Chapter 3: Gimmie Shelter
The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.
- W. B. Yeats
As soon as she had been wrapped in a thin, pastel-blue hospital gown, she gave back the brown felt coat that the harried manger of the hotel had covered her with, when the EMTs had come for her. The woman had rode with her to the hospital, despite Catherine's assurance that she wouldn't want to leave the hotel unwatched, to which the woman had replied that besides her, the only person who was staying in the hotel at the moment was a man who had recently broken up with his wife.
The woman (Margaret, she introduced herself to Catherine) waited with her for the results of the scan for any signs of a concussion from that fall down the stairs. Afterwards, she offered to drive her back to the hotel, but was interrupted by the doctor who had brought news that she was not suffering from a concussion, telling her that they would require her to stay in the hospital over night to make sure she was alright.
"But I'm
fine
, I don't have a concussion." Catherine said, wearily.
"I understand you're also a bit afraid to go back to your room at the hotel, where you said you, ah, felt a presence. It could do you some good, to get some sleep, in case you were hallucinating what you claim you saw." The doctor, an older man with a wrinkly waddle of fat that shook every time he moved or spoke, said in a voice that came off as offensively patronizing.
"Yes," The manager of the hotel said, looking awkward. "I would like a chance to, uh, look around, see if anybody could have snuck into your room, before you have a chance to come back.."
Catherine had been brought to Springwood, a larger town around seven miles away from Rock Garden, to the nearest hospital, Kirsten Cotton Memorial. Catherine wanted, more than anything, to stress that there had been no
person
in the bathroom with her, but she recalled the quiet looks of pity that she had gotten from a nurse and Margaret, when she had told them what had caused her to rush down the stairs.
Instead, she nodded in agreement, and gave a weak good-bye to the hotel manager before she left, giving her instructions to tell Danny or any of the workers where she was and that she had left her phone back in her hotel room. As Margaret left, Catherine felt as though she should try to call her mother and tell her what had happened, but as she was lead to the room where she would be kept for the night, she felt as though she could put if off. No doubt she would be at one of her expensive dinners with her two younger (and more successful and beautiful) sisters. No reason to break that up -- and hear the chiding -- earlier than she needed to. Or, at least, before a shower and a nap.
She was given a basic set of shower essentials -- cheap shampoo, some conditioner and a bar of unscented soap -- and was relieved to be left, thankfully, alone with her bruises and scrapes.
As she prepared to go into the shower, she happened to glance down at her hand, which still had that ring she had found, on her finger. Remembering her earlier run-in with the entity, she hurriedly yanked the ring off, setting it on the sink before jumping into the shower.
The warm water both soothed and stung the tender parts of her skin, as she ran the bar of soap over her body, attempting to not soak the bandages that covered her arms, legs and chest before she set about cleaning her hair and face. As she washed, the small voice of fear, the one that had hinted that whatever the entity had been that had touched her and laughed at her had followed her from the Witchwood, spoke up a little louder.
She had just managed to shut that frightening voice up as she turned the water off and grabbed for the towel next to the shower. As she began to wrap herself in the towel, she thought that she could hear a voice coming from the room behind the closed bathroom door. The thought of the entity, so fresh in her mind, came back in full force, as she thought, panicked, over what she could possibly do, with it standing between her and any chance of escape she had.
As she crept closer to the door, however, she quickly realized that what she heard was some sitcom that was on the television in her room. She knew it was a sitcom, after she heard a studio audience laughing at some muffled one-liner.
Relieved that it was only the television, (but not, for a moment, thinking it odd that the television was on, when she had not turned it on earlier herself) Catherine emerged from the bathroom, drying herself off with the rough towel and luxuriating in the warmth following the shower.
After she had finished toweling herself dry, she put the clean hospital gown that she had been given on and climbed back into the bed and, after locating the remote to the fat, box-like aged television on the other side of the room, Catherine began clicking through random stations.
After flicking through a multitude of channels, Catherine finally settled on a channel that was on its commercial break, after having not found much of anything else besides from a channel that dealt exclusively with a local church's pre-recorded sermons and a news station.
The commercial was for some jewelry shop, and it began with a beautiful young woman smiling with vapid happiness as she received a blue ring box from a male model in a large scarf. "This holiday season," began the announcer in a soft voice. "why don't you let her know that she's the One, with a ring?"
Something about the commercial stirred up a slip of fear inside of Catherine. Trying to calm herself down (Oh, come on, jewelry commercials are popular at this time of the year, its not a big deal) she turned the channel back to that church station, hungry for the sound of any noise in the far-too quiet room.
A white-haired old man in thick, wood-patterned glasses, began to yell out to the crowd beneath the pulpit, "...and what we need,
