Shifting Gears: The Complete Series (Sports Bad Boy Romance) (71 page)

I was in a melancholy mood on the drive
home and after I got there. I thought about going to the gym, but it was after
eleven already and I didn’t really see the point in going in to work. I trusted
that Greg took good care of my client. I drove to my apartment instead. I
parked in my usual spot and looked around as I got out of the car. Telling
myself that this was getting ridiculous, I walked up to my apartment, checking
behind the bushes that lined the sidewalk still and slipped the key in the
door. What happened next seemed both like it was in an instant…and that it went
on for days. As soon as I turned the key in the lock I felt the hand of a giant
on the back of my neck. I was propelled forward and with that one hand, Mitch
threw me across the room and into the wall. I hit the wall with my face and
bounced off, landing on my back on the floor. He stepped inside and slammed the
door behind him.

I was stunned. I was not sure what was
happening at that point. I started to lift my head and that was when his boot
connected with my ribs and I heard him say, “You lying, fucking little bitch!”

My brain processed what was happening at
last. Mitch was here, and he was pissed. Obviously, Paul and Marie and Victor
had been gone when he got to the gym. Good for them, I thought as I tried to
roll away from his next blow. I was in pain and moving too slow to completely
avoid it. I think I helped myself a little however because instead of
connecting again with my ribs that were screaming out in pain, his boot
connected with my lower back. Even on the carpet, the impact sent me skidding
across the floor.

I lay there trying to get my bearings. I
knew that I needed to try and get up…I needed to run. He was seething with
anger, now pacing in a circle around me, telling me what a “stupid bitch” and a
“red-haired lying ho” that I was. I thought about denying I had called Paul,
but that was just going to make it worse, I was sure.
 
I lay there trying to breath and at the same
time trying to curl into a tiny little ball so that I was a smaller target. The
whole time, I was watching his feet. When they landed in front of me I knew it
was my only chance. I reached out with both hands and grabbed his calves. I
caught him off guard so he stumbled backwards and nearly fell. He was able to
get his feet loose before he did, but he was at least a foot away from me now.
I flipped onto my other side and got up on my hands and knees. I did a fast
crawl towards the front door and I was almost there…when I felt Mitch’s hand
wrapped up in my hair.

He used it to drag me back across the
room. I felt like it was coming loose at the roots. I finally found my voice
and I began to scream.

“Shut up!” he told me. I didn’t. If he was
going to kill me, I was going to make enough noise so that he was at least
caught as he left. “I said shut up!” I opened my mouth to scream again. He let
go of my hair and drew back his fist. The sight of his hairy, meaty knuckles
coming towards my face was the last thing I saw before my world suddenly went
black.

*****

The first conscious thought I remember
having is why the hell does it hurt so much to breathe? My lungs were burning
like they did after I’d gone on a really long run but when I tried to suck in
enough oxygen to keep them inflated I felt like a long, sharp knife was being
shoved in between my ribs. My next thought was why my eyes were closed and why
I was having such a hard time opening them. They felt heavy like they do when
you’re sunbathing and you fall asleep in the sun…a little bit hot and swollen…I
had to struggle to send the message from my brain to my eyes and for some
reason, creating that simple thought made my head feel like it was going to
explode.
 

After several tries I finally wrenched one
of them open. It felt like it had been glued shut and I had broken the seal. It
would only open a slit and everything was blurry. But I could see enough to
know that I was in my own apartment. I was looking up at everything. I could
see the window and the pictures on the walls like I was lying flat on my back
in the floor. Why the hell was I lying in the floor? I tried to lift my neck
and my arms so that I could push myself up off the floor. I got my neck up a
few inches. It was sore and the muscles were tight. I tried pushing against the
floor with my arms and when I did, I felt something pop in my right one. I
think I cried out…I’m not sure, but it hurt like hell. I tried to move the left
arm next, but it was completely numb. What the hell? Was I in an accident? Did
I fall? The simple act of trying to remember was causing my head to pound
violently as if someone was slamming a hammer against my skull from the inside
and I felt like whatever was keeping me from getting in a good, deep breath was
sitting on my chest now, crushing it.

