Ava's Wishes (11 page)

Ava looked up at Thomas. His words sounded funny—as if he were in a tunnel—and the walls of the room were moving, too; in waves, going in first, then out. She blinked her eyes several times to clear her head.

“Thanks,” she attempted to say. Her brain wanted to tell him that Cynthia already mentioned she would have a job after graduation, but she was unable to convince her voice to project the words. What was happening?

Thomas moved closer and came around to the side where she was sitting. “I don’t know why you got so upset earlier, darling,” he said, caressing her cheek. “Surely you knew I’d be leaving after the exhibit. We could have had a great week together, Ava, you and me. Why did you have to ruin everything?”

“What?” Ava mumbled “Wha– No, I …” Her head rolled to the side, despite her attempts to hold it straight.

He stepped directly next to her and turned her chair toward him. She willed her eyes to move toward the sound of a zipper opening.
Thomas’ pants.
Suddenly, she felt his hands moving up her thighs as he pushed the fabric of her dress above her hips.

“No!” Ava tried to scream. The sound came out more as a muffled cry.

Thomas straddled Ava, cupping her breasts and kissing her neck. “Don’t fight it, darling. I know it’s what you wanted all along.”

Ava’s tears streamed down her face. “No, please, no,” she slurred. She tried to move her arms to push him away, but they hung down at her sides like two lead pipes.
What was wrong with her? Half a glass of champagne should not affect her like this.
She was unable to scream, unable to move.

Ava closed her eyes, feeling the weight of Thomas on top of her. His hands forcefully spread her legs apart, and he pushed her panties to the side. There was nothing for her to do except cry and pray it would be over quickly. She waited to feel the pain of violation, from this man she had liked, and even come to trust just days before. No. He couldn’t do this to her. In one final attempt, she gathered all of her strength and cried, “No! Help!”

“What the
hell
?”

In a sudden lurch, all of his weight was lifted off of her. She heard the sound of his body being thrown against the wall as well as the punch that crushed bone before she opened her eyes.

“Are you okay?” Max rushed over to Ava’s side and adjusted her dress.

Her head continued to roll to the side as she sobbed and attempted to nod.

“What’s going on in here?” Cynthia demanded, running into her office. She rushed over to Thomas, who was nursing his already bruised and swollen jaw. She gasped when she noticed his pants down around his knees, and threw him a wrap that she kept hanging on her coat hook. “For God’s sake, Thomas, cover yourself up.”

“Call 9-1-1 for an ambulance,” Max ordered, cradling Ava, “and the police.”

Chapter 24

“How are you feeling?”

Ava looked around the room, her eyes desperately trying to focus on something, anything, as she wondered who was talking and why their voice was causing her head to vibrate so loudly. She tried to lift her arm up to her head, hoping that would make the pounding stop, but felt restrained.

“Easy now, you don’t want to pull out your IV,” the kind voice said. “I imagine you have a bit of a headache. I can give you something for that if you’d like.”

Ava nodded and felt relief within moments as the source of that voice injected a substance directly into the IV tubing.

“Thank you,” Ava whispered, finally able to focus on the nurse.

“Your boyfriend should be back in a moment, he just went to get some coffee. He’s been by your side all night.”

Flashes of the previous evening played in Ava’s mind. The champagne, Thomas’ advances, Ava’s inability to fight him off. “Thomas.” In a panic, Ava tried to sit up. “He’s not my boyfriend. I need to get out of here before he tries to hurt …”

The nurse rubbed Ava’s shoulder as she tried to soothe her back into a lying position. “No, sweetie. His name isn’t Thomas. It’s Max. Everything is okay now. You’re safe here.”

“Max is here?” Ava asked.

“Yes, don’t you remember? He was with you when the ambulance brought you in.”

Ava put her head back on the pillow and closed her eyes. Why was Max here? The last thing she remembered was Thomas on top of her, trying to push up her dress. She was yelling
no.
Well, her brain was yelling no. Did the words actually make it out of her mouth? She’d only had a small amount of the champagne Thomas offered. Why had she felt so drunk last night? Not even drunk, really, she had felt drugged. Did Thomas drug her? She opened her eyes. She didn’t want to remember what happened next. There was a reason her brain pushed that memory to the back of her mind, and she wasn’t ready to go there yet, although she was curious to know how it was that Max wound up at the hospital with her.

