Excerpt
The police had arrested Sadie immediately following Morley’s removal by ambulance paramedics. Under their extensive questioning, the woman shed light on the events that happened that day – the morning Morley arrived in Medicine Hat. Sadie had been aroused by what she thought was a fight between two patrons of the girls down the hall, but on opening her door to yell at them, she saw a well dressed man being beaten up by two burly thugs she knew. The man whose name she had never learned had put up a good fight, but was no match for his assailants. Sadie watched in horror, screaming at them to stop. When they finally left him for dead and walked away, she had been terrified. She knew the police would involve her – she was well known to them – and she didn’t know how to convince them that she had nothing to do with this poor man’s death.
Soon, however, she discovered he was still alive, and she knew she couldn’t leave him there to die. But she couldn’t call the police or an ambulance, nor could she move him herself. So she enlisted the help of the desk clerk/bouncer, and swore him to secrecy. What information she used to blackmail the man, the police did not find out, nor did they consider it important.
For days she had tended Morley’s injuries, and did everything she could to ease his pain. At first he lay in a state of semi-consciousness, calling out for someone with a name Sadie had never heard before except for that river in England. Over and over, she had asked him his name and where he came from, but to no avail. Finally he sank into a coma from which she could not rouse him. She became even more terrified. What if he died? What could she do, and how could she keep it from the police? And besides, she had started to feel compassion for him, and began to believe that he belonged to her – like a brother, perhaps, or a lover … who knew?
In the end the police had released Sadie from custody. They decided she was not involved in any way except in the role, as misguided as it may have been, of good Samaritan.
Libros Libertad 