And after doing some paperwork, it was nearly midnight when he got back to Gabriella. “What's new on Sleeping Beauty?” he asked the nurse easily, and she shrugged. There had been no further response from her all evening. Maybe it had been a reflex, or maybe she was just so beaten up, she wanted no part of the world anymore. She had withdrawn into a place where no one could touch her. Sometimes that happened.

He sat down in the chair next to her, and the nurse left, and he put his finger in her hand again, but nothing happened. And she looked more than ever as though she were in a deep coma. He was just about to give up on her when he saw her move her arm in his direction, and stretch out two fingers toward him. Her eyes were closed, but he knew that she had heard him.

“Are you talking to me?” he asked gently. “How about saying something to me?” They needed to know if she could speak, and eventually if she could reason. But right now a word, a look, a sound would have been enough for him. “How about singing me a little song or something?” He had a funny, easy way with patients in the most devastating circumstances, which made both his patients and his nurses love him. And his remarkable skill in bringing people back from the dead, or damn close to it, had won him the respect of his colleagues.

“Come on, Gabriella, how about it? The ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ maybe? Or what about Twinkle, Twinkle’?” He sang it to her, softly, and very off-key, and a nurse wandering by grinned at him. He was a little crazy, but they loved him. “What about ‘ABC? It's the same tune, you know. I'll do ‘ABC,’ you do Twinkle, Twinkle?” And as he chattered on to her, suddenly there was a soft moan and a sound that was anything but human.

“Which one was that?” he asked, sensing victory beckoning him, and wanting to snatch it quickly. “Was that ‘ABC’ or Twinkle, Twinkle’? I recognized the tune, but I didn't quite catch the lyrics.” She groaned again, louder this time, and he knew she was coming back to them. This was no reflex. And this time, her eyelids fluttered, and he could see that she was trying to open them, but her eyes were still very swollen. And very gently, he reached down and tried to help her. And just as he touched her, her eyes opened slowly. All she saw was a blur, but she could see the outline of someone standing there. She couldn't see the tears in his eyes as he watched her. He wanted to shout, “Gotcha!” By sheer will, if nothing else, they had snatched her back from the dark recesses of death. And maybe, just maybe, she was going to make it.

“Hello, Gabriella. Welcome back, we missed you.” She groaned again. Her lips were still too swollen to speak clearly but he could see she was trying. There were a lot of questions they wanted to ask her, about what had happened and who had done this to her, but it was much too soon now. “How do you feel, or is that a really stupid question?” This time she nodded, and then closed her eyes. Moving her head was excruciatingly painful. She moaned at him again, and opened her eyes a minute later. “I bet you do.” He could give her something for the pain eventually, but having just come out of the coma, he didn't want to get her all doped up yet. She was going to have to live with it for a while longer. “Do you think you can say anything to me yet?… I mean other than sing Twinkle, Twinkle.’ “ He could see she was trying to smile at him, but the grimace she made instead was much too painful.

“Hurts,” was the one word she finally came up with. It was a cross between a groan and a whisper.

“I'll bet it does.” He couldn't begin to imagine where, there were so many possibilities to choose from. “Your head?”

“Yes…” she whispered, and sounded a little less croaky. “Arm… face…” There weren't too many places on her body that hadn't been battered. But she was also coherent enough now that he knew there were other questions he had to ask her. The police were due back in the morning. They had been keeping close tabs on her. It was the worst assault they'd seen in years, and they wanted to catch the guy who did it.

“Do you know who did this to you?” he asked cautiously, and she didn't answer. She closed her eyes then, but he was persistent. “If you know, I'd like you to tell me. You don't want him to do this to someone else, do you? I'd like you to think about it.” He sat very quietly and she opened her eyes and looked at him, she seemed to be thinking about it. She had always protected them, all of them, but even in the dark recesses of where she had been, she knew that this was different. “Do you know who it was?” If it had been an intruder, she may not have known. But Peter suspected it wasn't. And she didn't answer his question. “We can talk about it later.” She blinked agreement, and then tried to speak again.

