Body aching from head to foot, Harry laid on the ground as the cold seeped into her skin. She needed to find David and get home to Charlie, but to do that she had to get off the ground first.

She didn't understand what was wrong with her. She'd only been punched in the jaw and kicked. Worse happened at her previous school once a fortnight; large boys wailing on kids half their size, and their victims would always manage to get up just fine. So why was she struggling to move?

Voices... She'd heard voices before she'd been attacked. She tried to call out, but no sound came from her hoarse throat.

A beam of light scanned the area, much brighter than the pathetic glow from her phone, wherever that had disappeared to. Help was coming, as long as they saw her.

She made the effort to try to sit once more. Shifting her body, she placed her right hand on the ground, testing to see if the arm would hold her weight. She had barely rested it on the ground and the pain was already intense. Harry wriggled her left arm out from under her body, and propped herself up. Her tender muscles objected to the movement.

She let out a short, loud groan. At least she was regaining some of her vocal abilities.

"Over here," a woman yelled.

Footsteps stampeded towards her.

Someone stood near her back. They knelt down and gently bundled her against their body, cradling her like a newborn. Their bare chest was like cold stone.

She cleared her throat, but her voice still came a mere whisper, "Your shirt... I brought you your shirt. Its on the ground here somewhere. You'll catch a cold without it."

Torch light illuminated David's face. It was plastered with concern. His steel eyes were awash with horror as he looked at her damaged face. He would feel responsible for her being injured, even though it was her stupidity that had gotten her into this mess.

"Don't you worry about me. I'm fine."

He used the same voice she'd heard him use once when tending a baby bird, which had fallen from the nest. Did she really look that fragile? She felt pretty terrible, so perhaps she actually was more banged up than she'd realised. In Harry's mind she was always the heroine, she'd never imagined herself as the damsel in distress.

Her head was getting heavy. Her phone and David's shirt were still on the ground somewhere, however she didn't even have the energy to instruct the person with her the torch to look for it.

He carried her home, carefully removing the keys from her pocket, and opened the door. Harry could hear Ranger bounding beside him, attempting to make sense of the situation.

As they moved into the house, the warmth washed over her and the soft feel of microfibre brushed under her hand. Her damaged tissue squished under the skin of her legs and abdomen as gravity pushed her dispersed weight towards the couch.

"Sit me up!" Harry screamed, having fully gained control of her vocals.

In addition to the pain from having weight placed on her now swelling stomach, her whole body was on fire. She had kept her hands in the cold for too long before, then suffered the horrendous ache when running it under hot water. This was ten times worse. Every inch of her reacted to the heat of the room after the severe cold of the ground outside. The atoms within her seemed to be clawing at the heat, fighting within her body to be the first ones it touched.

A woman helped her sit. Harry assumed that she was the one that had called out earlier. It was the first opportunity she'd had to look at her. Her short blonde hair was pulled back off the angular face, which glared disapproval at her.

Harry smiled to herself, even if this woman hadn't been decked out in the traditional blue, her whole demeanour yelled 'cop'.

"Thank you, Sergeant," Harry said guessing her rank from the little she knew of the insignia on her uniform.

"Well, if you'd just let me do my job, we wouldn't have this issue. Why is it you city folk always do idiotic things the moment you get out here?" the Sergeant ranted.

"I'll keep that in mind next time my school is possibly be broken into and someone might be causing thousands of dollars damage," Harry retorted icily.

The Sergeant's attitude got her back up even more because Harry knew there was a strong possibility she was right.

"Ah well, while I'm here, I might as well get your statement. Not that it seems likely we'll catch the culprit now anyway. Thanks to you they're long gone."

"I'll help in anyway, I can, Sergeant... Sergeant... ah?"

"Stone. Sergeant Jenny Stone. How nice of you to do your moral duty."

Harry didn't know what she had done to offend this woman, but it appeared that Sergeant Stone viewed her being attacked as a personal affront that Harry had made intentionally.

"Well... David, we had better get some coffee," the interloper called in a much warmer tone than the one she'd awarded Harry. Turning her frosty eyes back on Harry, she continued bitterly, "I've got to go over events with you and your husband, so it looks like I'll be here for a while."

Sergeant Stone sighed, pulled out her pad, clicked her pen and looked at Harry expectantly, "Harriett Hill, begin at the start of the night..."