“Conscious?” Berger is fascinated and grim.
“The injury to her spinal cord wasn’t immediately fatal.”
“How long could she have survived, bleeding like that?”
“Minutes.” I find an autopsy photograph that shows the spinal cord after it has been removed from the body and centered on a green towel, along with a white plastic ruler for a scale. The smooth creamy cord is contused a violent purple-blue and partly severed in an area correlating with the gunshot wound that penetrated Luong’s neck between the fifth and sixth cervical disks. “She would have been instantly paralyzed,” I explain, “but the contusion means she had a blood pressure, her heart was still pumping, and we know that anyway from the arterial blood spatter at the scene. So yes. She was probably conscious as he dragged her by her feet along the aisle, back to the storeroom. What I can’t say is how long she was conscious.”
“She would have been able to see what he was doing and watch her own blood spurting out of her neck as she bled to death?” Berger’s face is keen, her energy at a higher wattage that burns brightly in her eyes.
“Again, it depends on how long she was conscious,” I tell her.
“But it’s in the realm of possibility she might have been conscious the entire time he was dragging her down the aisle, back to the storeroom?”
“Absolutely.”
“Could she talk or scream?”
“She might not have been able to do anything.”
“But saying no one heard her scream, that wouldn’t mean she was unconscious?”
“No, it wouldn’t mean that necessarily,” I reply. “If you’ve been shot in the neck and are hemorrhaging and being dragged…”
“Especially dragged by someone who looks like him.”
“Yes. You might be too terrified to scream. He might have told her to shut up, for that matter.”
“Good.” Berger seems pleased. “How do you know he dragged her by the feet?”
“Bloody drag pattern made by her long hair, and trails of blood from her fingers above her head,” I describe. “If you’re paralyzed and being dragged by your ankles, for example, your arms are going to spread. Like making angels in the snow.”
“Wouldn’t the human impulse be to grab your neck and try to stop the bleeding?” Berger asks. “And she can’t. She’s paralyzed and awake, watching herself die and anticipating what the hell he’s going to do to her next.” She pauses for impact. Berger has the jury in mind, and I can tell already that she didn’t earn her incredible reputation accidentally. “These women really suffered,” she quietly adds.
“They most certainly did.” My blouse is damp and I am cold again.
“Did you anticipate the same treatment?” She looks at me, a challenge in her eyes, as if daring me to explore everything that went through my mind when Chandonne forced his way through my front door and tried to throw his coat over my head. “Can you remember anything you thought?” she prods. “What did you feel? Or did it all happen so fast…”
“Fast,” I cut in. “Yes, it happened fast,” I go back. “Fast. And forever. Our internal clocks quit working when we are panicking, fighting for our lives. That’s not a medical fact, just a personal observation,” I add, groping, feeling my way through memories that aren’t complete.
“Then minutes might have seemed like hours to Kim Lu-ong,” Berger decides. “Chandonne was with you probably only minutes as he chased you through your great room. How long did it seem?” She is completely focused on this, riveted to me.
“It seemed…” I struggle to describe it. There is no basis for comparison. “Like a flutter…” My voice trails off as I stare at nothing, unblinking, sweating and chilled.
“Like a flutter?” Berger sounds faintly incredulous. “Can you explain what you mean by that, by flutter?”
“Like reality distorts, ripples, like wind ruffling water, the way a puddle looks when wind blows across it, all of your senses suddenly so acute as the animal’s survival instinct overrides the brain. You hear air move. You see air move. Everything seems in slow motion, collapsing in on itself, and endless. You see everything, every detail of what is happening, and notice…”