Adrenaline kicked in, and I freed myself from the strange man, ran into the hallway, and began banging on the door where I had earlier set my handbag for safekeeping. The door was padlocked from the outside. I began to scream and kick the door with the pointed toes of my shoes. At that moment, the music cranked up loudly and one of the guys from the bar in the corner of the living room—the tall one who had given me the drink—walked calmly over to me, picked me up like a sack of ashes, and deposited me back into the arms of the bespectacled stranger.
What happened next was unspeakably horrible. After pinning me down with his arms and legs, he raped me repeatedly. He beat me, despite my screams and my begging. I passed out from the fear and pain.
Waking briefly a few times throughout the night, I heard sounds, voices, slamming doors. I felt hands on me. I could not move. Suddenly, light flooded the room, and I found myself lying on a filthy orange sofa across the room from where my rape occurred. I was covered in nothing but a filthy sheet. The sheet was covered with large spots of blood. As I tried to get upright, I realized with horror that the blood was my own…
At the hospital, I was told to wait, and was given some tea by a nurse. No one gave me any paperwork to fill out. There were stares, gestures, and quiet conversations at the desk. I assumed that far more serious cases had come into the E.R. Finally, after waiting for a few hours, the nurse approached me and told me that they could not help me, that I had to travel to Richmond or Washington, D.C. for what I needed. Apparently, I needed “tests.”
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