Chapter 4
After a few more sips Catherine smiled and said, "Thank you."
"You are most welcome, Catherine. Is there anything else I can do for you to make you more comfortable?"
"I know this is silly, but to help me relax I like to read, could you maybe read to me? I understand if you can't," she rushed on.
"I would love to read to you. What kind of books do you like?"
"The classics, poetry, and Shakespeare"
"I have been reading 'Great Expectations', would you like me to read you some of that?" he asked.
During this exchange Father and Mary had faded away. If Vincent could keep their patient quiet by reading to her, they felt that would be a good thing.
"What a funny coincidence I was reading that the night before…" she trailed off here. "Well, before the attack."
"Catherine, I am sorry that this happened to you, but I will take very good care of you while you are here. Now if you will excuse me for just a moment I will get the book and return to your side."
"Vincent, where am I? This doesn't seem like a hospital…"
"No, it isn't. You are in my home, you were hurt so badly and I needed to get you to help fast. Father is a doctor and it was faster to bring you here."
"Where is here?" she asked in a tentative voice. She could hear tapping on what sounded like a metal, 'Morse code?' she thought, but she couldn't be sure since she didn't know it.
He returned with the book and sat down in a nearby chair. Vincent knew that Father had told him to tell the woman nothing, but he could sense how afraid she was and knew she needed some reassurance.
"It is a safe place, where people live and try to care for each other, it is my home," he told her gently.
"Vincent, is that tapping I hear?" she asked
He hesitated only a moment before replying, "It is people talking. It's our way of communicating here. They are tapping out messages on the pipes."
"So I'm really not in a hospital am I?" she asked with a hint of fear in her voice as she tried to sit and then hissed through her teeth at the pain.
"Please Catherine, don't try and move like that! If you wish to sit up, let me help you," he begged, reaching out to do so.
"Vincent! Why would you have brought me here if medicine were in such short supply even if it was closer!" she demanded to know.
"The hospital was just too far. At times we do have trouble getting supplies, but our Helpers have always come through for us in the past. I don't think it is anything that you need worry yourself about."
Catherine was quiet a moment and then said, "How long have I been unconscious?"
"I found you in the park seven nights ago," he told her softly.
"I have been here that long? Surely people are out looking for me!" she fretted.
Worried that she meant the men that had attacked her, from the fear he felt inside her, Vincent told her, "Catherine, this is a secret place, no one will find you here or harm you."
"Why do you all live here?"
"Each of us have our own reasons, for me, I was abandoned as a baby and brought here to the man that became my Father. He raised me." He paused for a moment and then went on when she didn't respond right away, "I was left outside of St. Vincent's Hospital. That is why I was named Vincent."
"Oh Vincent, that's terrible! Being abandoned, I mean!"
"I was loved here. There were always people to take care of me. No one could have had a better childhood." With a touch of amusement in his voice, he told her, "We still have our book to read, should I begin now?"
To be continued….