Not The One

Chapter Two: Fierce Confessions
by sammo_00

The sharp sting of the air against my nostrils woke me more than anything else, although it could have been a number of things, including the bright light pressed against my tightly closed lids, or maybe the steady beeping almost right in my ear. Without opening my eyes, I moved my hand to cover my eyes, but I found I couldn’t. My arm was secured to the side of the bed and when I tried to move, there was a piercing pain in my elbow.

Opening my eyes, it took a moment for them to adjust. They were gummy and dry and I wanted nothing more than to douse them with water. I started looking around and my eyes immediately landed on my mother, sprawled in what looked like an incredibly uncomfortable chair, her head back on the headrest and her hand reaching towards mine. Suddenly, the beeping increased in speed and sound and my mom jerked, her eyes slowly opening. When she saw me, I tried to smile, but my face hurt so bad. There was something pressing against my nose and my lips felt like they were on fire.

The door banged open and I tensed, wildly looking around to see who had entered my room. I calmed almost immediately, however, when I felt my mother’s hand enclose mine in a tight grip. She reached up and brushed the hair out of my face, then leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on my forehead.

“How are we doing today Miss Mary?” a strange voice called and I blinked, looking up at the nurse who had just come waltzing in. She was short, maybe 5’4, with blond hair and green eyes and a body I would kill for. But she was smiling nicely, and there was kindness in her eyes. “I’m Miriam and I’m going to be helping you today. Do you need anything?”

I opened my mouth to say something and almost dissolved in tears. It hurt so bad! Like someone had cut my cheeks from the corners of my mouth all the way up to my ears. The tears started overflowing and the nurse, Miriam, clucked her tongue.

“Oh sweetie, don’t try to say anything. We need those cuts on your face to heal first. Do you want some water?” she asked, the pity evident in her eyes. I nodded, averting my eyes. I didn’t need pity dammit! I needed to remember; there was something nudging me at the edge of my memory, but I couldn’t quite grasp it.

I felt the pointy end of a straw on my lips and, opening my lips as little as possible, took a small sip of cool water. If I could have, I would have shouted my happiness as the soothing liquid poured down my throat, but it hurt enough to open my mouth, so I merely closed my eyes and relaxed against my mother, who was still holding my hand.

The door opened again, slamming against the wall. Miriam jerked her head around to snap at whoever it was, but she paused before opening her mouth. I lifted my head and the tears started falling anew at the sight of my father. He stomped in, anger and disgust radiating from every pore of his body. Up until now, I had never really thought of my dad as an imposing figure, but right now, looking up at him with tears blurring my eyes, a monitor beeping in my ear and my mother sobbing at my side, I had never been so happy to see my father in all my life. I stretched out my unsecured arm and he grasped it tightly, as his eyes glistened behind his coke bottle lenses.

Miriam bowed her head and stepped back, closing the door softly behind her. As soon as it closed, however, it opened again and my younger sister came barging in, her hair everywhere and her bookbag falling off her shoulder.

“Is she ok?” she cried wildly. “I got here as soon as I—oh you’re ok,” she sighed, collapsing in the chair my mother had recently vacated. I laughed in my throat, or as well as one can laugh without moving their lips, and Susan turned red. “That isn’t what I meant,” she spluttered. “I just… well I’m glad you’re not, well you know and I was scared and I just didn’t know if I was gonna get here in time and no one would bring me—”

“Suze,” my dad said quietly. She stopped her babbling and sat there, looking a little sheepish. I didn’t want her to stop talking though; it gave me something else to think about besides the pain.

“Mary, you’re gonna be ok,” my mom said brokenly. “You’ve got a broken nose and bruises everywhere. The wounds on your face aren’t that bad, but you’re gonna have to be here a while. They had to… oh god my baby!” She started crying even harder, the tears falling fast. “You had to get almost thirty stitches baby; what happened?” Her hand tightened on mine and I clenched her hand right back, trying to hold back the tears.

Thirty stitches? That’s a lot, right? Is this going to be really bad as in scar damage and no children for the rest of my life? If there was one thing I had always been certain of, that was wanting children. Even though I was only 19, I knew that’s what I wanted. Three of them. Two boys and a girl if I could. And what if…now I couldn’t have them? What if everything was ruined and I couldn’t have kids?

I turned my head, letting the sunlight from the window wash over my face. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I was a good girl. I did well in my classes at college, I was almost utterly selfless and hardly ever raised my voice in anger. I practically lived by the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them to unto you. And this is what I get? It’s no wonder I had issues with religion. How could God let this happen to such a good person? Maybe I was being a little selfish, but I never really imagined that I deserved something of this magnitude.

