Chapter Seven: A sign that has trust
The sun was flowing through the hospital room window, making things feel a little more than bright and cheery as the day was now creeping towards a third over.
The light seemed happy on it’s own, but the one that was in the bed next to the window looked far from that. The girl seemed to be about as far away from bright and cheery sunlight as you could possibly get... it was obvious that her mind was pretty much far away from the room as well.
Looking up at the ceiling of the room, Abigail did not feel any of that cheeriness that the morning seemed to be bringing into her hospital room... her face was a mask of a thousand different emotions all at once. These emotions seemed to be churning inside of her to the point of almost exploding out of her, as it seemed they were coming one after another..
Two days had passed since that horrible evening when she had been attacked by both Eddie and Peggy in the seclusion of the park. She relived everything in horrible detail that had been done to her and screamed at her over a thousand times, but that was the tip of the iceberg for what was coming for her now. It was haunting her sleep each time she closed her eyes for a little rest, and it seemed to be there even into her waking hours.
The physical pain she was having was stemming from her three cracked ribs and also some very bruised kidneys... but the pain of all of that was not even close to being as painful as the bluntness of truth she had gotten after she had been brought to the hospital that evening. It was a sort of horrible truth which hit her soul like a sledgehammer, and threatened to completely destroy her with the weight of things she had never even knew was in her life.
The police had been there already to tell her that they had charged both Eddie and Peggy for the beating and the near sexual assault which had been perpetrated on her. It was through the explanation of the why they had been charged so fast, that really haunted Abigail’s very soul. After interrogating the both of them strenuously, and added in with some other investigation that was done, the truth came out to the officers and got back to her .
It was completely and despicably laid out that Abigail had been clearly set up to have her be attacked and then humiliated... orchestrated by her long time friend and the girl she felt so strongly towards.... and that was Shannon. That sort of information was almost as hard to take as the near rape from one boy she had loved.
After more information came out, it was clear that Shannon had been the one who called the house and left the messages on Abigail’s cell as well... to simply lure Abigail to get at least a beating. It was a plan, that seemed to had came together out of some sort of resentment coupled with other people emotions... all that had came into play with it.
The plan seemed to center around the fact that Abigail had dropped Eddie as her boyfriend foremost, followed with the many rumours that Abigail was gay. These tow things seemed to have stoked the anger and resentment everyone seemed to have against her, and the fear of the unknown of not truly knowing also made it that way. Abigail was perplexed by the reasons that were known about that had led to what had happened to her, the others were a total mystery.
Abigail had fought the pain in her heart that was caused by someone she had started to believe she deeply love, after already knowing for years. Getting set up like this and having a figurative knife plunged into her back, was a pain she had never had before... it was truly worse than her physical pain she was having.
" Why did she do this to me... after all of the time we had known each other?" She continually asked herself, as the silence of the room always made it comer out.
Her thoughts were broken with her sister coming into the room. She saw a softness on Kerri Anne’s face that she had not seen since they were both kids. The fact that Kerri showed this side of her after all of what has happened to her, made Abigail feel as if she was drawing closer to her sister at the moment.
" Hey there, Kid..." The older girl said with a smirk, getting to the bedside of Abigail. " Looking good today."
Abigail shrugged, not quite knowing how she was feeling today as yet. She looked right at her sister, words were nor coming out of her mouth. Her sister then took her had in hers and squeezed it softly, another thing that she rarely does.
" Came before my lasses started...." She began.
" Why?" Abigail asked back, hearing something a little odd in how Kerri Anne was talking to her.
Kerri Anne seemed to understand that Abigail knew something was up. She cleared her throat, a purposeful look crossed her fair skinned face.
" The cops came early this morning and talked to Mom and Dad... you know..." She started, slowly bringing in the subject. " I overheard some things as they were informing them of things in their investigations..."
" Listening in?" Abigail asked with a shrug, trying to play around to deflect her internal pain. " Or is it like Dad always asks you... were you sort of eavesdropping?"
" Well, yeah..." Said the girl, a little sheepishly as her face turned a bit red. " I was sort of... hanging around in the kitchen when they were there.... "
" What did the police say to Mom and Dad?"
Kerri Anne seemed a little hesitant to start telling her what it was that she knew, but she seemed to be resigned that she had to tell her..
" They said that Eddie and his sister attacked you because you had broken up with him a few days ago... egged on by his sister and set up by your rat of a friend Shannon..." She started, then paused for a second. " Is that true that you broke up with him?"
Abigail nodded, no use hiding that fact from her sister..
" Yes..." She agreed.
" You did break up with him...." Said Kerri Anne, looking a little less than surprised. " What for?"
Abigail got a little quiet for a moment, but saw that her sister was giving her all the time in the world to answer her.
" I had not feel the same about him for months, I guess... not like he still said that he said he felt about me..." Said the girl in the hospital bed. " Things changed in me, I guess the best way of saying it was."
