Chapter 1 - THE MONITOR STARTED SCREAMING
Caleb’s fingers closed around my upper arm before I understood that he truly meant to pull me out of the hospital bed.
“Stop this drama, Rebecca.”
He jerked the blanket down and dragged me toward the edge. My broken legs, locked inside heavy white casts from thigh to ankle, barely moved. The mattress dipped beneath me, pain tore through my ribs, and the monitor beside my bed began beeping faster.
“Caleb, I can’t.”
“You can,” he hissed. “You just don’t want to.”
I grabbed the metal rail with both hands. My wedding ring struck it with a sharp click. Three weeks after the crash, my body still felt like a collection of injuries being held together by tape, plaster, and medication.
Caleb leaned over me, his face tight with contempt.
“I’m done paying for this. You’re a burden.”
Eleven years of marriage narrowed into that one sentence.
I thought of every paycheck I had stretched while he built his contracting business. Every school pickup. Every dinner kept warm. Every apology I had made to preserve peace after he had been cruel.
Then I looked at him and said, “No.”
His expression changed.
He released my arm, raised both fists, and drove them into the mattress beside my abdomen. The bed jolted violently. One knuckle struck my bruised ribs, and my breath vanished.
The monitor erupted into a shrill alarm.
Caleb lifted his hand again.
“You don’t get to talk back to me.”
My fingers found the emergency button on the wall.
I pressed it.
The door swung open before Caleb could turn around. Nurse Elena stood in the doorway, her eyes moving from his raised fist to the displaced blanket and my body folded around my ribs.
“Step away from the patient.”
Caleb lowered his hand slowly. “She panicked. I was trying to keep her from falling.”
“You pulled me,” I said.
His head snapped toward me.
Nurse Elena moved between us. “Mr. Walker, step into the hall.”
“This is my wife.”
“She is my patient.”
Two security officers appeared behind her. Caleb straightened his shirt and forced a laugh.
“This is a misunderstanding.”
I pointed weakly past him toward the security camera mounted outside the doorway.
His face changed again.
Not anger this time.
Fear.
As security escorted him into the corridor, he looked back at me with the expression of a man who had just remembered something worse than what he had done inside that room.
Nurse Elena closed the door.
“Rebecca,” she said carefully, “has he hurt you before?”
I stared at the child’s drawing taped beside my bed.
Come home soon, Mommy.
“No,” I whispered.
May you like
Then I corrected myself.
“Not where anyone could see.”
