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The lights above were so bright.
Staring at the indistinct lump beneath the covers on the bed, Bill stood with his back to the door as it eased shut.
A monitor beeped a steady rhythm. His daughter’s heartbeat. When Summer was a baby, Bill used to slip into the nursery and stand over the crib, just making sure her tiny heart continued to beat. She was so small then, so helpless, the life inside her seemed nearly impossible to sustain. A flickering candle in a strong wind.
Bill stepped over to the bed.
Her hands were wrapped in gauze. The blankets neatly tucked under her arms.
Her face, though, the left side... Swollen like a balloon and badly bruised. Her eyes swollen as well. A gauze wrap of some kind covered the top of her head, obscuring most of Summer’s blond hair.
Bill knew he was biased—but she was a naturally beautiful girl. When she smiled, which wasn’t as often since Julia died, she lit up so much, she could probably be used as a power source. Just like her mother. Whenever Bill looked at Summer’s face, he saw Julia. Bill occasionally compared snapshots of Julia and Summer at the same age, and they were like twins. The bright blue of their eyes, the freckles that appeared when the weather turned warm.
Bill felt somewhat relieved to see there were no tubes down her throat or up her nose. She breathed on her own. An IV line dripped a clear fluid into the crook of her elbow.
Bill wanted to climb into the bed with her, to pull her close and keep her warm and safe. But he feared that placing any weight on or near her body would disturb her or cause her pain. He dragged a stool over to the side of the bed and sat down, and then placed his hand gently, ever so gently, on Summer’s left forearm, the only area of her body not covered by injuries or blankets or bandages.
He stroked the soft, downy hair, felt the smoothness of her skin. Like a baby still. She looked as vulnerable and weak as that tiny infant in her crib fifteen years ago. Her arm looked even smaller than he remembered, bony like a child’s.
“Oh, honey, what have they done to you?” he whispered. “Who did this to you?”
No response came. Summer’s lips looked parched and cracked. Painfully so. Bill checked for a pitcher of water, for a rag he could dab against her lips, but there was none. He wanted to do something. To act.
But there was nothing for him to do.
“Are you okay, Summer? I’m here. It’s Dad, and I’m going to be right here the whole time you get better.”
Bill irrationally hoped for something. A grunt. A moan. A movement. But nothing came.
He continued to stroke her arm. “I’m torn, honey. Part of me wishes your mom were here to help us through this. And part of me is glad she isn’t here to see you in this condition.”
Bill’s lower lip quivered, and he swallowed, biting back the tears. He took several deep breaths and tried to make sense of how his life had gone from being so normal a few days earlier to utterly out of control and disastrous in the hospital. He looked back over the chain of events. Summer asked if she could go out with Haley on Saturday afternoon. Bill said yes, because why wouldn’t he? The girls did everything together. Except for the accident of being born into different families, they might very well have been siblings. And then by late Saturday evening, the girls were nowhere to be found. No responses to calls or texts. No sign of either one of them.
And nothing until that morning when the police called, waking Bill out of a restless, paper-thin sleep to say Summer had been found and to get to the hospital as soon as possible.
Bill hated the helplessness he felt, the sense of being paralyzed and impotent in the face of his daughter’s injuries. In the face of what had been done to her. By someone.
Someone out there had committed this atrocity.
The door clicked open behind him. Bill didn’t turn or acknowledge whoever it was. He kept his eyes trained on Summer, the gentle rising and falling of her chest as she breathed. The horrible swelling in her face. He replayed the doctor’s words about long-term damage and wondered how anyone could recover from wounds like these. Would it be possible for her young body to heal?
And then what about the psychological scars? What if the tests they were doing for rape came back positive?
What if...?
He refused to let every “what if” into his mind. One would lead to another, and then a tidal wave would roar through his brain.
“Bill?” The detective eased over and gently placed his hand on Bill’s shoulder. “I think you and I need to talk a little more.”
“Can’t we do it here?” Bill asked. “I don’t want to leave her.”
“I think it’s best if we talk in private,” Hawkins said, his homey whisper allowing no room for discussion. He knew what was best, and he intended to see it done. “A nurse is on her way in to check on Summer. We should get out of the way.”
“I want to stay close.”
“You can, bud. But let’s go find a private spot. The sooner you answer the questions I have, the better our chances of finding out who did this to Summer.”
Bill continued to stare at Summer. His only child. His baby. That vibrant, bright life.
“It won’t take long?” he asked.
“Not too long,” Hawkins said.
Bill bent down and kissed her arm. “I love you, Summer. I’ll be right back. It’s Dad.”
When he spoke those words, his daughter’s cracked lips twitched, and she made a very low, very slight groaning sound deep in her throat.
She’s in there, Bill thought. She’s in there, and she heard me.