But at least my family was there. All four of them. No wait. I turned back and looked at my mom, tilting my head towards Susan. She understood my meaning and looked at my father. He cleared his throat, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

“Uh Mary, Jennifer didn’t want to come.” My eyes widened in surprise. My own sister didn’t want to come see me? What the hell was up with that? I would want to see her if this had happened to her, not that it would. Jennifer was the model daughter and now, wife. Or rather, would be shortly. She had moved out of the house yesterday to move across the city to live with her fiancé, some bastard named Brad. Not that I cared; it wasn’t my life. But he was such an arrogant prick. And cheap too. The engagement ring that he bought for her was…the engagement ring!

My eyes flew wide open and I started struggling against the ties on my bed. My mom looked frightened and stepped back, her eyes going wide as well. Susan jumped up, screaming, and ran out of the room yelling that I was having a seizure and would the nurse come quick!

I shook my head at my father and, despite the pain, managed to get out the words “Paper, pencil.” He heard me and reached into his breast pocket, handing me a notepad and a pen. It was awkward, writing with my left hand, but I managed to get it out. I handed it back to my father and his eyes widened, his mouth dropping open. My mother snatched it from him and let out a small shriek.

Just then Susan came back with Miriam and another nurse who was holding some sort of plastic thing. Maybe what they shove in people’s mouths during seizures to prevent them from swallowing their tongue. Instead she had to drop it and catch my mother, who had fallen backwards in a faint. The piece of paper fluttered from her hand and dropped on my chest, where I could clearly read the words I had written.

“Jennifer did this to me.”

It took me almost four days to heal enough where I could talk without causing further damage to myself. Have you ever gone four days without talking? It’s almost its own kind of hell. But on that fourth day, my mom finally convinced me to let the cops in to talk to me. They had done their forensic thing while I was unconscious after getting rushed to the hospital, not that they needed it. From what I could gather, they had caught Jack in the act of cutting my throat while Chuck stood by his side. Fortunately for me, Jack had barely scraped the skin before my father caught him. It took four of the movers to keep my dad from killing him, while my mother called the cops. As far as I knew, they were both in jail; Jack for rape and attempted murder and Chuck as an accomplice.

I was sitting up in the hospital bed, insanely wishing for a shower and some real food. Since I couldn’t get my mouth open, they’d had to feed me through an IV and I was dying for a Big Mac or something along those lines. But mostly, I just wanted to feel clean. I imagined that I could still smell Jack on me, and I could still feel the cold steel placed against my throat. But I couldn’t shower until the stitches came out. The doctors didn’t want them to get wet. They had, however, allowed my mother to wash my hair in the sink, so I didn’t feel as grungy.

Unfortunately, it was two cops, and one of them was male. I kept having horrible nightmares each night and the first night, a male nurse came in to calm me. I woke up with his face in mine as he tried to wake me up and I freaked out even more, thinking somehow Jack had found me and was going to rape me again and again. I tore three of my stitches out that night and reopened the wounds in my right cheek as I tried desperately to scream for help. I also tore two gouges in the nurse’s cheek with my free hand. After that, I was attended by only female nurses. The only male I had seen since the attack was my father.

I shrunk back against the bed as the cops approached. I glanced wildly at my mother and she stepped forward, placing her hand on my arm.

“Does he really need to be here?” she asked, inclining her head towards the male cop. He colored slightly. I could see that his name tag read “Morehart” and his sandy hair fell over his forehead into his light brown eyes. Kind of cute, but totally within my bubble of comfort. I could feel my chest tightening and as I opened my mouth, a small whimper escaped.

“Yes ma’am,” he said, coughing into his hand. “Officer Reed here is new to the force and as such, requires an older officer to stay with her. But if I am causing discomfort, I will step back. Is that alright?” He took a step back towards the door, glancing at me as he did so. I sighed and could feel my body relax. He was far enough away where I could pretend he was just an oddly shaped door if I didn’t look at him. Instead, I focused on the female, who had stepped to my bedside. Her brown hair was pulled back in a severe bun, and she looked as though she had never smiled once in her life.

For the next twenty minutes, she kept asking me questions about the attack. Some of them I could answer almost apathetically, but when she asked me to show her my bruises, I couldn’t. I turned my head and my mother had to point out the marks on my neck and wrists. Then she pulled down the blanket to show her the bruises on my legs. I was so embarrassed that I didn’t notice Officer Morehart cough and turn away until I was covered again.

