The Door to December

minutes ago.'
     'Where is she?' Laura demanded.
     'Valley Medical.'
     'The hospital?' Her clenched heart began to pound like a fist against her rib cage. 'What's wrong with her? Is she hurt? How badly?'
     'Not hurt,' the officer said. 'Way I get it, they found her wandering in the street, uh, naked, in a daze.'
     'Naked,' Laura said weakly. The fear of child molesters came back to hit her as hard as a hammer blow. She leaned against the counter and gripped the edge of it with both hands, striving not to crumple to the floor. Holding herself up, trying to draw a deep breath, able to get nothing but shallow draughts of air, she said, 'Naked?'
     'And all confused, unable to talk,' Phil said. 'They thought she was in shock or maybe drugged, so they rushed her to Valley Medical.'
     Haldane took Laura's arm. 'Come on. Let's go.'
     'But ...'
     'What's wrong?'
     She licked her lips. 'What if it's not Melanie? I don't want to get my hopes up and then—'
     'It's her,' he said. 'We lost a nine-year-old girl here, and they found a nine-year-old girl seven blocks away. It's not likely to be a coincidence.'
     'But what if ...'
     'Doctor McCaffrey, what's wrong?'
     'What if this isn't the end of the nightmare?'
     'Huh?'
     'What if it's only the beginning?'
     'Are you asking me if I think that ... after six years of this torture ...'
     'Do you think she could possibly be a normal little girl anymore,' Laura said thickly.
     'Don't expect the worst. There's always reason to hope. You won't know for sure until you see her, talk to her.'
     She shook her head adamantly. 'No. Can't be normal. Not after what her father did to her. Not after years of forced isolation. She's got to be a very sick little girl, deeply disturbed. There's not a chance in a million she'll be normal.'
     'No,' he said gently, apparently sensing that empty reassurances would only anger her. 'No, she won't be a well-balanced, healthy little girl. She'll be lost, sick, frightened, maybe withdrawn into her own world, maybe beyond reach, maybe forever. But there's one thing you mustn't forget.'
     Laura met his eyes. 'What's that?'
     'She needs you.'
     Laura nodded.
     They left the blood-spattered house.
     Rain lashed the night, and like the crack of a whip, thunder broke across the sky.
     Haldane put her in an unmarked sedan. He clipped a detachable emergency beacon to the edge of the car roof. They drove to Valley Medical with the light flashing and the siren wailing and the tires kicking up water with a hissing sound that made it seem as if the world itself was deflating.
    6
    The emergency-room doctor was Richard Pantangello. He was young, with thick brown hair and a neatly trimmed redbrown beard. He met Laura and Haldane at the admitting desk and led them to the girl's room.
     The corridors were deserted, except for a few nurses gliding about like ghosts. The hospital was preternaturally silent at 4:10 in the morning.
     As they walked, Dr. Pantangello spoke in a soft voice, almost a whisper. 'She had no fractures, no lacerations or abrasions. One contusion, a bruise on the right arm, directly over the vein. From the look of it, I'd say it was an IV drip needle that wasn't inserted skillfully enough.'
     'She was in a daze?' Haldane asked.
     'Not exactly a daze,' Pantangello said. 'No confusion, really. She was more like someone in a trance. No sign of any head injury, though she was either unable or unwilling to speak from the moment they brought her in.'
     Matching the physician's quiet tone but unable to keep the anxiety out of her voice, Laura said, 'What about ... rape?'
     'I couldn't find any indication that she'd been abused.'
     They rounded a corner and stopped in front of Room 256. The door was closed.
     'She's in there,' Dr. Pantangello said, jamming his hands in the pockets of his white lab coat.
     Laura was still considering the way in which Pantangello had phrased his answer to her question about rape. 'You found no indications of abuse, but that isn't the same as saying she wasn't raped.'
     'No traces of semen in the vaginal tract,' Pantangello said. 'No bruising or bleeding of the labia or the vaginal walls.'
     'Which there would've had to've been in a