Chapter 11
Thanksgiving weekend is notoriously bitterly cold in Chicago with winds whipping off the lake in teeth-chattering gusts and blankets of powdery snow carpeting the brown grass in grim promise of more to come.
Amy Hanson pulled up the collar of her beige cashmere coat, her hands thrust warmly into the deep pockets, her black over-the-knee boots crunching like a mouthful of peanuts over the snow. But bus stop was a short block away.
Her frost-nipped fingertips reached up to swipe at the hot trickle streaming down her cheeks. Behind her the awesome dark brick of Washington Memorial Hospital devoured her shadow. That old building, like some powerful maternal force had absorbed her share of anguished cries and hushed fears, sympathetically sponging up the bile of man's physical and mental frailties, blackening herself, though she stood stolid and ageless still. To the right the newer, lighter brick marked the recently dedicated Rehabilitation Ward, an experiment in prison reform. A naughty curl, happy to be free, swept over her eyebrows. Amy brushed it back. Wearing her hair long and flowing was a nuisance, but not forbidden. As of an hour ago Amy had turned in her cap.
Those men ... Butch and Ben and Josh hadn't suffered any permanent consequences. Denied television privileges was precious little punishment for their cold-blooded calculated attack that never reached the ears of hospital administrators. Satchmo, black as the building he worked in, accepted the blame for letting his patients slip undetected from bed in the middle of the night. Negligence, the hospital administration called it. In retribution, the old alcoholic would be committed for two weeks to dry out.
Scary, really, being free of that dingy hole. One knew what to expect from socially maladjusted men ... sexual taunts, physical abuse. Strangely enough, it had been oddly gratifying expecting the worst from these sadistic men and receiving it- more gratifying, really, than hanging out in singles bars expecting to find another Joe and going home lonely and frustrated to sleep with her cat. Enough of this depression. Time to get out, kick up her heels and flaunt that sexuality! That remained intact; Joe couldn't take that to the grave.
Funny, she thought, sitting down on the bus stop bench, fidgeting in her coat pocket for a quarter. Who's rehabilitating who back there? Bitterness had no part in her emotions even after that brutal rape. Those despicable men had possessed her body, shamed it, darned near tore it to shreds ... but her spirit remained untainted. Odd ... Amy shivered, hunkering against the cold. Maybe those psycho movies aren't just junk ... maybe those sex starved idiots back there really exorcised me of Joe's memory-that untractable bondage that held her tied to dead memories too sweet for reality and too embittered with age.