‘Which door?’
She didn’t know which door. Marilyn hadn’t told her. It was something they hadn’t talked about. Which door? She panicked.
‘Office door,’ she said.
‘Is your office here in the city?’ O’Hallinan asked.
Sheryl made no reply. She just stared blankly into the woman’s kindly face.
‘Your insurance carrier says you work up in Westchester,’ Sark said. ‘At a real estate broker in Pound Ridge.’
Sheryl nodded, cautiously.
‘So you walked into your office door in Westchester,’ O’Hallinan said. ‘And now you’re in the hospital fifty miles away in New York City.’
‘How did that happen, Sheryl?’ Sark asked.
She made no reply. There was silence inside the curtain area. Hissing and buzzing in her temples.
‘We can help, you know,’ O’Hallinan said. ‘That’s why we’re here. We’re here to help you. We can make sure this doesn’t happen again.’
Sheryl nodded again, cautiously.
‘But you have to tell us how it came about. Does he do this often?’
Sheryl stared at her, confused.
‘Is that why you’re down here?’ Sark asked. ‘You know, new hospital, no records from the other times? If we were to ask up in Mount Kisco or White Plains, what would we find? Would we find they know you up there? From before, maybe? From the other times he’s done this to you?’
‘I walked into a door,’ Sheryl whispered.
O’Hallinan shook her head. ‘Sheryl, we know you didn’t.’
She stood up and peeled the X-ray films off the light box on the wall. Held them up to the light from the ceiling, like a doctor would.
‘Here’s your nose,’ she said pointing. ‘Here’s your cheekbones, and here’s your brow, and here’s your chin. See here? Your nose is broken, and your cheekbones, Sheryl. There’s a depressed fracture. That’s what the doctor is calling it. A depressed fracture. The bones are pushed down below the level of your chin and your brow. But your chin and your brow are OK. So this was done by something horizontal, wasn’t it? Something like a bat? Swinging sideways?’
Sheryl stared at the films. They were grey and milky. Her bones looked like vague blurred shapes. Her eye sockets were enormous. The painkiller buzzed in her head, and she felt weak and sleepy.
‘I walked into a door,’ she whispered.
‘The edge of a door is vertical,’ Sark said, patiently. ‘There would be damage to your chin and your brow as well, wouldn’t there? It stands to reason, doesn’t it? If a vertical thing had depressed your cheekbones, it would have hit your brow and your chin pretty hard as well, wouldn’t it?’
He gazed at the X-rays, sadly.
‘We can help you,’ O’Hallinan said. ‘You tell us all about it, and we can keep it from happening again. We can keep him from doing this to you again.’
‘I want to sleep now,’ Sheryl whispered.
O’Hallinan leaned forward and spoke softly. ‘Would it help if my partner left? You know, just you and me talking?’
‘I walked into a door,’ Sheryl whispered. ‘Now I want to go to sleep.’
O’Hallinan nodded, wisely and patiently. ‘I’ll leave you my card. So if you want to talk to me when you wake up, you can just call me, OK?’
Sheryl nodded vaguely and O’Hallinan slipped a card from her pocket and bent down and placed it on the cabinet next to the bed.
‘Don’t forget, we can help you,’ she whispered.
Sheryl made no reply. She was either asleep, or pretending to be. O’Hallinan and Sark pulled the curtain and walked away to the desk. The doctor looked up at them. O’Hallinan shook her head.
‘Complete denial,’ she said.
‘Walked into a door,’ Sark said. ‘A door who was
probably juiced up, weighs about two hundred pounds and swings a baseball bat.’
The doctor shook her head. ‘Why on earth do they protect the bastards?’
A nurse looked up. ‘I saw her come in. It was really weird. I was on my cigarette break. She got out of a car, way on the far side of the street. Walked herself all the way in. Her shoes were too big, you notice that? There were two guys in the car, watched her every step of the way, and then they took off in a big hurry.’