THE PRICE PAID

     "It’s Billy," the voice on the phone said. It took a moment for Steve to orient himself. Billy? Of course, his sister’s boyfriend, or "partner" as was now insisted on. He hadn’t heard from either of them in a while. Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember Billy ever calling him.

     "Yes mate. How’re you going?"

     "Not bad. Listen, something has happened" His voice sounded strange. After an intriguing silence he added, "something bad has happened."

     Steve gut clenched with a sick feeling and his legs stiffened against possible loss of balance. "What? What’s happened?"  

     "Emily’s been attacked."

     "Attacked? What do you mean?"

     "She’s been raped." He was choking on the words. "It’s bad Steve, very bad."

     Steve arrived at Liverpool Hospital one and a half hours later. He had to resist the urge to jump straight in a cab at the rank on Darlinghurst Road but the fare from  there to Liverpool would have been much more than he could afford. And with the rationality that survived in the whirling of his mind he reasoned that with the traffic at this time in the late afternoon he wouldn’t be arriving much earlier than he would by train.

    

     When it arrived it was already crowded but he was able to claim an aisle seat. Dazed, he either looked unseeing through the window or let his eyes drift over his fellow passengers. Easily excited school kids shoved each other close to the sliding doors, making a nuisance of themselves to people trying to board and light, leggy young ladies admired the reflections of themselves looking back from the sealed windows, and grey-headed men's faces reflected the seriousness of their daily tabloids. Most of the passengers were white but as the train got further out into the suburbs the collective whiteness of the passengers changed to a darker hue until Steve became dimly aware of being the lone alien.

   Unlike the rattlers remembered from his childhood, the train slid quietly and smoothly, aimed directly at a sunset that appeared to be leaping from a great fire. Its beauty reminded him of the tropics. Tropical sunsets however hadn't mocked him though the way this one did. 

     By the time he stepped out onto the station platform a bracing coldness ensured by the clear sky of earlier in the day was waiting to meet him, He pulled the collar of his jacket up, thrust his hands into its pockets and hurried up the stairs.  

 

     "Emily Sheffield," he told the nurse behind the reception desk.

      "Are you family?"

     "Yes, I'm her brother."

      After quickly scanning a page of names she gave him the room number and directions on how to get there. Along the seemingly never-ending corridor he made his way to the lifts. Apprehension bordering on fear dogged his every step.

 

 

     He found the number of the shared ward and turned into it. He could see maybe five or six patients in bed, none of them Emily. The only staff present was a plump Philippina about to wheel away a food trolley. In response to his enquiry, she pointed at a curtained off bed in a corner of the windowed side of the room.

     He parted the curtain. Surprised, Billy sprung up from a chair beside the bed. In two paces he was in front of Steve, grabbing his extended hand and then pulling him into a hug. In a detached part of Steve’s mind it registered that this was the first time he’d ever done this. His usually well cared for appearance was tipped  out of kilter by his hair looking as though he’d just gotten out of bed. His eyes were red-rimmed.

     Steve pulled away from him enough to be able to look down at the bed. The figure on the bed looked disconcertingly like a corpse. All he could see was the form of someone around Emily’s size in the foetal position covered completely by a sheet.

     "She’s been like that for hours," Billy said. His eyes were red-rimmed. Steve took hold of the edge of the sheet and tried to gently pull it away from his sister’s head but it was weighted down with a hand. When he tugged a little more determinedly the fingers of the hand tightened in the sheet and held it firmly. "It’s probably best to leave her alone," Billy advised. "The doctor told me she’s in shock and could be that way for a while"’

     "Has she said anything to you?"

     Billy was silent for a moment and then said, as if still trying to understand it, "all she said was that she was sorry."

    

     The curtain parted again behind them. Steve turned to see a young woman in a white hopital coat

     "This is the doctor"’ Billy said. He motioned to Steve and said to the doctor, "this is Emily’s brother, Steve."

     The woman shook Steve's hand almost with grip almost masculine. "I'm Doctor  Briant," she said. "I'm afraid there's no way to soften this. Your sister been subjected to a terrible experience; I'm sorry. Her physical injuries will probably heal in a matter of weeks but ... well it will probably take longer for her psychological health to return. I understand that you are her only remaining family. Is that correct?"

     "Yes."

     "Then Steven, she's going to need all the support and love you can give her."

     "Yes, she'll get it. Thanks Doctor."

     "I think at the moment it would be better to allow her some space. There's tea and coffee available in a room down the corridor. Why don't you two go and try to relax for a while, then come back later. She may be wanting to talk to sombody by then."

     "Yes, good idea. Just one thing Doctor. Why can't she be in a room on her own?"

     "I'm sorry about that but she has no private health insurance. I'm afraid this is the best we can do with Medicare." 

     Steve sat in the small lounge while Billy stood at a sink waiting for a jug to boil. They were fortunate in having the room to themselves. "There were a couple of coppers here earlier; detectives, a man and a woman. No reply came from Steve who sat like a ventriloquist's dummy minus the ventriloquist, so Billy continued. "After they'd oranised a rape kit, whatever that is, and questioned Emily they wanted to speak to me to find out whatever they could about Emily's habits, her background, her family situation, her friends and so on. I told them what I knew but I can't see how it was of much help.

