Chapter 1 - THE HAND BENEATH THE BLANKET
Caleb yanked the white blanket off my broken legs and seized my forearm before I could reach the nurse-call button.
“Enough with this performance!” he shouted.
My shoulders slid toward the edge of the hospital bed. Both legs, trapped in thick white casts from my thighs to my toes, stayed fixed against the mattress. Pain tore through my ribs as I grabbed the raised rail with my left hand.
“Caleb, stop.”
“Get out of that bed—I’m not wasting my money on you!”
The cardiac monitor quickened behind him. Its alarm cut through the quiet private room while blurred lights from downtown Milwaukee shimmered beyond the window. Caleb leaned over me, jaw clenched, trying to peel my fingers away from the rail.
Three weeks earlier, a black SUV had forced my car through an intersection and into a concrete barrier. I remembered broken glass, a spinning streetlight, and someone standing near the wreck before the ambulance arrived. I had been too disoriented to see the person’s face.
For twenty-one days, Caleb had visited only twice.
Now he was trying to drag me out before my doctors had cleared me to sit in a wheelchair.
I pushed weakly against his chest. “You’re hurting me.”
“You don’t get to talk back to me.”
His hands rose above me, both fists clenched. I recoiled against the pillows, but this time I did not look away. Caleb had spent eleven years training me to lower my voice, apologize first, and call his cruelty stress.
My right hand moved beneath the displaced blanket.
My fingertips found the red button beside my hip.
“No,” I said.
He froze for half a second, stunned by the word.
Then he drew his fists higher.
I pressed the button.
The monitor alarm intensified. Caleb’s face lost its color as a shadow appeared beneath the closed door. The handle began to turn.
He lowered one fist slowly.
“You have no idea what you’ve just done,” he whispered.
I kept my hand on the button and stared straight at him.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “I finally do.”
Nurse Tessa Brooks entered with a hospital security officer behind her. She looked at the blanket on the floor, Caleb’s hand locked around my arm, and my body twisted toward the edge of the bed.
“Step away from the patient,” she ordered.
Caleb released me and changed his expression so quickly it frightened me more than his rage.
“My wife became confused,” he said calmly. “She tried to get out of bed.”
Tessa did not look at him. She looked at me.
“Rebecca, do you feel safe with this man in the room?”
May you like
For eleven years, I had answered questions like that with silence.
“No,” I said. “Get him away from me.”
