Thanks for the feedback guys! This chapter's short, but I didn't want to make a transition and have it be way to long. Anyway- read and review! :)
Henry pulled into an empty parking spot- another blessing of two in the morning traffic- and leaped out of the car, slamming the door behind him.
"What's happening?" he asked, running up to a man in jeans who looked like he wasn't busy ad wasn't part of the emergency crew. "Is someone hurt? Can I go into the club?" he asked.
"Kid, what are you doing out at two in the morning? You don't look old enough-"
"Is someone hurt?" Henry asked, noting that the man did not answer any of his questions.
But the man didn't have to answer. Into Henry's sight came several men holding a stretcher. Henry couldn't see what the men were wearing, or what they looked like, or anything other than the person in the stretcher.
Natalie was lying, strapped in, on the stretcher. Her bare arms and legs that were exposed by her skimpy outfit were covered in bruises, as well as several on her face. Then, one of the emergency men tossed a blanket on top of her to keep her warm. Or maybe because she was...
"Natalie!" Henry screamed, running forward without thinking. Instantly the wind was knocked out of him as two men restrained him. He thrashed against them. "Let me go!" he grunted. "I have to get through!"
They were saying something to him, but he couldn't concentrate. Something about having to calm down, be relaxed, identify the body...
"The body?" Henry whispered, going still instantly and looking into the eyes of one of the men.
He shook his head quickly, as though clearing a thought. "Forgive me. The girl's body- you know her?"
"Is she alive? Please, tell me what happened!"
He sighed. "Someone called 911 to report screams from that alleyway there," he pointed into a dark cavern next to the club. "I've heard people talking, and figured out that she'd been dragged from the club by some jerk. She was raped and robbed... it's fucked up. She doesn't even look nineteen."
He continued prattling on about horrible things, not noticing how this was affecting the boy in front of him, who was white as a sheet and whose vision was swimming. Finally the man looked back up at Henry.
"You know her?"
Henry nodded slowly. "She's my girlfriend. I... came to pick her up," he swallowed back the tears for Natalie's pain and his self-hatred. He suppressed any feeling, letting himself remain numb while he walked away.
Henry walked up to a man who was doing paperwork from the ambulance.
"She is alive, isn't she?" he choked out, his eyes huge.
The man looked up at him. He nodded sadly. "It's horrible, isn't it?"
"What kind of bastard-"
"Can I help you?" the man asked brusquely, having business to attend to.
"Yes- I can identify her."
"Good. She didn't have anything on her- not a phone, not an id, real or fake... nothing. The guy really cleaned her out."
"Her name's Natalie Goodman," he said, then gave them her address and phone number and parents' names. The people would investigate more at the hospital, but they needed some information to start.
"Can I ride with you, in the ambulance?" Henry asked, knowing it was futile.
"No," the man said, but this time he looked kinder, seeming to empathize for Henry's pain.
"Where are you taking her?" Henry was remarkably calm and quiet about this.
The man told him the hospital's name, and then the ambulance got the ok to go to the hospital. Before it did, though, Henry got another look at Nat through the open doors of the emergency vehicle. She was hooked up to countless wires and machines already, her head lolling, bleeding, unconcious, black and blue...
He ran from the street and reached a patch of grass. Then he threw up. Then, with businesslike precision, he got into his car and started driving to the hospital.