I let my head drop back to the floor.
Neither the motion of it nor the thud of the floor against the back of it,
improved my situation. I lay there, taking in slow, shallow breaths and feeling
myself getting light-headed. I started to close the only eye that would open,
but something was nagging at me, telling me not to. I got the sudden, dreaded
feeling that if I did close it, I’d never be able to open it again. I willed
myself to relax. Although I had no idea what was happening right now, I was
able to remember that when I was tired or anxious controlling my breaths helped
control my emotions. While I did that, I tried to remember what day it was and
what I had been doing before I decided to take a nap in the living room floor.

I remembered picking Mom up from the
police department. Was that today? We came back to the apartment and we talked.
Fuck! My head hurts so bad, and my right arm…and what the hell is stabbing me
in the side? I picked Mom up at the police department…why was she at the police
department? Why the hell was I on the floor? I finally let my tired eye close
again. I couldn’t hold it open any longer. When I did, it triggered something…a
memory. Mitch was here…he was angry and he…Oh shit! Mitch fucked me up! Oh
shit! I worked on pulling that eye back open again. Where the hell is my phone?
Very slowly and carefully, but not without copious amounts of effort and pain,
I turned my head to the right. I scanned the floor through my blurry lens but
there was nothing there. I could see that the front door was closed and it
looked like there was blood on the handle. Shit! I was going to have to turn
the other way. I’m pretty sure when I came through the door I had my phone and
my keys in my hand. Did I set them on the table? I looked up at it and although
it was only four feet tall, it may as well have been as tall as the Empire
State Building. There was no way I’d be able to reach up there. No fucking way.
One of my arms still wouldn’t move at all and I’m pretty sure that the other
one was broken.

It probably took me a full five minutes to
turn my head to the other side. The first thing I saw was the hole in the wall.
I remembered now. My head had made a hole in the drywall as it slammed into
it…after Mitch threw me across the room by the back of my neck. The good news
was I could see my phone. The bad news…how the hell was I going to move the
three feet that seemed to stretch out between me and it. I closed my eye again
and summoned every last bit of strength I had in my body. Then I concentrated
on my legs and with a loud grunt and maybe a little scream, I pushed against
the floor, moving my body about four inches in the direction of the phone. I
kept moving like that over and over again for what seemed like an eternity with
each movement becoming more excruciating than the last. My head was not only
pounding now…it was spinning. I was going to pass out again. Before that
happened, I had to get to that phone and call for help.

CHAPTER
THREE

I tried to lift my heavy eyelids as the
strong smell of anti-bacterial cleaner burnt my nostrils. My mouth was so dry.
It was the first time in my life that I actually understood what the term,
“cotton mouth” meant. I tried to swallow, but my neck hurt. It was just as
well, there wasn’t enough spit to coat the back of my throat and force down the
knot I felt there. Something was beeping….was it my phone? I suddenly
remembered that I’d been on the floor before. I was trying to get to my phone…I
needed to call for help. I bent my knees, or at least I tried to and I tried to
get my feet to meet the floor so I could get some leverage. The floor was soft
now…that didn’t make any sense.

I gave up on moving for a second and
concentrated on pulling open my eyelids. It took a ridiculous amount of effort,
but I finally got the right one open a slit. That beeping noise was beginning
to become annoying. I had to get to my phone. My half open eye was being
assaulted by the light. Why was the light so bright? My eye was watering and it
wanted to close again. I refused to let it though…my heart was slamming against
the inside of my chest. I needed help. I turned my head and that was when I
realized I wasn’t at home any longer. I was in a big, glass room. I could see
people in brightly colored clothes…uniforms, maybe? They were scurrying back
and forth. God! My head was beginning to pound to the rhythm of that beeping
noise. What the hell was that?

