Chapter 1 - THE THING BENEATH MY CAST
By the time Dr. Sarah Jenkins touched my right hand, three of my fingers had turned a frightening shade of purple.
“Emily, can you feel this?”
I felt pressure. Maybe.
Pain had become so constant during the previous week that my body no longer separated one kind from another.
I was lying beneath fluorescent lights in the emergency department at Lenox Hill Hospital, shivering despite a fever of 103.8. My month-old cast rested on a pillow beside me, absurdly large around an arm that seemed to have doubled in size underneath it.
Daniel stood near the foot of my bed wearing the beige jacket he’d thrown on before driving me into Manhattan.
“She’s had the flu for two days,” he said.
Sarah didn’t look at him.
She pressed one of my fingernails and watched the color return slowly.
“Her circulation is compromised.”
Daniel gave an impatient sigh.
“The cast has been fine for a month.”
Sarah reached for the cast saw.
That was when my husband changed.
Until then, he had been irritated.
Suddenly he was scared.
He stepped forward.
“It’s the flu. Stop pretending she’s dying.”
Sarah put her body between him and my arm.
“Her hand is losing circulation. I’m opening it.”
Daniel reached over her shoulder.
Sarah blocked him.
The saw touched the fiberglass.
Its motor whined.
“You don’t have permission,” Daniel snapped. “Leave it sealed.”
I turned my head.
He wasn’t looking at Sarah.
He was staring at the upper inside edge of my cast.
One particular spot.
A place near my elbow where, for several days, I had felt something hard rubbing against my skin.
Sarah saw it too.
A short length of dark braided cord was poking through the padding.
My breathing stopped.
I knew that cord.
Black nylon.
Tiny metal clasp.
My USB drive.
Four weeks earlier, after Daniel brought me home from the urgent-care clinic with a fractured arm, I had hidden it beneath the upper edge of the cast because I knew he would search my purse.
I had pushed it down with two fingers until the silver drive disappeared under the padding.
I had never been able to retrieve it.
In the days after, fever, medication, pain, and Daniel’s constant presence blurred everything together.
But I remembered now.
And judging by my husband’s face, so did he.
Sarah looked from the cord to Daniel.
He stepped backward.
“What is that?” she asked.
I stared at him.
Daniel’s face had gone pale.
For almost five years, I had believed I knew exactly how my husband looked when he was angry, worried, embarrassed, or lying.
I had never seen this expression.
Terror.
Sarah switched the saw on again.
Daniel moved toward her.
Hospital security was already appearing outside the curtain.
“Then why,” Sarah said calmly, “are you terrified of what’s underneath?”
I gave her one small nod.
The saw began cutting through the outer fiberglass.
Daniel froze.
And for the first time since the night my arm broke, I understood something clearly.
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My husband had not spent the last month trying to protect my injury.
He had been protecting whatever that little drive could prove.
