The Blade and the Damage Done

Although the wound on Anna’s neck was insignificant, the startling discovery of the brutal sewn up wounds on her stomach were enough to warrant a trip to the hospital for examination by a physician.

Once there, a nurse dressed in a crisp white uniform came to her and lead her to a place where there was a bed with a pull curtain on an aluminum rail overhead.

Pulling the curtain closed, the kindly nurse had Anna sit on the bed, before she crouched down in front of the girl. “My name is Doris,” said the nurse. “What’s your name?”

“Anna,” replied the girl, big eyes round.

“A doctor is going to come in and look at you, okay?” Doris asked.

Anna nodded.

Doris smiled, a kindly expression on her middle aged face. “After the doctor is done, there’s a woman from Child Services here who’s going to come and talk to you and help look after you until we can get in contact with your mommy,” advised the nurse.

Anna nodded again.

Doris stood up, placing a comforting hand on Anna’s shoulder, “It won’t be long now, the doctor will see you,” she provided, slipping out through the break into the curtain.

When Doris returned, she was with another man, he was dressed all in pale green. He was an older man, bald on top, silver on the sides, he wore glasses and held a clipboard in his hands.

“Hello Anna, my name is Dr. Henry,” he introduced, smiling down at her, then glancing back to the clipboard.

“I have an uncle named Henry” Anna replied.

He smiled, “Henry is my last name, James is my first name but you can call me Jim okay?” he said, crouching low in front of her.

“Doris is here in case you feel uncomfortable, but I would like you to remove your shirt for me, if you could?”

“Is my daddy here?”

Dr. Henry nodded, “Your father is in another part of the hospital right now, other doctors are looking after him, okay?”

She nodded.

He let her remove her t-shirt. In thirty four years of being a doctor, he had never seen such willful and deliberate damage inflicted on a child. He leaned back. The ugly lacerations carved deep into her skin, through the full thickness of the epidermis almost into the underlying tissue, were crudely stitched together. They resembled symbols of some type, arranged in a specific order, but he had no idea what they represented.

Doris let out a gasp. “Her back,” she said, eyes looking at the lattice work of brutal scars.

The doctor’s examination of her revealed the depth of her father’s depravity and treatment of her. Over the years she was in his care, at very specific calendar events, he had ritualistically mutilated her, decorating the tender flesh of her back with a near perfect circle containing an eight pointed star surrounded by odd triangular markings situated from her shoulder blades to the narrow of her young waist. Likewise, the soft skin of her stomach and thighs, sported similar welted ugly scars on her young smooth flesh, some older, some very recent.

She would scream as he tied her down and brutalized her innocent flesh, cruelly slicing and gouging her without regard for the pain he was inflicting upon her. He would say pain was a purifier and only through suffering could she be set free.

She didn’t understand, mentally and emotionally unequipped to process the sadistic brutality inflicted on her at the hands of the man she was supposed to respect and love above all others in the whole world. He said he loved her and was doing this for her, telling her again how miraculous and what a special girl she was. The pain was transitory and would pass.

Torn between the savage pain and the distorted sense of love she felt for the man who was her biological father, she had remained with him, enduring his bouts of madness and desecration of her body, suffering in silent loyalty.

Inspecting the wounds, he checked for signs of infection and underlying structural damage to the tissue beneath. Once his examination was complete, Dr. Henry carefully photographed her, making sure to document all of the markings for his report.

“Who did this to you?” he asked.

“My daddy,” she replied.

He shook his head, “You’ve been a very good girl, you can put your clothes back on,” he said. Stepping through the curtain, he let out breath and ran an aged spotted hand over his balding pate.

“How’s she doing?” Anna heard a woman ask.

Peering through the vertical gap in the curtain, she could see the doctor turn to talk to the other person whom she could not see.

“This little girl has been tortured,” he said, shaking his head, lips pulled back, eyes narrowed.

“What do mean, like molested?” asked the concerned female voice.

“No, she said he never touched her there. It looks like he took a scalpel and literally carved out chunks of her creating extensive scarification of her skin, particularly her back, stomach, thighs, and each of the palms of her hands,” he explained.

“Oh my god, who would do that?” exclaimed the female voice.

“He father. I can’t understand it, it’s beyond beastly, the man is a monster,” stated the physician.

“How is she doing?” inquired the woman.

“Remarkably resilient, but I want to call Dr. Dennard to come in and do a psychological evaluation on her,” he advised. “I also want to get Ben Shepherd in here, he’s the best plastic surgeon I know and I want him to see what he can do as far as skin grafts are concerned,” he added.

“By all means,” she answered. “Did you want to keep her here then, for observation?”

“I’m going to have her moved to a private room on the third floor. None of her wounds are life threatening, she doesn’t need to be here in emergency and I think she’ll benefit from some privacy,” he expressed.

“Absolutely, this whole thing is already all over the news, actual video footage of her rescue, it has gone national,” said the woman.

“Great, just what this little girl needs right now,” scorned the doctor.

“Agreed,” answered the woman.

“Here, let me take you in to meet her,” said the doctor, pulling the curtain back slightly to reveal a fairly plump woman with curly hair. “Anna, this the lady from Child Services, her name is Margie.” The round woman smiled broadly, Anna smiled back shyly. “Margie, this is Anna,” introduced the doctor.