“She mustn’t have too much agitation, Dr. Herschel,” the nurse said.
Lotty pushed herself to her feet. Despite the gray hair, she still moved with easy agility. I smiled foolishly at her. She didn’t stay long but the next evening she returned with Morrell. The two together told me my story.
A state trooper had found me on the Belmont exit ramp to the Kennedy around three on Sunday morning. The boxes that tumbled out of the back of the truck when CO Polsen drove off had saved my life: a motorist, swerving to avoid them, noticed me lying in the road and called the cops. The state troopers rushed me to Beth Israel, where Dr. Szymczyk—the same surgeon who’d been on call the night I found Nicola Aguinaldo—patched me together.
I had been luckier than Nicola on several counts. When Hartigan kicked me, I’d managed to twist away enough so that my ribs took the main force of his blow. He had badly bruised my intestine and I had developed a severe infection, which accounted for my fever, but when the state trooper found me, the wound had only just begun to perforate the peritoneum. Nicola already had such advanced peritonitis when I came on her that she didn’t have much chance for survival.
And then, unlike Nicola, I was in good physical condition and I was used to defending myself, so that despite the jolt from the stun gun—which was what Hartigan shot me with—I was able to shield myself from the worst of his blows. I had apparently managed to put my hands over my head, so that the kick that knocked me out broke the fingers in my right hand but didn’t do serious damage to my skull.
“You were lucky, Vic,” Lotty said. “But you also don’t have the habit of victims.”
“But how did I end up here instead of in the hospital? The Grete Berman Institute is for torture victims, isn’t it? That isn’t really me.”
“I didn’t think you should be moved from Beth Israel until you were more stable, but Morrell persuaded me that the man Baladine could get access to you in a hospital if he was looking for you. I wanted to bring you to my home, but the Berman Institute is secure and fully staffed, so I finally agreed to let you be moved here as soon as you were out of surgery. But besides that, you—” Her voice cracked and she steadied it. “You were in a helpless situation, at the mercy of the law, shot with an electric weapon, beaten, and then chained to a bed. I think you were tortured, Victoria.”
“She needs to rest now, Dr. Herschel,” the nurse intervened.
Over the next several days, as I got back on my feet and began to get some exercise in the Berman Institute gardens, Morrell put together the rest of the story for me. He had called Freeman Carter when he got back to Chicago from Coolis that last Thursday, urging him to try to get me a bail hearing in Chicago on Friday; Morrell told Freeman he was worried that Baladine might not let me survive the weekend. Freeman was skeptical at first, but Morrell managed to persuade him.
Freeman spent all day Friday shaking up the judicial system trying to find me. It was three on Friday afternoon before the head of the circuit court granted Freeman permission to post my bail in a Chicago courtroom and have me released that afternoon instead of making us wait until a circuit judge rode out to Coolis on Monday.
At that point, although no one outside the prison knew it, I was already chained to a bed in the segregation wing, with a rising fever. Freeman couldn’t get anyone at Coolis to admit to my whereabouts and finally was told that they lacked the administrative personnel to process my release after 5:00 P.M. on Friday, that Freeman would have to come back on Monday.
Freeman went to the state appellate court and got an emergency writ requiring my immediate release. The prison then told him I had faked an injury at my work station and they had put me in the hospital. On Saturday, as my fever rose, they played a shell game with Freeman, passing him between the prison and the hospital, each saying the other had possession of my body.
Of course neither Freeman nor Morrell knew what discussions took place at the prison end of things, but the most likely guess was that the staff panicked. Perhaps they thought I might die, and Freeman was making it clear they would face intense scrutiny if they didn’t produce me in good shape. They probably figured they could repeat what had sort of worked for them with Nicola Aguinaldo: dump me in Chicago—where I’d either be hit by a car or die of my wounds—and put out word that I had managed to escape. Morrell showed me the Herald–Star’s report.