'Hey. Did you get any sleep?' Harvey asked softly. Donna just smiled at him and nodded gently before resuming her apparent fixation on the fire drill posted on the door to her room. She'd been moved to a private room that morning, which they had all agreed was better for her after the previous night. His heart sank at her reply: he knew she was lying to him. He would never claim to have even a fraction of her ability to read people, but he could see the dark circles under her glassy eyes and the way she stifled yawn after yawn.
'The police want to speak to you today.'
'Ok.'
'Doctor Campbell said they'd be here in an hour.'
'That's fine.'
'Donna, are you ok? Do you want to talk about it? Whatever's wrong, please just tell me so I can help.'
'I'm fine Harvey, just in a lot of pain and all these meds make it hard to think.'
'Ok I just thought you see-'
'What? I'm fine,' she snapped. Harvey felt his heart break as he saw the defeated look in his wife's eyes. Evidently she had not slept at all and she was thinking about the assault.
'Are you going to try and get some sleep for me?' he tried, 'I'll stay with you, I promise.'
He saw the longing in her eyes and the temptation to give in.
'I mean, I should get my beauty sleep for the hot policeman coming, right?' she smirked. The old Donna flickered back, but the flame in her eyes extinguished before he could fully appreciate its presence. He stroked her arm softly again as she closed her eyes and tried to relax. He traced the circumference of the purple bruises around her upper arm where he assumed Jackson had hit her or she'd fallen, but in the harsh light he could see the distinctive shape of fingers, as though she'd been grabbed. Similarly, there were hand prints on her throat and he guessed, from her pained expression last night, on her lower back and waist too. He brushed his fingertips over her cheek and leaned over to kiss her lips softly. Her eyes screwed even tighter shut and she forced her head further into her pillow, her breathing quickening again.
'No… no,' she mumbled
'Hey I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It's only me, shh,' Harvey soothed, 'I didn't mean to scare you, go back to sleep.'
He resumed the systematic, soothing strokes up and down her arm, pondering the handprints and what they meant. And why did she seem so scared of him? Having helped Mike with a few pro bono cases in the past, he knew that assault victims were often jumpy, but he had never seen them as outright terrified of people as Donna seemed.
