Try Not to Breathe by Holly Seddon Page A

of information on her record that was marked as confidential and wouldn’t have been in the papers.”
    These details would have been gold dust to a prosecutor, thought Alex, and they wouldn’t have given them away in case that jeopardized a trial. It felt like just another quiet injustice that Amy never got her trial. “Do you think her attacker thought he’d killed her when he left the scene?”
    “Who knows?” The doctor held her gaze. “I mean, really, who knows what a person like that thinks.”
    Alex nodded. The uncomfortable facts were seeping through her notes like a dark ink blot. It appeared that Amy had willingly had sex with someone, and been attacked soon after. She was there, in part, through trust and choice.
    “So she wasn’t raped or sexually assaulted, it was a non-sexual attack?” Alex clarified.
    “That’s what it looks like on paper here, but there would be far more details in the police forensic reports. I’m just looking at the bare medical facts, just the stuff we needed to know to treat her.”
    “Could the person she had sex with, and the person who attacked her, be two different people?”
    “Yes, possibly,” Dr. Haynes said, looking at his watch. “It’s possible she willingly had sex with someone then toddled off and ran into someone else, who attacked her, but…”
    “But no one ever came forward who’d had consensual sex with her,” Alex finished, “right?”
    “Right.”
    Alex continued: “So she had a boyfriend, but apparently they hadn’t slept together, so…”
    “I can’t really help there. I wouldn’t have the first clue about my patients’ love lives. I can barely get my own on track.” Peter Haynes looked up briefly and then back down at his hands.
    “Oh yes, of course,” Alex said, feeling her cheeks flush a little. “Just one more thing. Last time we spoke, you said that Amy had shown signs of brain activity. Does that mean there’s a chance she might wake up?”
    “Well, she’s not asleep, Alex. That’s an important distinction; this isn’t a coma. She’s in there somewhere, to a small degree at least. But after fifteen years, and with such slow progress, I think it’s highly unlikely she’ll ever improve.”
    “But it’s possible?”
    “Well, it’s not entirely impossible. But it’s highly unlikely. Alex, I’m sorry to rush you, but I really need to get to another meeting.”
    “No problem at all. And thanks so much, you’ve really helped iron things out. It’s been hard to piece together from news clippings alone.” Alex stood up quickly and grabbed her bag.
    “Well,” said Dr. Haynes, extending a hand to shake. “You can’t trust everything you read in the newspapers.” And he smiled, holding Alex’s hand for a little too long.
    —
    The chill of Dr. Haynes’s touch stayed with Alex long after she’d left the office and made her way, blinking, out of the hospital and into the sunlight.
    She walked with sore feet to her car, which was parked in the farthest corner, shaded by a thick tree. She sat down with a heavy “hmph” and placed her bag, notepad and phone on the empty passenger seat. She yanked off her shoes and lobbed them into the back foot well. For just a few moments, she closed her eyes in the cool quiet. Her head thumped and she was sweating last night’s Sauvignon Blanc.
    Her conversation with the doctor had stitched together some assumptions—and scorched some guesses where they lay. As grotesque as she found the crime, the challenge of unpicking Amy’s final conscious moments stirred a small part of her, buried beneath the rubble.
    Once upon a time she had been a bright young thing, a celebrated writer, a “voice of her generation.” She’d had fire and ambition and ideas…now most of the time she felt dry. Her moment had passed, and she’d spent it wasted.
    Alex slipped her flip-flops on and headed home. Her mind churned over her conversation with the doctor as she drove slowly past the white villas