Free Caedmon’s Song by Peter Robinson Page B

struggled to sit up. ‘I don’t want a bloody sedative! I want to know now! If you don’t tell me, I’ll only imagine it’s worse than it is. I feel awful, but I
don’t think I’m going to die, am I? What else could be so bad? What could be worse than that?’
    ‘Lie back and keep calm,’ the doctor said, gently pushing her down. ‘No, you’re not going to die. At least not until you’ve had your three-score and ten. If you
were, you’d have done so before today.’ He moved back to the end of the bed.
    ‘So tell me what’s wrong.’
    The doctor hesitated and looked towards her father. ‘Go on,’ he said quietly. ‘Tell her.’
    Kirsten wanted to let him know that his permission wasn’t required. She was twenty-one; she didn’t need his approval. But if this was the only way to find out, so be it.
    The doctor sighed and stared at a spot on the wall above the top of her head. ‘What you saw,’ he began, ‘is the result of emergency surgery, the sutures. It looks bad now, but
when they heal, it will be better. Not like new, but better than now.’
    Anything would be better than now, Kirsten thought, picturing her red and swollen breasts covered with stitch marks like zips, like something out of a Frankenstein movie.
    ‘When you were brought in,’ the doctor went on, ‘one breast was almost severed. We counted thirteen separate stab wounds to the mammary region alone.’ He shrugged and
leaned forward, gripping the metal bedframe. ‘We did the best we could under the circumstances.’
    ‘Alone? You said alone. What else was there?’
    ‘You’d been beaten around the face and head and, all in all, you had thirty-one stab wounds. It’s a miracle that none of them hit a major artery or organ.’
    Kirsten gripped the top of the bedsheet and held it tight across her throat. ‘What did they hit then, apart from my tits?’
    ‘Kirsten!’ her mother gasped. ‘There’s no need to speak like that in front of the doctor.’
    ‘It’s all right,’ the doctor said. ‘I suppose she has every right to be angry.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Kirsten said. ‘Thank you very much. You were saying?’
    The doctor fixed his gaze on the wall again. ‘Most of the other entry points were in the region of the abdomen, thighs and vagina,’ he went on. ‘It was a vicious attack, one of
the worst I’ve ever seen – at least on a victim who survived. There were also shallow slashes across the stomach, and something that looked like a cross with a long vertical had been
cut from just below the breasts to the pudenda. The cuts weren’t deep, but they needed stitching nonetheless. That’s why your skin feels so tight.’
    Kirsten lay silent and relaxed her grip on the sheets. It was even worse than she had thought. Thirty-one stab wounds. That terrible ache between her legs. She gulped and struggled to force back
the tears. She was damned if she was going to prove them right and react like a baby. ‘If I’m not going to die,’ she said, ‘why are you all looking like undertakers?
What’s the bad news you’re hiding from me? What is it you’re all trying to save me from? Am I disfigured for life? Is that it?’
    ‘There will be some disfigurement, yes,’ the doctor said, glancing at Kirsten’s father again for the go-ahead. ‘Chiefly of the breasts and the pubic area. But
that’s not the main damage. There’s always the possibility of further surgery to correct some of the disfigurement. The real problems are internal, Kirsten,’ he said, for the
first time using her Christian name, and saying it softly. ‘When you came in, you were unconscious. We had to operate immediately to put things right, to save your life, and we had to do it
quickly, because there’s always considerable anaesthetic risk when a patient is unconscious.’
    ‘Well?’
    ‘You were suffering from severe internal bleeding, and there was a strong chance of infection, of peritonitis. We had to perform an emergency