The Resurrectionist by Wrath James White Page B

She remembered looking up and seeing Dale stab Josh again and again. And she remembered what he had done to her. She could not forget the image of his tiny penis thrusting between her blood-soaked breasts. The problem was that she could also remember waking up unmarred with no visible wounds or scars and seeing her husband…alive. It had to have been a dream. But then she’d started finding things, things that didn’t add up, things that supported her memories. The only thing that didn’t make sense was the fact that she and Josh were alive.
    They arrived at the hospital with the police officer still visibly annoyed at being inconvenienced. There was a nurse waiting for him along with a victim advocate from the LVPD.
    “We’ll take it from here,” the female detective said, and the young officer looked like he could just barely contain the urge to jump for joy.
    “Have fun, guys,” the officer said, and saluted themwith a flip of his hand as he turned and walked out the hospital’s sliding doors, weaving around a gurney that was being rushed in by some paramedics with a man on it screaming his head off and bleeding from a huge wound in his leg. The officer gave the bleeding man the same flippant salute as he strode out into the parking lot.
    “Asshole,” Sarah and Josh said in unison as they watched him leave.
    The female detective smiled at Sarah as she ushered them into a small examination room.
    The victim’s advocate from the police department was a tall black woman in her late thirties with thick curves. She had a kind face with a scar in the corner of her mouth that ran from the right corner of her lip up to her nose.
    “My name is Detective Trina Lassiter.”
    “Sarah Lincoln.”
    “Okay, Mrs. Lincoln, tell me what happened,” she said as she and the nurse pulled on a pair of latex gloves.
    “I’m not really sure. I remember being attacked but I’m not sure it wasn’t a dream.”
    The nurse just nodded without looking up.
    “That’s normal. Your mind sometimes suppresses unpleasant memories,” the nurse, a Latino woman in her fifties, said.
    The detective opened a big plastic bag and withdrew cotton swabs, Q-tips, and little plastic jars.
    “When do you think this happened?” Lassiter asked.
    “The memories are from two nights ago but I think something may have happened last night as well.”
    The nurse finally looked up. She looked at Detective Lassiter and then they both looked back at Sarah.
    “You think you’ve been raped twice?” Lassiter asked.
    “At least. I think the neighbor is doing it. I think he might be drugging me.”
    Detective Lassiter turned to the nurse who was still staring with her mouth open.
    “Let’s get blood and urine samples. Check her for GHB and rufinol.”
    She turned back to Sarah.
    “Okay, let’s get your clothes off. Is this what you were wearing during the attacks?”
    “No. They happened at night when I was sleeping. I was just wearing my underwear but somebody washed them.”
    She related the entire incident, as much as she could remember including being stabbed and then waking up the next morning without a mark on her. She told the detective about the bloody sheets and then the missing sheets the next day. The tall black woman listened patiently.
    “Okay. Okay, let’s just get you undressed.”
    Sarah took off her clothes and slipped into the hospital gown. She put her legs into the stirrups and closed her eyes as the nurse swabbed the inside of her vagina and anus and then swabbed beneath her tongue and inside her cheeks, bagging each Q-tip and labeling it before placing them back into the plastic envelope. She winced as the nurse slid a syringe into the vein on the inside of her elbow and withdrew three vials of blood. Then she gave Sarah a cup and helped her into the bathroom to take a urine sample.
    When she came out of the bathroom she could tell by the demeanor of the two women that something had changed.
    “What did you