Andy paced around the living room. Sharon had excused herself to sleep and left him wondering what would be an effective way to talk to her about the last few days. He wanted to trust her, but her entire story was off, and her avoidance made him even more suspicious.
That she had returned to Los Angeles without telling him was alarming. He knew that she felt embarrassed to be seen in her bruised and beaten state, but how did she think to hide it from him, the man who, in a few months, she was supposed to marry?
He was confused and concerned and wanted answers he wasn't sure he'd ever get. Hell, he wasn't even sure what to tell Provenza earlier that day. He had lied and told the grumpy old lieutenant that Sharon had returned home sick and needed his help for a few days. He hated lying to his best friend but had no idea how to explain his fiancée's absence and her sudden reappearance.
He had checked on her after she had gone to bed, finding her in bed with her jeans and hoodie. It was odd. Sharon never wore everyday clothes to bed, and now she was breaking her habit. He looked at her sleeping form from behind; her breathing was labored and was accompanied by a soft whizz. It sounded like she had something in her lungs or maybe a cracked rib that made pain seep through her slumber. He remembered how hard it was for him to breathe after he had been nearly ran over by a suspect the previous year. Sharon sounded the same.
He left the bedroom and went into the kitchen to cook some soup for her. He could see how hard it was for her to chew her lunch, and she tried it for him, but he could tell she wasn't hungry. He occupied himself with thinking up a meal plan that she could eat without pain and spent the next couple of hours cooking.
A suspicious sound drew him out of the kitchen and into the bedroom. Sharon wasn't there, but Andy noticed the bathroom door was open, and he went there, finding her kneeling in front of the toilet and retching what little food she had eaten earlier. With only one functioning hand, she had not moved her hair from her face, and Andy quickly kneeled by her side, gently gathered her hair, and twisted it upwards. Sharon hissed as his fingers touched the nape of her neck. That was when Andy saw it was covered by an odd pattern of black and blue bruises, a pattern he recognized from various crimes he had investigated in his long career: fingers.
After Sharon emptied the contents of her stomach, she looked at Andy, realizing what he saw, but knowing she could not explain it to him.
"Can you get me some water?" she asked, trying to distract him.
Andy nodded and went to the kitchen to get her water. When he returned to the bathroom, Sharon was lying on the floor, her beaten cheek against the cold tiles, and trying to regulate her breathing. Her lips moved as if she was unsuccessfully trying to get a breath in her lungs but couldn't. Abandoning the glass of water by the bathroom sink, Andy rushed to her side and gently lifted her head off the floor.
"Sharon," he said her name softly. "I'm here with you. You are safe."
He had never seen Sharon going through a panic attack before, but he was trained in helping others go through it, and he had personal experience dealing with it in the past, too.
"You are safe, and I am here with you," he repeated. "Do you think you could get off the floor?"
Sharon looked at him, her eyes slowly filling with tears.
"Let's try something simpler. Can you count to five?" Andy asked.
"One," Sharon's lips moved, but no sound came out. "Two."
"Try to count louder."
"Three," her voice was croaky but louder. "Four."
Andy nodded, encouraging her to continue.
"Five," she wailed the last number.
"That's great. How about telling me what day Emily was born?"
"October 28th, 1987," Sharon's voice shook, but it was a quicker response.
"Wonderful. Now, let's try to sit. Can you push yourself up, or do you need help?" Andy asked.
"Help," Sharon croaked.
Andy nodded and helped her prop herself up against the bathtub.
"That's much better, right?" Andy asked.
Sharon responded with a slight nod and brought her knees to her chest.
"You've been through a terrible experience. It's normal to feel like this," Andy said.
"I wanna go back to bed," Sharon said, and Andy recognized that she avoided talking to him again. Maybe she needed time to process what had happened to her, he thought as he helped her off the floor.
"Why don't we get you into something more comfortable?" he asked, motioning towards her jeans once they were in their bedroom.
"No, it's fine," Sharon replied.
"Come on, it can't be comfortable sleeping like this," he said, reaching for her hip.
"I said no!" She roared and pushed him backward with so much force that Andy stumbled, and his back hit the wooden chest behind him.
He groaned in pain and looked at her in disbelief. The woman in front of him was not the Sharon he knew, and by the haunted look in her eyes, he realized that she also failed to recognize herself.
"I'm sorry," her voice shook. "I'm so sorry, Andy, I didn't mean to…"
And with these words, she escaped the bedroom and locked herself in the bathroom.