     "Then I asked them to tell me exactly what had happened to Emily. They wouldn't at first; said they wanted to spare me, but I put on a real turn and bloody well demanded that they tell me. They looked at each other then the female detective let me have it - with both barrels. Do you want me to tell you what she said Steve?"

     The dummy's head turned slowly, just as mechanically as a real dummy's. "Yes, tell me."

     "Well, when the paramedics reached her at the lady’s house where she’d gone for help she was hysterical, understandably. Everything she’d had been stolen from her. Her clothes as well. All she had to wear was the blanket the lady had gotten for her. She wasn’t making much sense and she had difficulty speaking anyway. Her mouth …. She’s copped it in the mouth. Steve, she was beaten pretty badly. It’s what the cops call aggravated rape." Steve was rocking, leaning with his elbows on his thighs and his head in his hands.

    "Steve, you’ll need to brace yourself. It gets worse."

     "How much worse can it get?"

     "A lot."

     "Give it to me."

     "It seems that Emily had finished work early for the day. She was walking through the park between the salon she’s been working at and her flat, just as she did every day. She was listening to music on her Ipad through ear plugs as she walked."

     "Yes, she loves music," Steve said, crouched over, looking at the floor..

     ‘She was almost to the other side of the park when she was grabbed from behind and then dragged into some bushes. There were two men. She was beaten and raped by both of them. Do you want me to continue?"

     Steve nodded, so he inhaled deeply before continuing. "I’m afraid that wasn’t the end of it. One of them held her down with a knife to her throat, while the other made a call on his phone then walked to the street bordering the park. A few minutes laterr he returned with another five men."  He paused like someone about to deliver the coup de grace. They held her for around another hour. The all raped her – both ways. While they were doing it the second way one of them asked her how she like being fucked Lebanese style." Steve was beginning to sob. Gary's voice was cracking with emotion as he tried to continue. "And then Steve .... the all pissed on her." Steve was weeping uncontrollably. "And there was the lipstick."

     Steve looked up, tears streaming down his face. "What?"

     "It was smeared by the time the doctors saw it but they could still make out what it said. These cunts had taken her own lipstick and written on her back OZZIE SLUT."

    

      When they returned to Emily’s bedside Steve was almost staggering. Billy had a hand on his shoulder as though to steady him. He turned him around, took him by the arms and steered him backwards to a chair he in the tiny alcove. He then went around to the other side of the bed to pick up a second chair, placed it beside Steve and sat down. A clock was ticking loudly, another patient in the ward coughed and the smell of extreme cleanliness hung in the air but Emily was now sitting up in bed. She was looking at them both but appeared not to see them. Steve was aghast. The whole of his sister's face was swollen. Both her eye-sockets were shades of black, blue and purple running together. Stitches laced together an angry red laceration running vertically into her right, partly shaved eyebrow. The sight of her mouth though caused Steve to press knuckles to his own mouth. A jagged cut ran a good inch from the bottom of her top left lip, ending only about a quarter inch below and to the left of her nose. This wound was bound by many more stitches than the one in her eyebrow.

     The light of recognition appeared in her eyes but  her attempt to smile was quickly aborted because of the pain it caused. The brief parting of her lips had though revealed a dark space below the cut where two upper teeth, once beautiful and pearly, were now missing. An ugly graze was visible on her shoulder where the hospital gown had slipped.

     "How are you Sis"? The stupidity of the question almost caused Steve to wince.

     "Couldn’t be better." She again tried to smile but quickly stopped again. "The doctors tell me I’ll be out of here in no time. My injuries are only superficial. Superficial," she repeated, almost savouring the irony.

      Steve rose and walked the few steps to the side of the bed. He leant over, put the side of his face to the top of his head, put his arm around her and tried to hold her as gently as possible. Billy, sensing he wasn't part of this, rose and slipped out between the parted curtains.

     "My lovely black blouse."

     "What?"    

      "I was wearing my lovely black blouse. I’d only bought it the day before. I saw it in a shop window a week ago and fell in love with it but it was much too expensive. Every day I’d stop in front of the shop and look at it. Finally I said to myself 'bugger it; you only live once' and walked straight in and bought it."

      The look in Emily’s eyes told Steve she had left him; she was away in time and space. "The just tore it off me. One of those bastards …the one who … the one who did it to me first … one of the ones whose eyes I tried to scratch out stood over me with his foot on my chest while his mate lay beside me with his hand over my mouth and started ripping the blouse apart. 'You won’t be needing this anymore you slut,' he yelled at me and then spat on my hair while his mate laughed.

      It was all happening again. Tears welled in her eyes like water in an overfilled bottle and began dropping on her gown. Her body convulsed with sobbing the likes of which Steve had never heard before. He put his arms around her and held her to him. He was suddenly thrust back through time to long ago when a bicycle riding lesson had ended in tears and a grazed knee. He had held her in the same way to comfort her. She had brightened up almost immediately and smiled at him. But not this time. Her crying seemed as unstoppable as as the turning of the Earth and he felt consumed by utter helplessness.

     Now and then, over the course of his life, Steve had mused over whether he was capable of ever killing someone. The answer now thrust itself up from somewhere deep and dark inside him. He was perfectly capable of murder. Not only that, he would enjoy it - he'd enjoy causing as agonising a death as possible. Consequences? Didn't care.