The Bodyguard Read Online Free PDF

“‘Recovery’? You had to operate?”
    “She was bleeding internally, from a ruptured spleen. If she hadn’t gotten here when she did, she might not have made it.”
    “Do you know how she was injured?” Cornell asked.
    Luke shook his head. The answer was as obvious as the bruises on Caroline’s wrists.
    The doctor’s jaw tightened. “I’ve got a pretty good idea. Follow me.”
    He led them through the double doors and turned left down a brightly lit hall, stopping at a door marked Recovery. Inside, he brought them down a row of curtained-off enclosures to the last one at the end. He pulled the green curtain back to reveal Caroline Ashton, asleep, looking pale, vulnerable, her small body lost in the middle of the hospital bed. An IV tube ran from the back of her right hand to a bag suspended on a pole. A blood-pressure cuff was wrapped around her other arm. The monitor behind the bed beeped and displayed numbers and graphs as it tracked her vital signs.
    The doctor waved to the bruises on her wrists.
    For once, the detective wasn’t smiling. He hadn’t seen the bruises earlier, as Luke had. The sight of them now had his mouth pressing into a hard, thin line.
    “I won’t disturb her to show you the other bruises,” the doctor said, keeping his voice low. “But I can tell you, there are plenty of them, across her abdomen, her back, her side, in places typically covered by clothing. Unless she was in several violent car wrecks recently, there’s only one obvious explanation. Someone beat her, viciously, repeatedly, over a period of several days, based on the coloration of the bruises. But that’s not half the story.”
    He crossed the small space to a computer monitor on a rolling cart. After typing a few commands, he turned the screen around to reveal an X-ray.
    “This,” he said, pointing to the screen, “is a healed hairline fracture on her right forearm. It was probably broken a few years ago.” He punched another button to reveal a new picture. “And this is another fracture, on her other forearm. Again, it’s healed, a relatively old injury, probably within the past eight or nine months.” He turned the monitor back around. “I could show you more scans, but they all show the same thing—a history of injuries. None of them were compound fractures, meaning they weren’t bad enough breaks to cause lasting damage or require setting. Which is probably why whoever did this to her was never forced to take her to a hospital. But those injuries should have been stabilized with a cast to aid in healing and to reduce her pain.”
    Luke flinched and looked down at the bed. How could someone do that to another person? Especially a woman. And especially a woman as small and delicate as this one.
    “How do you know no one took her to a hospital?” Cornell asked.
    “Because as soon as I saw the scans, I had my assistant call the Ashton house and talk to the staff. None of them were aware of any trips to the hospital and never saw her in a cast. We also verified that none of the hospitals in Savannah ever listed Mrs. Ashton as a patient. Either she wasn’t treated for these injuries at all, or she was treated out of town, or possibly seen in a private office by a doctor who didn’t know her history of other injuries. If a doctor only saw her once, for one fracture, he might not have had any reason to suspect domestic violence. But this last time, her abuser went too far, ruptured her spleen, nearly killed her. But that’s still not the worst of it.”
    Luke’s head whipped up. “What could possibly be worse?”
    “Mrs. Ashton is septic. She’s on IV antibiotics and will be moved from Recovery to Intensive Care soon.”
    “Why is she septic?” Luke asked.
    “Because she was recently pregnant. I suspect she lost the baby during a beating, and she never had medical treatment. I performed a D & C to scrape out her uterus. If she’s lucky, she’ll respond to the antibiotics.”
    “And if she isn’t