Andy rubbed his sore back and sat on Sharon's side of the bed. He shouldn't have forced her to change, but wanted her to feel more comfortable. As his eyes searched for an anchor to hold on to, his gaze landed on two pill bottles on Sharon's night desk. Sharon usually didn't take any pills, and Andy grabbed one of the bottles and looked at the label. He didn't recognize the medication name, but he felt confident it wasn't a painkiller or an antibiotic.
Taking his phone out of his pocket, he googled the medication's name and its use.
"What the hell?" he muttered under his breath. He took the other bottle – another medication with a name he didn't recognize – and googled it, too.
What he found made him bury his head in his palm and wish he had known earlier, wish she had told him. His heartbeat grew faster and faster, and breathing became more difficult. Why did she lie? Why didn't she trust him? Hadn't she known he would be by her side no matter what?
Standing up, he walked towards the bathroom door and knocked on it gently. "Sharon, open the door, please."
He could hear her sobbing silently behind the white door.
"Sharon, can you please open the door so we can talk?"
She unlocked the door and let him in, taking a seat on the bathtub's edge and wrapping her healthy and broken arms around herself.
Andy leaned against the counter, keeping a safe distance from her. He could tell that she appreciated the space.
"You're wearing your engagement ring," Andy said softly. "They'd have taken it if you were really mugged."
Sharon let out a deep yet shaky sigh.
"And you're taking PEP," he said softly, no blame in his voice. "That means you think you may have been exposed to HIV, right?"
Sharon lowered her gaze and gave him a single nod.
"I think it's safe to assume you weren't mugged," Andy said softly.
"No," Sharon's voice was hoarse. "I wasn't, um, mugged."
Andy hoped she would deny what he suspected and insist she hadn't lied. It would have been easier.
"What happened?" Andy asked.
"I'm pretty sure you figured it out by now," Sharon replied, her voice so small and defeated.
"I'd appreciate hearing the truth from you," Andy said.
"They must have been following me during the convention," Sharon said. "There were three of them in my hotel room when I returned on the last evening of the conference. They broke in somehow while I was out."
Three men? Andy's head was reeling. Three men had done this to his fiancée and had broken her from the inside out.
"By the time I realized they were there, I had no way to get out," Sharon said.
Andy wrapped his arms around himself, mirroring Sharon's position.
"One of them had a baseball bat," Sharon touched the side of her face. "And he used it to knock me down. I lost consciousness for a couple of minutes, and that was enough time for them to rip off my…" She shook the collar of her hoodie instead of saying the word.
Andy involuntarily imagined the scene, and it was horrifying.
"I said no."
That was the third time Andy had heard this exact sentence from her today. Maybe she had been trying to tell him all along and didn't know how to say the words. In fact, she hadn't outright said it yet.
"I said no, over and over and over," Sharon went on. "And they still kept going. And when I tried to resist, they crushed my fingers with the bat. They threatened to cut them off if I uttered another sound, and I was so scared, Andy. I stopped and just let them go on, hoping they'd leave me alone once they were done."
"But they didn't," Andy said.
"Eventually, they did. Two of them left the room to get some beer. I pretended that I had passed out, and when the third guy turned his back, I reached for the bat that they'd thrown on the bed earlier, and I smacked him on the head – maybe six or seven times. I killed him, and I called the police."
Andy looked at her, so devastated by what she had just told him and, at the same time, so proud of her for saving herself, for surviving this unbearable ordeal.
"It turns out it's their MO. They follow solo women in conferences and break into their hotel rooms. And when they're done with them, they slit their throats and leave the bodies for the maid to find out. They've done this to five women already."
Andy wanted to throw up.
"And now one of them is dead, and the other two have been taken into custody, and I provided enough DNA evidence to put them away for life, so… now you know."
Andy remained silent. He wasn't sure what to say.
"I didn't know how to tell you. I had hoped you'd never find out," Sharon spoke, her voice so weak that Andy felt the urge to hold her. He wasn't sure she'd appreciate it, so her kept his arms to himself. How Sharon had thought he wouldn't find out was beyond him, but he could imagine that she was still trying to come to terms with what had happened to her; that it had happened to her to begin with.
"I'm glad you're okay," Andy said, sitting on the bathtub's edge by her side. "Well, I guess you're not okay. I'm glad you're alive, though."
She rested her head on his shoulder, the first physical contact she felt truly comfortable with in days. "It's gonna take a long time for me to recover."
"I know, and we'll go through this together," Andy promised.