Chapter 10
Charles, Ororo, and Remy were still sitting outside the med lab, waiting for news, when Jean and Hank finally came out an hour later. Hank spoke to Ororo first. "She will be all right," he said quietly. "She is in shock right now; it is to be expected. She's badly bruised and battered, but those will fade with time." He hesitated.
"Give me the bad news," Ororo said quietly, sensing there was something more. "If she's just bruised, where did all that blood on her nightgown come from?"
"The blood…" Hank paused, chewing his lower lip anxiously. "There's no easy way to say this…I guess…well, she was sexually assaulted."
Ororo clamped her hands to her mouth to stifle her cry of anguish. Jean, sensing her friend's pain, stepped forward, hugging her tightly as Ororo stared at Hank with tear-filled eyes. Hank, unable to bear the sight of Ororo's face, looked down at Charles instead. His words, however, were for Ororo's benefit as much as Xavier's. "Her body tore around the point of entry," he said quietly. "Jean and I had to put stitches in. It will be intensely painful for the next few days, until she heals enough for me to remove them, so I will keep her heavily sedated. Her feet were cut up by the gravel on the path leading up to the back door, and she was also chilled through. Charles," he said, turning to Xavier, "What do you want me to do? Shall we keep her here, or shall I move her to the hospital in town?"
"She came here for help and for comfort," Xavier said slowly. "I am not going to send her to a hospital. When she wakes up and doesn't find herself in familiar surroundings, she's going to be terrified. I don't want to traumatize her unnecessarily. And I want to know what happened."
Hank looked relieved. "I was hoping you would say that," he said. "She shouldn't be moved, anyway. As to what happened…well, I could wake her long enough for you to talk to her. She was begging us to let her see Ororo; she will doubtless feel better after she sees you," he said to Ororo. "However, if you are visibly upset it will upset her further."
Ororo wiped the tears from her face and swallowed the lump in her throat. "All right," she said. Hank waited another few minutes fro Ororo to straighten her clothes and hair, and then opened the door to the medlabs.
Joey lay in the bed, her pale face almost the same color as the sheet covering her. Her eyes looked even more startlingly purple against the pallor of her skin, and it just accented the dark bruise under her right eye. Ororo stood there for a moment, fighting the urge to cry again, and got herself under control before she stepped forward and reached for the limp hand. The girl's nails were broken, and there was dirt under them. "Joey?"
The girl's eyes opened partway, then she turned her head to look at Ororo. Her hand fought its way out from under the sheet, and she reached out to grasp Ororo's in a shaky grip. Ororo folded the small hand in her own, giving it a gentle squeeze as she said quietly, "Joey. Can you tell me what happened?"
"It was Mr. Hunt," Joey said weakly. Hank and Charles, on the other side of the bed, leaned forward intently, but she ignored them, focusing on Ororo. "He walked in on me when I was taking my bath. I told him to get out. He said I wasn't being polite; he went to Mrs. Seward's room and got the yardstick and beat me. He put my old nightgown on me. It's too small, and it makes me look younger than I am, but he liked it, I guess. Then he pulled his zipper down. I heard him do it, and I got scared. I did what you told me to do, I kicked him right there where the zipper ends, and he fell over with a funny sound. I ran. I couldn't think of anywhere in the house I'd be safe, so I ran outside, went to the greenhouse. I locked the door I thought I was safe. But I wasn't; he sort of ripped the door off, I guess. He saw me sitting on the floor, and he…" Tears filled those indigo eyes. "He grabbed my hair and made me open my mouth, and then he…he put his thing in my mouth, and I felt like I was going to get sick…I dug my nails into his tummy. He shoved me away. I fell into the shelves, and all my plants fell down. Then he took his belt out of his pants, and he beat me with that. Then he got on top of me and he put himself inside me. It hurt, awfully. I screamed. I begged him to stop hurting me, I begged and begged him, but he didn't care, and he just kept going, so I picked up a flowerpot and hit him with it.
"He got really, really mad. He picked up the belt again. I thought he was going to hit my legs, but he didn't. He hit my chest, and that really hurt. I tried to crawl away, but he wouldn't let me go, and he raped me again, and then he got up and told me to come back in when I was ready for more." Tears spilled down her cheeks, and Ororo gently wiped them away, being careful not to touch the bruise. "I couldn't go back, Ororo, I just couldn't, he hurt so bad…All I could think of was coming to you. You could make the pain stop." Her eyes overflowed again. "Please don't send me back. He'll kill me, I swear he will. And nobody's there to stop him; everybody's gone. Even Mrs. Seward, she went to visit a relative."
"Ssshh." Ororo bent carefully over the bed and hugged the frail body gently. "You're not going anywhere. You'll stay right here as long as you want to. I'll stay with you. He won't get you here, no one will hurt you here. Trust me." And Joey sobbed into Ororo's shirt as Charles quietly left. Ororo saw Hank reaching for Joey's IV, and nodded imperceptibly as Hank injected a sedative. After a few moments Joey went limp again, and Ororo gently lowered her back to the bed and tucked the sheet back around her before following Hank out of the room.