“Name…”

“The name of the person who beat you up?” He was confused now, but she frowned and looked annoyed that he hadn't understood her. She pointed a finger at him then, barely lifting it off the covers. She wanted to know who he was. “Peter… Peter Mason. I'm a doctor. And you're in the hospital. And we're going to get you all put back together and send you home, but we want you to be safe there. That's why we want to know who did it.” She only moaned again then, and closed her eyes, exhausted. She drifted off to sleep, and he watched her for a minute and then left her. She was definitely thinking clearly. She had responded to everything he said, and she wanted to know who he was. It was a great beginning, and he was encouraged.

He slept for a short time that night, and came back to see her in the morning. She was looking brighter than she had the night before, and she was able to speak more clearly in a whisper, and she remembered that his name was Peter. The EEG looked good and so did all the other monitors. She was definitely up and running, by his standards at least, which didn't take much. And he was still with her when the police came to see her. They were pleased to hear she was no longer in a coma, and what they wanted now was information.

Peter warned them, as they approached her bed, to go easy. She had only been conscious since the previous evening. They asked her the same questions he had, although less gently. They told her they wanted to do everything they could to help and protect her, but they couldn't do it unless she told them who had attacked her, and she looked very pensive when they said it. She seemed to be weighing it all out, thinking about it, and she almost looked as though she were listening to something.

“You can't let this happen to you again,” Peter said quietly, standing next to her bed, and looking down at her with compassion. “Next time you might not be as lucky. Whoever did this to you wanted to hurt you, Gabriella. He did everything he could to injure you and kill you.” He had kicked her, broken her, bruised her, tried to strangle her. This was not an accident, or even a crime of passion, in his mind. It was a vicious attempt to destroy her, and he had very nearly been successful and she knew it.

“He wanted to do this to you. Now you have to help us catch him, so it doesn't happen again. You won't be safe until he's put away in jail where he belongs. Think about it.” She was, obviously, and she looked up at them, moving her eyes from one to the other. Her whole life had been spent protecting other people, hiding their crimes, making excuses for them, telling herself she deserved it, but suddenly she no longer believed that. She didn't deserve this. He did. She opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it again, unsure of herself. And the suspense was killing them. And then finally, when Peter was certain she wouldn't tell them, she looked directly at him, and nodded. Something he had said had gotten to her, and opened the door for her, and he knew it.

“Come on, Gabriella… tell us… you've got to. You don't deserve this.” She didn't, and she knew it. Just as she had known when he did it to her that he had no right to do it, no right to do what her mother had done, any more than she had. And it was exactly what she had said to Steve. It was over. She was never going to let this happen again. No one would ever again touch her, not like this, not to hurt her. She wouldn't let them.

“Steve,” she whispered almost inaudibly at first, “Steve Porter.” But she knew she had to explain other things as well, and she barely had the strength to do it, but they were listening closely and one of the inspectors was scribbling. They knew Porter was her boyfriend and lived at the boardinghouse, from what the other boarders had told him. “Other names… letters in the professor's desk… different names… he's been in prison.” Both inspectors looked up simultaneously. This was going to be easy. Bingo.

“Do you remember what his aliases are, Miss Harrison?”

“Steve Johnson… John Stevens… Michael Houston.” She remembered them all with surprisingly little effort. And now she wanted to do this. She owed it to herself, after all these years, and she knew it. No one would ever hurt her again. Or break her. And Steve deserved everything that happened to him. “He's been in prison in Kentucky… Texas… California…”

“Do you know where he is now?” they asked her, and she told them she didn't. “He hasn't been here, has he?” They looked up at the doctor and he shook his head. That crazy he wasn't. “Do you know why he did this to you? Was he angry at you? Jealous? Were you trying to break off with him, or seeing another man?” Those were all the usual reasons.

“He wanted money from me… I've been giving him money for months,” she whispered, and he'd been taking it, but she didn't have the strength to say that. She could tell them the rest later. “And a friend just left me some money… He wanted me to give him all of it, or most of it… or he'd say I tried to have him kill the professor… He left me the money. Steve wanted it all… wanted to go to Europe… said he'd kill me if I didn't give it to him.” And he had very nearly delivered on the promise. And then she added the final blow to what she had told them. “I think he killed the professor… tried to… hurt him… then he had a stroke… he left me the money.” It was a little garbled, but they thought they could get the rest from the landlady and the other boarders at the boardinghouse, and there was plenty of time to ask Gabriella more questions later, when she felt better.