Step Back, Part 12

On Wednesday afternoon a police cruiser pulled up to the ER entrance of Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas.  One of the officers rushed inside to get a gurney while the driver went back to extract the victim from the car.  The teenage girl had been severely beaten and then received further injuries from dropping from the second storey window to escape the family home.

It was on the street that the officers first saw the girl and from there taken her to the hospital.  

Mark Goldman was the doctor on duty when the girl was brought in. As he worked on her injuries she briefly regained consciousness.  He used the opportunity to speak to her.

“I’m Doctor Goldman, you are at Parkland Hospital.  Who did this to you?”

“Father,” she replied.

“Who is your father?”

“William Grant.”

Goldman was not surprised.  To him it wold take a very serious mental disconnection to preach any form of religion on an advanced technological medium such as television.  The beating of his own daughter to a bloody pulp was clearly not a surprise to the doctor.

“Do yo know why did he beat you?”

“He found my copy...of...Atlas Shrugged.”

After she had returned home after school for the day Judith Grant has spoken with her father.  He absolutely had to read his latest sermon to Judith and his other children.

Judith had learned the hard way to not criticize her father to his face.  But the obvious disconnection from reality was too much even for her this time.

“Father,” she said, “the Uptimers are just normal people doing what they see as right with what they have.  And reality is real, Father.”

He was shocked to hear a voice of dissent.  Then the state of anger at his oldest daughter rose within him.

That shock and anger was clearly in his voice as he spoke in return to her.

“What did you say?”

Judith could see her father’s anger, but she would speak what was clearly the truth.

“Reality is real, things and people are what they are.  A is A.”

Grant recognized the last sentence and the literary work it came from.  In full rage he stuck Judith in the face with his open right hand.  As she fell to the floor he looked to his other children.  They were clearly frightened of him now.

Good, he thought.

“Go to your rooms!”  He shouted the command.

As his other children scattered in fear to their rooms he reached down picked up Judith from the floor.

“Where is it?”  He shouted in a state of full rage.  “Where is that filth?”

“Atlas Shrugged?”

“Yes!  Where is it?”

There was no point in lying,  She answered the question.

“In my room.”

In a full rage he dragged her by the hair to her room and bodily pushed her inside.  He then followed.

“Now!”  He shouted.  “Where is it?”

There was no point in hiding it.  It was simply a material object, and one that could be replaced.  It was her own life that was precious and it was something that could no longer be lived in the shadow of a monster.  At this time, right now, that she decided to leave.  To run away from this nightmare.

She opened a dresser drawer where she kept some of her underwear  and pulled out an aging paperback copy of the book.

He suddenly grabbed it from her hands and shouted.

“This!  You dare to defile this house of The Lord with this filth!”

He raided his voice further.

“Rand is Satan’s whore, and you are no better than one yourself!”

He started beating her.  He would eventually beat her unconscious.  When she regained consciousness she found that the door to her room was wedged shut.

She decided at this time to go out of the window.

In the ER Doctor Goldman now stopped and looked down at Judith for a moment.  William Grant was generally known to have major connections to the political establishment in Dallas.  As a result he could very well get away with beating Judith, even if she had eventually died.

Doctor Goldman spoke to Judith.

“I promise that he will not harm you ever again.”

The girl smiled.

“I have some other things to do.”  He said.

“Yes.”  She replied.

Doctor Goldman steeped out into the hall and immediately saw one of the cops who brought Judith Grant to Parkland Hospital.  He walked up to him and spoke.

“Officer, William Grant has committed a felony assault on his daughter Judith.  He has to brought in.”

“Can’t do it.”  The officer replied.

“Why not?”

“Reverend Grant is politically connected and is untouchable.”

That was wrong thought Doctor Goldman.

“And what if his daughter dies?”  He replied.  “Then you’ll have a murder to deal with?”

The policeman shook his head and answered.

“Then I guess we’ll have to find a nigger to fry for it.”

Doctor Goldman stared for a moment.

“Never mind.”  He said.

There was something else he could do.

Goldman returned to a small office just off of the ER.  He opened his desk and brought out a notebook.  He recently attended a conference of Objectivists in New York City.  The CMO from the Eagle was one of the speakers at the conference.  And he wrote down a contact number.

He picked up the receiver of the desk phone and dialed zero.

“Hello, operator?  I need to make a long distance call to Nevada.”