no one, and she knew that all she could do was wait and see what happened. She had known for years that there were no rescuers, no saviors in her precarious life.
Eventually, her father left the house, and it was then that her mother found her. It was all too predictable, as she descended on her like a large, furious black bird. Her hair was down and flying out behind her. Her fists were powerful and relentless. Gabriella was aware of a sharp pain in her ear right from the first, a blow to her head, and a battery of blows to her chest, and this time her mother used a candlestick to hit one of her legs. Gabriella was sure she would hit her in the face or on the head with it, but miraculously she didn't. And after the shock of the first few minutes, the rest was a blur. Eloise was angrier than she had ever been, and Gabriella could sense easily that whatever she did now, whatever she said, might cost her her life.
She did nothing to avoid the blows that rained down on her that night. She simply waited, as she always did, for the storm to abate. And when it receded finally, and her mother left her alone on the floor of her room, Gabriella couldn't even crawl onto her bed. She simply lay there, drifting between consciousness and darkness, and was surprised to find that this time nothing hurt. She felt nothing this time, and all through the night she saw what seemed like halos of light around her. She thought she could hear voices once, but she couldn't hear what was being said. It wasn't until morning that she realized someone real was speaking to her, the voice was familiar, but just like the voices the night before, she couldn't distinguish what she was hearing. She didn't even realize it was her father. She never saw his tears, or heard his gasp of horror when he saw what Eloise had done to her. Gabriella was lying in a pool of blood this time, her hair matted to her head, her eyes glazed and unseeing, a terrifying wound on the inside of one leg. He wanted to call an ambulance but he was afraid to. Instead, without even waiting to talk to Eloise, he wrapped Gabriella in a blanket, and hurried outside to hail a cab.
When he arrived at the hospital, he wasn't even sure she was still breathing, but he rushed inside and deposited her on an empty gurney, called for help through his tears, and explained that she had fallen down the stairs. It was almost a believable tale, considering the extent of the damage, and no one questioned him. They put an oxygen mask on her small pale face and rushed her away, surrounded by nurses with worried faces, while John stared at them in disbelief.
He sat there looking stunned for several hours, and it was four o'clock in the afternoon before they came to reassure him that she would in fact survive. She had a concussion, three broken ribs, a broken eardrum, and a serious wound on one leg. But they had stitched her up, taped her ribs, and after a few days in the hospital, they felt sure that the worst of her injuries would be repaired. They asked him how long he thought it had been from the time she fell until he found her, and he said he thought several hours, although he admitted he wasn't sure when she had “fallen.” He didn't tell them he'd been out.
“Shell be fine,” a young intern reassured him, and the nurses promised to take good care of her. He peeked in at her once, but she was sleeping, and without approaching her again, he left. He felt dazed as he rode home in the taxi, unsure of what to say. He had no idea how to stop Eloise now, how to end this, how to do anything except escape himself. At least Gabriella was in good hands now. It seemed like nothing short of a miracle that she'd survived the beating of the previous night.
He entered the house with overwhelming trepidation, and was relieved to discover when he went upstairs that Eloise wasn't there. He had no idea where she was, and he no longer cared. He went to the library and poured himself a stiff drink, and then sat there waiting, not even sure what to say to