“You’re home?”
“Yes.”
Another pause.
Too long.
“Richard. Where is my wife?”
“There was an incident.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“What incident?”
“She was attacked.”
Everything inside me stopped.
“When?”
“Three nights ago.”
“Where?”
Richard told me Sophia had apparently gone out late and ended up alone in a rough neighborhood several miles away.
Someone attacked her in an alley.
“She’s at St. Matthew’s,” he said. “Intensive care.”
I stared at the stains on my kitchen floor.
“Why didn’t anyone call me?”
“We thought you couldn’t be reached.”
“That’s not true.”
“I was told—”
“By whom?”
Silence.
Then Richard said:
“Just get to the hospital.”
Twenty minutes later, I was outside the intensive care unit.
The doctor spoke carefully.
Sophia had been unconscious for almost three days.
Multiple fractures.
A badly injured wrist.
Deep bruising.
A concussion.
Injuries serious enough that the doctor believed whatever had happened lasted more than a few seconds.
I gripped the back of a chair.
“Thirty-one fractures?”
He nodded.
Some were small.
Some were not.
“Was she robbed?”
“That’s something the police are investigating.”
“Who found her?”
The doctor looked at the chart.
“I was told her father brought her in.”
I looked up.
“Richard?”
“Yes.”
“From the alley?”
“That’s what we were told.”