“She’s awake?” the male voice asked.

“Yes,” replied the nurse. “You can go in. The doctor should be in soon as well.”

Max pulled a chair close to Ava’s bed and sat down.

“Hi there,” he said, “Good to see you awake finally.”

“Thanks,” Ava responded.

“How are you?” Max asked, cautiously taking Ava’s hand in his.

“I feel like a truck hit me,” Ava responded. She looked down at Max’s hand and noticed it was swollen and bruised. “What happened to you? You look like you attacked the truck that hit me.”

Max laughed. “Well, I kind of did, actually. Don’t you remember?”

“Not really,” Ava remarked.

Another memory flashed through Ava’s mind. It was not so much a vision as it was a sound … the sound of two people scuffling. Were they throwing punches? Is that what Max meant?

“Hello there, Miss Haines, I’m Dr. Boyd,” said an older man in a white lab coat as he entered her room.

“Call me Ava.”

“Certainly, Ava.” He nodded at Max. “Mr. Wallis, nice to see you again. Ava, I have some of your test results here. I’d like to go over them with you. Is Mr. Wallis a family member?”

“No,” Ava replied, “but he can stay. It’s okay.”

“All right, as long as you consent.” Dr. Boyd flipped open Ava’s chart. “We ran a variety of tests on you when you were brought in. We were able to confirm Mr. Wallis’ belief that no penetration took place.”

Ava looked at Dr. Boyd and blinked several times.

“I wasn’t raped?” she asked in relief.

“No,” Dr. Boyd confirmed. “Do you remember the attack?”

“Not all of it. Not that part of it. I mean, I wasn’t sure.” Max smiled at Ava and wiped away the single tear that slid down her cheek.

“The other good news is that there were no signs of any drugs in your blood stream. However, your blood alcohol level was .25 … that’s extremely high. Dangerously high, actually. Especially for someone of your size.”

“But I only had two sips of champagne. That’s it,” Ava stated. “I didn’t even want to have it. Thomas kept insisting. He said we needed to celebrate and that this champagne was some fancy stuff from his own private stash. I swear I didn’t have anything else to drink. I never drink when I’m working.”

Dr. Boyd took off his glasses and sat down in a chair next to Max. “Ava, did Thomas also drink the champagne?”

“Yes,” Ava replied. “He had more than I did. He had the entire glass. I only had about half.”

“Did you see him pour your drink and his drink from the same bottle?” Dr. Boyd asked.

“No,” Ava replied. “He came into Cynthia’s office holding two glasses that already had champagne in them. He offered one to me, and he drank from the other.”

“And what happened after you took the first sip?” Dr. Boyd asked.

Ava thought for a moment. The events of last night were still so muddled in her brain.

“Nothing at first. The first sip I took was so tiny. I didn’t want any to begin with. I was trying to get some paperwork done for Cynthia, but he had kept insisting. I only took a sip hoping it would make him happy so he would leave. But then he kept going on and on about how fancy the champagne was. He was kind of making me feel bad that I wasn’t drinking it … like it was so special of him to offer it to me, and I was just wasting it. So I took another sip, a bigger sip.”

“Then what happened?” Dr. Boyd asked.

“Then I started feeling funny,” Ava said.

“How so?”

“I don’t know … sort of drunk, but not really. I felt
different.
The walls were moving like waves, and my head got really heavy. I remember I felt like my neck was an elastic band or something. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t hold my head up. I couldn’t really speak either. My brain would form words, but my mouth wasn’t working to get the words out. After that my memory is a little fuzzy to tell you the truth.”

Dr. Boyd patted my hand. “How are you feeling now?”

“Better, especially since the nurse gave me something for my headache. Will I be going home today?”

“I don’t see why not. You have an appointment with a counselor this morning. After that, I know the police will want a statement, and then we’ll sign your release papers.”

“Police?” Ava asked.

“Just tell them the truth, there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Dr. Boyd,” Max started, “if Ava only had two sips of champagne, why was her blood alcohol level so high?”

