Silent Scream Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    Chapter Four
    At one time, hospital sounds like laughing nurses, meal carts wheeling down the halls, and beeping IV machines would have been so commonplace to Maddie she wouldn’t have thought much about them.  Now, she heard everything and did the only thing she could to shut it out—drew the covers more tightly around her.  Every sound coupled itself with images Maddie didn’t want to think about.  The squeak of cart wheels as the dietary workers pushed dinner trays reminded her of the squeal of her tires before she’d hit the pickup.  The beep of the IV machine jolted her back to that truck and the sound of his watch beeping the hour as he hit her.  Laughter triggered his laughter.
    All it took were sounds to transport her back to hell.  It was a one- way ticket, and she didn’t have the fare for the return trip.  Sweat beaded her forehead and ran down her temples, but still she clung to the blanket, lamenting it not being a cloak of invisibility.  Still, it was a blanket, and it covered the body she’d grown ashamed of wearing.
    Her door slowly swung open, and a vaguely familiar blonde  stepped into the room carrying a clipboard.  She looked at the paper on the board and then back at Maddie’s face.  “Maddie?” she asked and smiled softly.
    Discomforted by the woman’s apparent recognition, Maddie squinted, trying to classify her features into someone recognizable. No go, especially not in the half-darkness filling the room.
    She sat in the chair beside the bed.  “Do you remember me?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
    Maddie brushed the hair from her face.  “No, I’m sorry.  I really don’t.”
    “Fair enough,” she replied evenly and offered her hand.  “Tammy Ballard.  I roomed next to you at the University of Oklahoma.”
     I don’t want you to see me like this.   Maddie swallowed the lump in the back of her throat and thought back to college days from fourteen years ago.  Now she could see the slight blonde girl she’d befriended her sophomore year—a  quiet girl who liked track and psychology.  “You broke a track record our junior year,” she said finally.
    Tammy smiled softly.  “Yeah, I did—and  sprained my ankle on the very next race.”  She shook her head.  “I was so clumsy.”
    She looked at the chart in front of her.
    Maddie frowned.  “What brings you here?”
    “I’m a crisis counselor, Maddie.”
    Maddie stiffened and looked away.   Images of the rapist filled her head, and she tried to blacken the memory, but it remained.  “I don’t need a counselor,” she said, staring at the sleet pecking the window.  “It’s not like I remember much, anyhow.”  She trembled, and tears threatened to spill down her face.  “There’s nothing wrong with me.”
    “You’re right,” Tammy agreed, setting the chart on the counter next to the chair.  “There isn’t anything wrong with you.  There’s something very wrong with what happened to you.”  She leaned toward Maddie.  “Sending a counselor to help a woman who’s been raped is a standard procedure.   It doesn’t mean there’s something about you that’s defective.  Most women find it beneficial.”
    I’m not most women , Maddie thought, gritting her teeth.  With her good hand she rubbed her other shoulder, trying to ease the taut muscles.  “I’ve already told you I don’t remember much.  Why bother someone who has such poor memory skills?  I don’t remember much about our college days, either.”  She looked out the window and wished to be elsewhere as a sudden chill caressed her flesh.  She shivered.  “Why counsel someone who doesn’t even remember the attack?  I must be just fine.”  She brushed a fingernail across the sheet, wishing everyone would leave her alone.
    “I know you don’t want to talk about this, but it’s not going to go away. No matter how hard you try to pretend nothing happened,