Charles was as close to being totally enraged as Ororo had ever seen him. He had clamped a tight psychic shield around his mind, to keep his anger from affecting the others around him, but his face was shuttered and closed, and Ororo could see the thin anger lines around his compressed lips.
"I have been patient with her father," Xavier said, "But he obviously doesn't know about this. If you will excuse me, I am going to call all his offices until I find him, and I will tell him what's happened." He turned his hoverchair and headed for the elevator that would take him to his office.
Jean patted Ororo's back gently. "'Ro, are you okay?"
Ororo wiped away the tears that had been flowing unheeded down her cheeks. "I shall be all right, Jean," she told her friend, smiling weakly. "I am just…I…Seeing her in so much pain, Jean, it hurts. I didn't realize how much I cared about her."
"You not de only one, chere," said Remy grimly. "How dat bastard could hurt a chil' like dat is beyond me. I wish I could go make him hurt like he hurt her." He turned on his heel and stalked off.
Jean sighed. "Is there anything I can do?" she said gently to Ororo, who shook her head.
"I am going upstairs to change, and then I'm coming back down," Ororo said. "She will look for me when she wakens; if I am not there she will panic again. I do not want to stress her out like that."
"I'll wait here until you get back, then," Jean said. Ororo nodded once, then headed up to her room to change into her regular clothes and grab her book. It was going to be a long night.
Charles called the Tokyo office first. No Henry LeFevre there. The secretary hadn't seen him since last week, and no, she had no idea where he was at the moment. However, she did think he had an appointment in the Paris office; maybe he should try there.
He wasn't there. The secretary told Xavier to try the Vienna office. The Vienna office told him to call the Rome office. And so on it went. Xavier got more and more frustrated, and more and more angry, so by the time he dialed the number to the Brussels office he spoke almost rudely to the secretary. "Mr. LeFevre, please."
"I'm sorry, sir, he's in a meeting right now, and can't be disturbed. If you'd give me your name I can have him call you back--"
Xavier took a quick glance at the clock. It was almost three in the morning by now; in Brussels, it would be about nine in the morning. Joey had come to the back door around ten o'clock; that meant that, as Joey had been raped, Henry had been lying soundly, peacefully asleep in a hotel halfway around the world. The thought stoked the fuel of Xavier's rage, and he almost snapped at the secretary. "I'm sorry, I need to talk to him now. It won't wait." A sudden thought struck him, and he said, "My name is Dr. Xavier. I need permission from Mr. LeFevre to perform emergency surgery on his daughter, Joette Gourand." There was silence from the other end, and then the secretary spoke again. "If you'll wait a minute, Dr. Xavier, I'll get him on the line for you."
Henry was sitting at the table, listening to one of his Brussels managers talk, when there came a tap at the door. Before he could even stand, his secretary poked her head in. "Call on Line 71 for you, Mr. LeFevre."
"I told you I was not to be disturbed, Catherine," Henry started to say, annoyed, but she interrupted him.
"Sir, I know you did, but the caller sounds urgent. He says he's a Dr. Xavier, and he needs your permission to perform emergency surgery on your daughter."
"Surgery…Joette…emergency…" Henry bolted up out of his chair and ran into the office, where he snatched up the phone Cathy had laid down on the desk. "Doctor? Doctor, what is wrong with my daughter?"
Xavier's voice was sharp as he responded. "Your houseguest, Mr. Hunt, brutally beat and raped your daughter. She came to my back door barely conscious, battered, and bleeding. My friend and personal physician Henry McCoy needs your consent to put stitches in her body where your guest tore her open."
Henry's mouth fell open. "No…this can't be possible…Greg Hunt wouldn't do that…"
Xavier sighed and softened his tone. Henry really sounded like this had taken him by surprise. 'According to Joey, he has been coming into her room at night when she's sleeping and relieves himself while he watches her. She tried to tell Mrs. Seward, the nanny you hired for her, but that woman refused to believe her and beat her with a yardstick for telling lies."
"No…" Henry's breath left his body in a huge sob. "No…Oh, God, my little girl, my baby, what have I done…who are you, that you know all this?" he asked in a whisper.
"Charles Xavier, Henry. Charlie X, from college? Remember? I own the house and property next door to you, and turned it into a school? One of my students, Ororo Munroe, has developed a close friendship with her. They both have an interest in horticultural pursuits. Ororo was the only one Joey could turn to after Mr. Hunt raped her." Xavier proceeded to tell Henry exactly what Joey had told them. "She is now a guest in my house, and will remain so. I will not allow her to return to her home, even if she were in a condition to be moved, which she is not. She has no wish to return home, either. My doctor saved every scrap of evidence, and when Joey wakes up and feels a little better, I will call the police and file assault, battery, statutory rape, and pedophilia charges against your houseguest."
"No you won't," Henry said, pushing himself up against his secretary's desk. "I'll take the company plane and be at Kennedy by this afternoon, New York time," he said. "I am going to file the charges myself. But I have to see my baby first. Will you be expecting me?"
"Yes," Xavier said. 'We'll be expecting you."