“There are lots of reasons why one person may metabolize alcohol slower or faster than another—factors such as size, whether or not they had anything to eat, medical conditions, and the like. However, to see such an extreme level after only two sips, honestly it doesn’t make sense to me. Is it possible this Thomas fellow put something in her drink that acted as a catalyst to boost the effects of the alcohol … something he knew wouldn’t show up in her blood if she were to be tested? I suppose. The problem is, I can’t prove it one way or another without the numbers to back me up.”

“There’s something else,” Ava said. At the time it seemed odd, but now it was starting to make sense.

“What is it?” asked Dr. Boyd.

“We went out for dinner last weekend. I had three drinks. Normally, I’d be fine, but I got drunk.
Really drunk
.”

“Did you leave the table at any time that night?” Max asked.

Ava thought for a moment. “Yes, actually, right after the third drink arrived, I got a text from my younger sister, Tessa. Teen drama, you know. I excused myself to answer her. I was only gone for a few minutes. I felt fine at that point. It wasn’t until I had that third drink that I started feeling weird. Do you think … It just doesn’t make sense. He was such a gentlemen that night.”

“Again, without labs, I really can’t say,” Dr. Boyd remarked. “But be sure and tell all of that to the police.”

Ava nodded.

Dr. Boyd made a few more notes in Ava’s chart and then said, “You take care of yourself. Be sure to follow up with your regular doctor as well as the counselor in the next week or so, okay? Mr. Wallis, thank you for bringing her in.” And with that, Dr. Boyd closed up the chart and walked out of the room.

Chapter 25

“You don’t have to do this, you know.”

Max arranged the flowers Cynthia had sent over in the vase while Ava rested on her couch. Once Dr. Boyd had signed all of the papers releasing her from the hospital, Max gave her a ride back to her apartment. He grabbed the pillow and blanket off her bed, made sure she was comfortable on her sofa, brought her the sandwich he picked up at the deli on the way home, and proceeded to busy himself around her tiny apartment, which included taking on the task of arranging the enormous bouquet of flowers that were waiting at Ava’s doorstep from Cynthia. She was relieved she had left her apartment in a somewhat decent state. Well, decent may be an exaggeration, but at least there were no dirty panties or bras strewn across the floor. Her mother would be semi-proud.

She desperately wanted to call Holly, but at the same time was hesitant. For starters, she didn’t want Holly to overreact—something that surely would happen. Should she call Tessa instead? No, Tessa was only in high school; it wasn’t fair to dump something like this on her. It had to be Holly … privately. With Max mulling about, even the bathroom afforded little privacy in Ava’s minuscule apartment. Even so, she didn’t want to ask Max to leave, not after everything he had done for her. Not yet. The truth was, she was afraid to be alone.

“I know I don’t have to,” Max responded. “How does this look?”

Ava smiled. Either he sensed she didn’t want to be alone, or he wanted to be here with her. Any of those scenarios were okay with her as long as he stayed, although she kind of preferred option two.

“It looks great. Thank you. For everything.” Ava felt tears coming to her eyes. She wanted to say so much more to Max, but it was so hard for her to talk about last night again. When she had met with the counselor earlier, all of the remaining memories flooded her brain, including the one where Max came in and pulled Thomas off of her.

Max sat on the edge of the couch by Ava’s legs. “I know, Ava. It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything. I’ve been a real jerk to you. You don’t owe me a thank you. If anything, I owe you an apology.”

Instantly, Ava felt the tears flowing freely down her face. She was unsure exactly why she was crying. Was it because of last night? Was it because Max admitted he had been a jerk and wanted to apologize? Was it because she was happy he was sitting here with her now, looking at her the way he was? Just how was he looking at her … was she mistaking pity for tenderness?

Ava suddenly recalled the hostility she felt when she received the letter from Max the day after their date. “You should probably check in with Megan. I’m sure she’s wondering where you’ve been all day.”

Max sighed. “We’re not a couple, Ava. She was just my tutor.”

“Same way you were just mine?”

“I guess I asked for that.”

“Yes. You brought her to the exhibit. She looked like a date to me.”

“Maybe, but we weren’t
dating
. That was the first time we went out. I had mentioned I was going, and she asked if she could come along. I don’t know why, though. She seemed completely bored by the entire thing once we got there.”