Malice by Danielle Steel Read Free Book Online Page B

at him.
    “Tell that to the chief,” he grinned at her. He liked her, but he didn't believe a word of her self-defense theory. She was clutching at straws. John Adams just wasn't that kind of guy. No one in Watseka would have believed it, no matter what Molly York thought, or the hospital told her.
    Two women officers came to pick Grace up in her cell half an hour later, handcuffed her again, and drove her to Mercy General in a small van with grilles on the windows. They didn't even talk to her. They just chatted to each other about the prisoners they'd transferred the day before, and the movie they were going to see that night, and the vacation one of them was saving up for in Colorado. And Grace was just as glad. She didn't have anything to say to them anyway. She was just wondering what they were going to do to her at the hospital. They had a locked ward they took her to in an elevator that went up directly from the garage, and when they got there, they uncuffed her and left her with a resident and an attendant. And they let Grace know in no uncertain terms that if she didn't behave herself they would handcuff her again and call a guard to control her.
    “You got that?” the attendant asked her bluntly, and Grace nodded.
    They didn't bother explaining anything to her. They just went down a list of tests that Dr. York had ordered. They took her temperature first, and her blood pressure, checked her eyes and ears and throat, and then listened to her heart.
    They did a urine test, and an extensive blood test, checking for illnesses as well as drug screens, and then they told her to undress and stand naked in front of them, and they checked her over carefully for bruises. She had a number of them that caught their interest, there were two on her breasts, several on her arms, and one on her buttocks, and then in spite of her efforts to conceal them from them, they discovered a bad one on her inner thigh where her father had grabbed her and squeezed her. It was high up, and led to another that surprised them further. They took photographs of all of them, despite her protests, and wrote extensive notes about them. She was crying by then, and objecting to everything they were doing.
    “Why are you doing this? You don't have to. I admitted I shot him, why do you have to take pictures?” They had taken several graphic ones of her crotch, but there were two bad bruises hidden there and some lesions, and they told her that if she didn't cooperate they would tie her down and take the pictures. It was humiliating beyond words, but there was nothing she could do to stop them.
    And then, as they put the camera down, the resident told her to hop on the table. Until then, he had scarcely spoken to her. Most of the directions had been from the attendant, who was a very disagreeable woman. Both of them ignored Grace totally, and referred to various parts of her as though they were looking at them in a butcher shop, and she weren't even a human being.
    The resident was putting on rubber gloves by then, and covering his fingers with sterile jelly. He pointed at the stirrups and offered Grace a paper drape to cover herself with. She grabbed it gratefully, but she didn't get on the table.
    “What are you doing?” she asked in a terrified voice.
    “Haven't you ever had a pelvic?” He looked surprised. She was seventeen after all, and a good-looking girl, it was hard to believe she was a virgin. But if she was, he'd know in a minute.
    “No, I …” Her mother had gotten her birth control pills four years before, and she'd never been to a doctor for an examination. No one knew for certain that she wasn't a virgin, and she didn't see what difference it made now. Her father was dead, and she had admitted that she had shot him. So why put her through this? What right did they have to do this? She felt like an animal, and she started to cry again as she clutched the paper drape and stared at them, as the female attendant threatened to tie her