Then it came.

“Ma’am, do you think you can explain fully why you believe it was your sister who orchestrated this?” Officer Reed asked, her pencil poised over her notepad. I swallowed and looked at my mom, who tightened her grip on my hand and looked right back at me, tears shimmering in her eyes.

“I don’t believe, I know,” I said flatly, looking determinedly at my clenched fist. “Both Jack and Chuck kept referring to this third person as her. Both of them were scared out of their minds. Chuck was going to do… what Jack did, but I think he chickened out.”

The officer scribbled furiously, then looked back up at me. “Please continue,” she urged, her voice soft and her frown relaxing slightly.

“When Chuck placed the knife on my neck, Jack started freaking out even more than before. I don’t think either of them wanted to do it, but something had really scared them. Chuck was shaking so bad he could hardly hold the knife and him and Jack almost got in a fight. I think Jack was going to leave, and then suddenly someone appeared behind him, holding a gun to his head.” Here I paused, taking a deep breath, steeling myself. “I couldn’t see who it was, nor do I know how they got in without us seeing them. But I did recognize the hand holding the gun. There was a very recognizable ring on that hand. I didn’t recognize it at first because I was in so much pain, but it came to me later. It was that cheap ass cubic zirconium that Brad bought for Jennifer as an engagement ring. He bragged to everyone that it was a one of a kind and had cost him an arm and a leg but it didn’t matter because he wanted Jennifer to know how much he cared for her.”

Officer Reed looked at me evenly, but I could see the tear in the corner of her eye. “Could you describe the ring please?” she asked quietly.

“Sure. It’s silver with a figure eight twist on the top. The band is corded and there is a large CZ on the middle of the eight with two smaller ones in the loops. Ugliest damn thing I’ve ever seen, but there it is,” I finished emotionlessly.

“Would you like to hear what happened?” Officer Reed questioned. I looked at her, wondering what she meant. She sighed and looked back at Officer Morehart. He cleared his throat and took a step forward, making me turn immediately in his direction, my muscles clenching tightly. But he stopped after one step, just making sure he was in the light.

“We’ve already got a confession from Jack and Chuck. Apparently, your sister was hiding in your closet, which is why she seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Your sister is currently being held in jail, and the trial is scheduled for two days from tomorrow. Supposedly, she threatened them both with murder if they didn’t do what she wanted them to do and when it appeared that they weren’t going to do it, she stepped out with the gun to finish what they started,” he said, motioning with his hands.

I was staring at him in disgust. “Well, if she was standing in my closet, how come she wasn’t caught with Jack and Chuck when my dad burst in?” I asked, a hard tone in my voice.

“We’re not quite sure. It would appear that she told them what to do, and then slipped back in the closet, still holding the gun on them. In the confusion that followed, both Jack and Chuck tried to mention it, but no one was listening enough to realize what they were saying. By that time, she had stowed the gun under a box in your closet and just waited until a free moment to walk out and join in the confusion. No one noticed anything because no one was paying attention,” he said blandly. I thought it was my imagination, but I swore there was a tear in his eye as well.

“How did my father know to come in my room?” I asked stoically, trying to hide the tremor in my voice.

“One of the movers happened to mention they saw Jack and Chuck go into your room but didn’t think anything of it. They figured there was something in there that they were supposed to move, but wondered where they went to. Your father went upstairs to check on you and well, you can imagine the rest. Apparently, your sister told them to inflict as much superficial damage before slitting your throat. They only got so far as breaking your nose before your father came in,” Officer Morehart finished, not looking me in the eye.

I nodded and turned my head to the window. The sun was out and I could faintly hear the birds chirping in the tree outside my room. The sky was blue with only a few clouds marring the perfection and I could feel the pressure rising in my chest again. I could vaguely hear my mother pushing the two cops out of my room and she came back, kissed my cheek, and when I didn’t acknowledge her, she left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

The tears slowly coursed down my cheeks. After four days of crying, I didn’t think I had any water left in me, but I guess when you learn something like that, there is no stopping it.

Again, the chirping sounded in my ears. How could everything be so perfect and yet so horrible at the same time? It should be thundering, rain pouring down, lightning striking down everything within reach. It shouldn’t be sunny with the birds chirping and the warmth pouring in my window. This wasn’t how things were supposed to be.


A/N: Please review!! I'm only asking for an extra minute of your time. I know this is a rewrite but I implore you, please let me know what you think. If people don't like this, I won't continue working on it!! Thanks!!!