" What did he do that made you drop him? You two seemed so much into one another, it made me wanna barf at times" Asked the girl, her tone told of someone who was confused about things. " That is what I wanna know."
Abigail looked at her sister and just shrugged her shoulders a little.
" He did nothing at the time..." She blurted out, the memories of what had happened in the park came back to her. She wet her lips and pushed what happened away for her mind. " I cant explain it..."
" Can’t or won’t?" Came in Kerri Anne, her voice was one of comfort.
The girl looked at her older sibling and shrugged... it was in fact, a little of the two at the same time. She could not say what was in her mind, nor explain it if she wanted to either. She sighed, and that had seemed to soften Kerri Anne even more.
" I thought so... " She muttered a little, her voice was soothing to Abigail. " Then you rest... I just stopped in before my classes started anyways."
Kerri Anne gave a simple nod of her head as she started to turn to walk to the door. That made the girl I the bed seemed to be a little surprised at that.
" Your not going to push me to say something ‘bout it?" Abigail asked, a little shocked at it all.
A smile came across the older of the two, as she turned back and walked to her sister’s bedside and actually held the prone girl’s hand again.
" Why do you say that I would do that to you?"
" You are always so nosy, always having to know things and such..." Abigail came back with, slowly. " but now you seem like... like..."
" I seem like I am not doing that?"
" Yeah..." Nodded Abigail, seeing that her sister was not mad with her pointing that out.
The glimmer of understanding came through the older girl’s face.
" Most of the times, I do things like that to simply annoy the living hell out of you on most occasions...." Kerri Anne Came back with. " But I do know when I should and should not do that to you... just never have shown that, I guess."
" Why are you doing that now?" Abigail asked.
A softer glow appeared in the girl’s eyes as she looked at Abigail. Gone was the that angry and very attitude fuelled look she normally sported. She looked at her sister in the bed, ands there was great tenderness that came through her gaze.
" Right now it is seriously not my place to worm my way into.... if you figure things out, and wanna talk it over, we will talk..." She smiled. " That is what sisters are suppose to do, when talking to parents are out of the question... and I have sort of forgotten that part of the sister thing..."
" You... would talk to me like that?" Abigail asked.
Kerri Anne giggled a little, hearing the inflection that was in Abigail’s voice to her. She nodded.
" Fucking hell yeah..." She replied.
" Why would you now?" Posed the girl right back, obviously a little wary of this side to her sister..
" I realized that I had not been quite the sister I am suppose to have been, I guess..." She started, then her face got more serious looking. " But Mom and Dad might want to know the reasons why this all happened, and why people they trusted to be around their daughter... had done something like this and would not be as kind as I am. They have waited on asking until you were better, so it is a matter of time for that...."
Abigail sort of knew that the time to talk to her Mother and Father had been coming for more than awhile, and nodded to show that she had been thinking about it. If she actually was her parents, she too would want to know what was going, and need a explanation to help that along also. She did expect it to be that way, but was sort of wanting to delay it a little while longer... but knew that forgiveness time was all too short... and quickly running out.
She just watched her sister as she started to leave the room again to continue on to her College classes... and marvelled at the fact that after all of this time of being at one another’s throats... she was still looking out for her in the end. Abigail suddenly found herself calling out to her eldest sibling she had.
" One question I really need to get an answer for here..." She called out to Kerri-Anne, as it suddenly had popped into her mind. " How did you know about what was going to happen to me... and showed up to protect me?"
Kerri Anne smirked a playful grin, as she turned back towards her sister.
" Your wanting to know how I had arrived at the park and ended up saving your scrawny ass, literally?" The girl replied back, half giggling with her answer as she went back to the girl’s bedside.
" Well... yeah..." Said Abigail, surprised with how right her sister was with knowing exactly what she was going to say.
Kerri Anne looked at Abigail straight in the face, her eyes never once wavering as she locked on.
" Sasha phoned back after you had left that evening... and she went absolutely nuts after I told her where you had gone... she had started to actually cry...sobbing like a mad woman... " She started, her voice was stiff.
" She was crying?" Said a very shocked Abigail.
" I was unsure of why she had became so god-damned upset all of a sudden, and just got her to calm the fuck down so she could tell me every thing..." She continued to explain to her younger sis. " She did after a few moments, and that was how I was told about this set up shit that bitch, Shannon, had pulled on you."
" Sasha knew about all of this..." Asked Abigail.
Kerri Anne stiffened, and made even firmer eye contact with Abigail.
" More like tried Sasha was trying to stop this shit from happening..." She said
" How did she know what was going on?"
" She said that she overheard them planning this the day it happened... When Shannon was on her cell phone at school with Eddie on the other end, plotting all of this out." Kerri Anne explained." She actually overheard Shannon planning all of this out... against me?" Spluttered Abigail, shocked at the callousness of her former friend.
Abigail was shocked at the details that only know, she was starting to hear. Kerri Anne nodded, and seemed to give the girl a second to digest the information.
