Rescue Me

Chapter Twenty-Two

Carlisle was hidden in his office eating his (rather late) lunch when the phone rang. He groaned loudly and for the first time in his life considered ignoring the call…but then his conscious stabbed at him and quite rightly so. The receptionists knew he was taking his first break of the long day and they wouldn't have put a call through unless it was an emergency.

"Cullen," he said as he picked up the phone, dropping his barely touched sandwich back into his Tupperware lunch box.

"Sorry to interrupt your break, Dr Cullen, but I've got Chief Swan on the line and he says it's urgent."

"Oh," Carlisle mumbled. He'd heard from one of the other ER doctors that the Chief of police had been a patient himself earlier that day after someone they had been arresting turned violent. A bad feeling began to grow in his gut as he asked the receptionist to put the call through.

"Carlisle?" Charlie's voice was heavy with worry, a fact that worsened Carlisle's gut feeling. "I don't know if you've heard about what happened earlier…"

"You ended up in hospital with nasty black eye and a slight concussion," Carlisle interrupted him, "How is your head feeling, by the way?"

"Better. Look, the guy we arrested earlier, the violent drunk…it was Ethan Whitlock," Charlie explained quickly. "When I went to tell the kid, Jasper, he admitted to me that his dad abuses him at home. He's down at the station with me at the moment; we're waiting on child services before he makes his statement. I was hoping you could come down and give him a check-up," Charlie sighed deeply, "He's got some fresh looking bruises and we'll need a list of them for his statement…"

"I'll be right there. And I'll bring a copy of his personal fill. That should help with the case against that bastard," Carlisle growled, so angry with the man at that moment he did something he normally wouldn't do - he swore.

"I hadn't thought of that," Charlie muttered, obviously annoyed with himself.

"Also wouldn't it be better for me to do the examination here?" Carlisle suggested as the thought entered his mind. "A judge might frown at a medical examination being done at the station…"

"Damn. I hadn't thought of that either," Charlie muttered, now very annoyed with himself. "I'll bring the kid over once the woman from child services gets here."

"Ok. I'll let the staff know to send you in straight away," Carlisle said, already searching on his computer for the electronic copy of Jaspers file. Charlie said a hurried goodbye and Carlisle heard him barking orders before the line went dead.

Sighing sadly Carlisle called the necessary people and gave some orders of his own whilst telling the computer to print the horrifying large folder of information that was Jasper Whitlocks medical history. This done he settled back into his chair and watched pages shooting out of the state of the art printer. His stomach growled loudly, he hadn't eaten since six am and so he picked up his sandwich and took a bite…but it didn't taste the same as it had done before. Gone was the pleasant taste of tuna and cucumber and in its place was…ash.

Dropping the rest of the sandwich into the bin he resigned himself to going hungry for the rest of the day and settled back into his chair and lost himself to his worried thoughts about poor Jasper…

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A/N Big, big, big apologies for the length of this chapter. I haven't been very well and I kinda feel that the next bit of the story needs to be told from Jaspers POV.