"I need to know your name.. do you know why you're here?" A woman with a soft and concerned voice is talking to you. "Hello?" You try to look at her, but only one eye seems to want to open, and even it can't make it past the halfway point, too swollen to function. There's the dull buzz of a heart monitor beside you, and it's cartoonish blip blip blip catches your fuzzy attention for a moment, but then your eye begin to fall thankfully closed again. Whatever they've given you, it is strong. You've been in enough hospitals to know the feel of an IV in your arm, the sticky pads attached to your chest that keep track of things like life and death. Still, can't be too bad, this doesn't look like the ICU. You've been there before too. "Can you hear me? The police are here, we need you to answer some questions.." Tonguing the inside of your lip, you feel fresh stitches. You know by the searing ache that covers your body that they can't be the only ones you got. It is really no wonder that they don't put mirrors in emergency rooms. You don't want to see yourself anyway, and you shy away from the metal railings of the bed with a wince, as if they might somehow cast a reflection you can actually glimpse. You don't want to see the worthless, pitiful, disgusting thing you've become. The drugs make you think that you belong in Mordor, and the idea is so out of place that you choke on a sound that would have been a laugh four years ago, before any of this began. Now it sounds more like a sob.
A nurse pushes something else into your IV, and with it comes the strange relief of drowsiness. The lack of worry or fear or pain. Still, you're awake. You're floating above yourself and if you focus hard enough, you can hear the nurses and the police outside talking. It takes you a moment to realize that they are talking about you. "She can't speak, her trachea is bruised, she has twenty-six stitches in her mouth, a punctured lung, three broken ribs.. somebody found her in Central Park, no ID, no purse.."
You begin to doze off, with your eyes closed, it is difficult not too. They're saying things that you don't understand now anyway. "Miscarriage.. three months.. lost the baby.. internal hemorrhaging.." You wonder who lost their baby, you hope they find it. If you fall asleep, it feels like hours, but can't be too long because there is a man by your bed now. He has a badge and a tablet, he hands you a pen and asks for your name. Your hand shakes, but you get the letters down in squiggly lines. Behind the officer, there are x-ray photographs hanging on an illuminated screen. The pictures don't lie, and all the black fracture lines through the white that is supposed to be bone looks more mosaic than skeleton. "Do you know who did this to you?" The officer is stony, but his eyes reflect a kind of concern that you immediately deem as untrustworthy. Somebody else looks at you like that sometimes, concerned after the fact. The cop is tired, you can see the bags under his eyes.
A nurse pokes her head in the door with a smile, "We called your husband dear, he's on his way." You nod, thinking somehow that is good because this room is cold and the cop is making you tired with his eyes. He asks again, "Do you know the man that attacked you?" With your eyes closed, you shake your head. No, no idea.. you don't know who that madman was. He's not who you thought he was, he's something else. Someone else. It had to of been someone else. The memory blurs momentarily, a fast forward to dozens of other emergency rooms when the questions become a barrage of insistence. We can help you. Tell us, and we can help you. But nobody can help you, and you reach for the pen to scrawl another word. Mugged.
The cop nods, writes something down, and turns to leave. You want to ask him if they found the baby, but your tongue is swollen with stitches and the IV fluid drips more and more until the room grows dark and so painless.