevated slightly. Amazing how much better that felt.

Tom bent over the head of the table and shone a light in my eyes. I guess what he saw was okay.

“Kristin, I’ll clean this cut out well and then we’ll get it sewed up. I’ll just get this IV started to get some antibiotic into you quickly and then I’ll give you something oral to take home with you. You should be out of here in 30 minutes.

He turned to the sink and began washing his hands. Helmet hair nurse gave me such an angry look I thought it was quite possible I could be mugged twice in one night.

Okay. This was better. This was a lot better. I was warm and not in pain. Grayson had given me a shot of something that made me feel kind of floaty. I could feel a kind of tugging on the skin of my arm as he intently sewed his way down the cut. Didn’t matter. Didn’t feel much of anything.

“I’m sorry to be keeping you up, Dr. Grayson,” I said to the back of his head.

“Call me Tom and don’t worry about it. Who knows when I’ll need an emergency ‘Plato-ectomy’ and you can return the favor.”

His eyes never lifted from my arm, but I could see them crinkle a little at the sides of his face.

A huge jolt of guilt shot through me, so much that I inadvertently jerked my body.

“Don’t move, Kristin. We’re almost through here.”

Tom’s calm tone did anything but calm me.

I was realizing how attracted I was to this man and the sense of disloyalty to Marco was intense.

‘Get a grip, Kristin,’ I lectured myself. This has been a very emotional evening. You were almost killed for Christ’s sake. Don’t mistake adrenaline for sexual attraction.

Yeah. Right.

I hoped I was more convincing when I lectured students.

I knew I had been aware of him at the Human Experimentation Committee meetings. As junior faculty I had twice as many committee assignments as my more senior colleagues, but I’d not minded that one. And it wasn’t the interesting discussions of ethics.

“There.”

Tom had finished sewing.

“I’ll just wrap this up for you, take out the IV, and make you a very unattractive sling from gauze that will hold the arm still.”

He turned and opened a supply cabinet.

“Is someone waiting to drive you home?”

“Ah . . . no . . . no. It’s okay. I’ll call a cab.”

“Well, I can drop you. You live on Rosemont, right? I’m only a few blocks over and one block north. No problem.”

He looked over his shoulder at me and smiled.

Yeah. No problem. Right. Except my heart started to race. Oh, well. If I had a heart attack, the ER was a better place than most for that.

Tom helped me sit up and he expertly wound gauze around my arm and then fashioned a sling.

“Use this sling to keep the arm elevated. It will swell less and be less painful for you.”

He handed me several little foil packets and a piece of paper.

“Here are some samples of the antibiotic that will get you started until someone can fill this prescription for you tomorrow. And here’s something for pain if you need it.”

More little packets handed over.

“Otherwise, I won’t need to see you for ten days to two weeks. Just call my office and schedule an appointment. Of course, if there is increased redness and swelling, I’d like to see you right away.”

He stood aside and took my good arm to help me get off the table. The blankets slid off to reveal my bloody martial arts uniform. I flushed with embarrassment.

“I knew you’d been a cop, but must you clean up crime in Hyde Park single handedly?”

Tom chuckled and tucked my good arm under his and headed for the door.

“Come on, Wonder Woman. It’s been a long day for both of us.”

I had the immense satisfaction of watching Helmet Hair’s face as I was escorted out of the ER by a surgeon. And I loved the feeling of his tall frame bending solicitously toward me as we walked to his car.

I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes. Then I snapped them open. How did he know where I lived?

Oh, for Pete’s sake, Kristin. That’s the kind of question you ask in junior high. I closed my eyes again and smiled a little at the memory of middle school gossip and going with boys in cars.

Good ole pain medication.

“Are you smiling or grimacing?” Tom broke into my thoughts.

Tom glanced again at me from the driver’s side.

“Not a grimace. Not in pain. Thanks for asking.”

And for the rest? I just needed to get home, get into my own bed and forget this day ever happened.