He stood up and looked at me square in the eyes. He made me tremble, he was so creepy. His dirty fingernails twirled that disgusting mustache as he used his tongue to clean across his teeth, making the grossest sound ever. Ugh, creep!
“Listen very carefully, ma’am. There’s nothing to be done. Now I believe it’s best you be on your way.
“No! You can’t just leave him in here overnight. Has he even eaten? Does he have a blanket? It’s freezing in here.” I wrapped my own jacket around me tighter. Mr. Fox lightly tapped my shoulder as if to say to calm down. He cleared his throat to emphasize the point.
“You are disrupting my establishment.” He stood up with his hands flat across the desk.
“Your establishment? This isn't your establishment.”
“Do you question an officer of law?”
“Well, yes I do. You have no right to—”
“When you enter this line you enter the law. And I’m the law.”
I looked quickly around to see if there was any other officer I could speak with. It was eerily empty and I wondered if he was the only officer on duty. “I’d like to speak to someone else! I’d like to—”
The cold metal against my wrists caused a shiver to run down my spine. I was handcuffed. By this creepy man who probably belonged to be locked up himself, with anger like this.
“You can't cuff me. I didn't do anything wrong. You can’t do this! I didn’t do anything wrong! Mr. Fox, please call my mother! Or get ahold of her somehow! You can’t just keep me in here for no reason.” My voice was high and I was screaming. If anyone else was in the county jail office, they heard me. I’m sure of it.
“You’re interfering with the law. That’s obstruction of the law.” He forcefully pushed me down a hallway and Mr. Fox was now left behind. “Get my mom!” Everything was happening so fast, I couldn’t believe my own eyes that I was being led down a dimly lit hallway past creepy, small cells.
“You people think you can get away with anything and get whatever you want. Well, I’ll tell you what.” The iron bars slid open before me as he pushed me in. “You wanted to see him. Now you see him.”
Chapter 15
KATE
* * *
I spun around to see the iron door slid shut. And there across the hallway laying on the ground, curled up in a ball, was Bradley. Naked. His eyes were shut and he looked oddly pale.
“Bradley! Oh my god. You animal! You have him locked up without a blanket like that! He could die! He could die!”
“You two are perfect for each other.”
“What the fuck! Look at him! Look at what you’re doing! He’s freezing to death!”
“Yeah, well, not my problem! Not so tough are you now, huh, tough guy?”
“Hey! Hey!” I called out after him, screaming at the top of my lungs. “There’s a very hot place in hell for people like you!”
My hands grabbed the iron bars and I could just stare at him. He looked so freezing and his lips looked blue. There was blood everywhere and I couldn’t stand to see him like that.
“Bradley! Bradley! Can you hear me? Can you hear me? It’s Kate! Don’t think you’re getting away with this, you asshole! You just messed with a Rainshaw.”
“Well, Rainshaw or no Rainshaw, enjoy the blizzard. See you when the city opens back up. Might be a few days.”
The door slammed shut.
“Wait, what! You can’t do this! You can’t do this!”
After yelling until my throat ran dry, hearing my voice echo off the walls of this cold and sterile cell, all I could do was cry and visualize warmth around him as I called out to him.
“Bradley! Bradley!”
He’d moan occasionally and say odd things.
“I’m soo….soo….” His head rested against the wall. I shivered as I called out to him, which worried the hell out of me because he wasn’t covered up, himself. “It’s going to be okay! It’s going to be okay,” I called out a thousand times but deep down inside, I didn’t have a clue if he was going to be okay.
I don’t know how much time passed. Every torturous minute felt like an hour when finally the door at the end of the hallway swung open and I wondered if I were seeing a ghost.
“That bastard really thinks he’s something,” the officer muttered until he finally opened my cell. “Oh, thank God!” I ran immediately to Bradley’s cell to get a better look at him. He didn’t look good at all.
“Would you look at him?
“He looks awful.” He opened the door and I ran to Bradley and covered him in my jacket. He was cold as ice. I felt his pulse. It was slow, but still there. He moaned and I tried to get him to open his eyes. They rolled to the back of his head.
“We need to get you two to a hospital, stat. Let me help you get him.”