" She over heard it all, and was scared about what had been planned for you." Kerri Anne said. " In desperation, Sasha phoned and hoped she could calm herself enough to tell someone, because she was afraid to try and stop it physically on her own..."
" She is a very small person..." Abigail said, knowing how diminutive Sasha was, as she did stand under five foot and weighing less than a hundred pounds soaking wet.
" Yeah... that was what she told me." Agreed the girl. " I could really understand the fact that she was so afraid of stopping it.
Abigail thought on the information for a moment, then looked right at her sister.
" And you actually came and protected me?"
" You are my sister there Kiddo... I just had to..." Smirked Kerri Anne, her warm smile was back on her face. " Besides, I am suppose to be only one that has the right to physically torment the hell out of you is me.."
" You do that normally.." Laughed Abigail, seeing the sparkle her sister’s eyes held as she kidded with her.
" Being a sister... that is my job..." She smirked, through fits of snickering..
They looked at one another for a few minutes, connecting with just there eyes. For the first time in many years, they each could see through the animosity they had been having when they would have been butting heads like they did... and notice just how much the other actually meant to them. It was the world.
Watching her sister turn and head off to return to her College classes, Abigail found for the first time in a long time, she was feeling so glad to having an older sister like Kerri Anne. It was a feeling that she had not had in a very long time... and she was feeling so glad for it right now.
The girl feeling more relax that she had been in awhile, sighed and layed back. Seeing her sister, had made the whole difference in her life. She only wished all of her problems could have been settled like that.
******
It was nearing the middle of the afternoon that same day... what had been foretold by Kerri-Anne, had finally happened. Both of the girl’s parents arrived at the hospital and were looking for answers to most of their unanswered questions pertaining to all of what had happened..
For nearly two straight hours, they asked about the reasons whys such great friends and a polite and respectful boyfriend would end up turning on her like they had done,. They were shocked and horrified at the fact that their daughter was found beaten up in the park with her pants pulled down while their oldest daughter and a family friend were fighting off these other so called friends who had done all of this in the first place.
" We just want to understand what it was that lead to all of this happening to you." Her mother kept saying.
" Your mother and I are quite upset and worried about you and all of this that has transpired." Her father said, seemingly stoic in his shock. " Your actions as well, young lady..."
" I know..." Was the only real thing she could get in, other than very short answers to their questioning.
" We are very worried..." The woman butted in, not even noticing that she had cut off her husband so rudely.
Her parents went on, and on, telling her things that dropped her heart into her stomach. They told her that they knew about her being ‘sexually active’ now, a thing that had came out of the police interrogating Eddie and his sister. The Police had given her parents access to the transcripts of the two had made, and every sorted thing that Abigail had done with her now ex, was right there down in black and white.
Humiliated, embarrassed and quite sadden and very much feeling so low, Abigail just listened as her mom and dad went down the laundry list of everything that had been her life... and now layed in basic ruins in the wake of what had happened to her.
Everything they were asking her, were honest questions... asked out of love for the girl in the hospital bed, but Abigail had asked the very same things to her own self over the last few days she had laid there in the hospital. She answered as many of the questions to the best of her abilities for herself, but she did end up leaving out a few certain points for reasons that felt very necessary.
She felt bad that she purposely had left out her little ‘confusion about might being a lesbian’ thing for the time being, but right now she did not know if that was the truth or not. She frankly was not sure of a whole lot of stuff at the moment. All that she really knew was she was still as confused as she has been lately, and getting the royal shit kicked out of her had not helped her either.
On the flipside of things...She was more than just simply aware that her parents were as confused or even more, with the situation that they found themselves knee deep in... but in a totally different way. She could see that registering in their eyes as they looked at her. It hurt to see her parents like that, but there was not much else she could do for them.
Her Mom and Dad finally left to return to their respective offices and the jobs there of, after taking a little time to talk to the doctors. Abigail just waited, wanting to hear how much longer she would have to lay here, and be subjected to boredom and the worst food that she had ever had the un-pleasure of actually eating. The boredom she could handle, unflavoured lime jell-o, was harder than that.
Soon, young Abigail got the word that she would be in the hospital for a at least two days more. Because of the severity of the cracks to her ribs, the pounding her kidneys had taken at the hands of Eddie and his sister, it was clear that they were being rather cautious to the point of being anal.
There was a good point to all of it though. She was so damned exhausted after being with her parents as they grilled her for answers. The energy it would have taken to get up and dress to go home seemed impossible, she was already lying down... a bonus right then. She closed her eyes, and could actually feel her body relax as she laid there.
Abigail quickly drifted into a light sleep for awhile, finding that she was now just tired. It really seemed as if her mind needed that little space. Drifting off so quickly, she never even noticed that there was a lone figure that was standing just outside of the hospital room, looking in on her.
Hidden a little by a deep shadow, the figure just stood there for awhile and watched the girl sleep.... never once making a move to go into the room. It seemed simply to linger in the doorway, as if it was trying to figure out what to do next. It never did leave, but just stayed there and seemed to pounder the sleeping form for a long while later.