The glass door on my gilded cage slid open
and one of the people from outside…this one a plump lady in a bright pink
outfit came in. She acted like she didn’t see me. Oh Jesus! Am I dead? I don’t
think so. Everything hurts, even my fingertips. If I was dead, I wouldn’t be
able to feel that pain, would I?

The plump lady somehow put a stop to the
beeping. She finally looked at me then and when she saw that one of my eyes was
half open, she smiled. “Well, hello there. You decided to wake up, finally?” I
opened my mouth to answer her but my lips were so dry. It felt like they had
cracked from the lack of moisture…It’s okay, honey. Just relax,” the pink lady
told me. “I’m going to get the doctor, okay? I’ll be right back.”

The doctor? I must have made it to the
hospital somehow. I didn’t even remember making it to the phone. I waited in
silence and a lot of pain until at last the pink lady came back, this time with
a well-dressed man with a white lab jacket over the top of his dress shirt and
pants.

“Hello there Miss Cooper, I’m Dr. Yancey.”
I hoped that this man knew I couldn’t answer him. I felt like my mouth was
hanging open, but still no sound was coming out of it. Maybe if I had something
to drink…that would help. “Do you know where you’re at?”

I struggled to answer him, finally
producing something that sounded a lot more like an animal sound than it did,
“hospital.” The doctor must speak animal, however because he said, “That’s
right you’re in the hospital. Do you remember what happened to you?”

I grunted out a “Yes.” I would have liked
it to be followed with “unfortunately,” but that was asking too much. “Water?”
I managed to ask.

“You can have a sip,” he said, nodding
towards the nurse. Suddenly there was a straw pressed against my sore lips. I
somehow managed to get then around it and sucked in a mouthful. The nurse
pulled it away quickly. I guess I was abusing my sipping privileges. I held the
water in my parched mouth for as long as I could before letting the cool liquid
slide down my throat. It felt better than sex. “Better?” he asked.
Was it good for you?

“Better,” I said. My words still didn’t
sound right, even with a layer of moisture. My lips were sore, maybe they were
swollen.

“Do you remember what happened to you?”

“I got the shit kicked out of me,” I said.
It sounded like, “I ought the it icked out of me.” The doctor smiled, I can’t
be sure if it was at my discomfort, my grammar or the simple fact that I got my
ass kicked.

“I’m going to examine you, okay? As I do,
I will go over with you what injuries you have. If there is anything you don’t
understand, or you need explained, let me know.” I said a strange sounding okay
and he got started with the poking and prodding. When all was said and done he
told me that I’d been in the hospital for almost twelve hours. I had two broken
ribs, a punctured lung which was now sporting a tube to keep it inflated, a
severe concussion, a few broken teeth…in back, thank God. My right arm was
broken and my left had been dislocated when I came in. I had bruises and
contusions from head to toe…but the good news is there were no signs of sexual
assault.

The only question I had was, “Is there
anything that’s not broken or damaged?”

He smiled again and said, “Well, your
sense of humor seems to still be intact. I have one more unpleasant task to ask
of you. The police have been waiting to speak to you.” I nodded…that was the
biggest mistake I made all day.

“Shit!”

“I’m sorry. I know you must be in a lot of
pain. We’ll give you something else for it as soon as you speak to the
officers, okay?” I was smart enough not to nod again. I said, “Yes,” but it
sounded like “Ess.”

The police officers were two older
gentlemen. They seemed concerned about me, which was nice but when I told them
it was one of them who had beat me up, they seemed skeptical, which pissed me off.

“You’re saying that Detective Mitch Slocum
did this to you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you involved in a relationship with
Detective Slocum?”

“No.”

“Okay, so this was a random assault?”

“No.”

“I’m confused,” the detective said. I
could understand that, but I don’t think he understood that the effort I was
having to put forth to talk to him was tantamount to climbing Mt. Everest at
the moment. Full sentences were practically out of the question.