The big officer picked Bradley up as best as he could. “Follow me. Hurry. I’m not about to let a blizzard take two innocent people’s lives. It’s bad out there. Real bad. All of New York City is shut down. It’s like a ghost town. And I heard you screaming about Bradley, too. He had a bucket of water thrown on him. It wasn’t right. I had this nagging feeling all day. When I left to go home, I knew with the temperature dropping in the low 20s, no blankets, well, I may have barely graduated high school, but I do watch a lot of shows on The Discovery Channel. Hypothermia doesn’t just happen to people lost in the forest. I wouldn’t be a real American, a real officer, if I didn’t think of his life in danger. Which it is.”
We finally made it to his police car and I couldn’t stop the tears from falling and the panic from flooding my chest.
I rubbed my hands up and down his cold limbs but he just lay against me, barely moving. “Come on, Bradley. Come on.” I kissed his ice-cold skin over and over again.
“The thermal conductivity of water is thirty-two times greater than air. The fact that he was slapped with that icy bucket water wasn’t right. It wasn’t just hazing. It was a death sentence. If I would have left you two over night, he could have died. Not to mention that excessive alcohol raises your risk of hypothermia. Did you know you could even get hypothermia in summer from your wet clothes? If you body heat drops too drastically and it’s windy. It happens.”
My mind was racing as he droved slowly through the blizzard. I was listening, but it sounded like background music. I was scared to death I was losing Bradley. Just when I finally had him.
“Maybe you should go into the medical field.”
“Yeah. Maybe. Maybe I will with the hefty sum of ransom money. I mean, award money from Mr. Rainshaw once he comes to.”
We finally pulled into Southampton Hospital.
“He hasn’t eaten all day either, or all night. His body doesn’t have any nutrients to help him stay warm.”
“Thank you for saving our lives. I’ll spare you in the upcoming media firestorm that you know is coming.”
“Yeah, well, about that compensation.”
“Of course. Of course.”
“Promise he’ll remember me? He’s not coherent right now.”
“I promise. Thank you.”
As soon as we made our way through the doors with the help of Officer Jackson, we were assisted.
With the blizzard and the special circumstances of practically the entire island being shut down, it was an eerie sight with the hospital being like a ghost town.
Once Bradley and I were seen, Officer Jackson tapped his hat to us and I promised we would remember him and compensate him. I no doubt would have Bradley do so; he saved his life.
The nurses and doctors immediately administered humidified oxygen via an air mask as they removed my jacket from him and he instantly shivered, naked. He was so weak. So tired. So incoherent. They immediately wrapped him in a special blanket before laying him down to administer an IV.
“Is he going to be okay?”
“He came at the right time.
”
“We need to check your vitals, as well. You don’t look so great.”
* * *
I wasn’t even aware that I was shaking all over until a nurse began to check my vitals.
“Will he need stitches on his lip? He’s so bloody and swollen. I gave him my jacket. I wasn’t there for long, though.”
“There?”
“Jail. But uh, it’s not like you think.”
“DWI?”
“No, God, no. I, well, some asshole I guess decided to administer me into custody because I kept asking questions about, my, uh…uh… boyfriend.”
Just saying that term of endearment caused color to rush to my cheeks.
“And you were left how long? I feel like I should bring our officer in here. It’s not every day you see a man naked and barefoot.”
“For hours. In the dark. Cold. They left him like that!” I began shivering thinking about it all.
“Okay, I’m going to administer a sedative and get fluids and nutrition in you as well. You should get some rest, as well. I’m sure that was quite traumatic.”
“I…I’m not cold like he is. I don’t think I have hypothermia.”
“Sweetie, you’re in shock. It’s written all over your body.”
“Well, it was quite…stupid…stupid…crazy! I didn’t think you could just be put into jail like that. I didn’t do anything.”
My breaths were coming quickly now and everything I had held back to stay strong for Bradley—giving him my jacket, trying my best to stay calm to keep him calm, well, it all came crashing into me like a freight train. That pound of bricks. The restricted breathing. The anxiety attack.
“Are you on any medications?”
I nodded. “I sometimes take Xanax when an anxiety attack is coming.”
“I’ll get you something. I also need to get you an IV and an oxygen mask.” I went weak in the knees and sat in a chair by the hospital bed. I felt spent. I felt like I was cast into angry waves at sea, seeing Bradley suffer like that. It really took a toll on me. Being freezing, fear. I shivered thinking about it all.