Page 61 of For Emery

“You’ve always been a terrible liar,” she said.

“Yeah,” Jordan added. “Remember when she threw the baseball and broke the vinyl siding on Esther’s house and blamed that kid down the street?”

My mom smiled, though I could see it hurt her to do it.

“And how about the time she—” he continued.

“Okay. We get it,” I said. “I’m a terrible liar.”

“Marisa?” A doctor in a white coat walked in holding my mom’s chart. “I’m Doctor Vickers. How are you doing?”

“I’m having some discomfort,” she admitted.

Jordan left the room to give us privacy.

“That’s to be expected,” the doctor said. “From what they tell me, you’re lucky you called the police when you did.”

I squeezed her hand gently.

“It appears as though there was some internal bleeding due to the ecchymosis on your abdomen.” He glanced to me. “The purple skin tells me there’s bleeding into the skin and soft tissue. We’re using intravenous fluids to prevent any drop in blood pressure.”

I nodded, trying to keep up. “That’s good, right?”

“Well, she’s still under observation. She’s scheduled for an ultrasound to check if the bleeding has slowed or, ideally, has corrected itself.” He glanced back to my mom. “Are you having pain anywhere else?”

“In my side when I move or take a deep breath,” she admitted.

“Broken ribs,” he asserted. “We’ll do an X-ray to be sure you don’t have pneumothorax.” He glanced to me. “A punctured lung.”

He looked back to my mom. “Anything else?”

“My right arm.” She spoke softly. “He slammed me into a wall.”

Anger coursed through my body. Childhood memories rushed through my mind. The darkness in his eyes. The despair in hers.

“We have people here you can talk to,” the doctor offered. “The physical wounds will heal. That’s what I’m here for. It’s the ones left inside—the emotional ones—we need to be sure are healing.”

My mother said nothing, but I could tell she was thinking a thousand things as tears welled in her eyes.

Tears pricked my own eyes. “Thank you, Doctor,” I answered for my mom, hating to see her so uncomfortable. “Please excuse me for a sec.” I released her hand and stood, walking unsteadily into the hallway to compose myself and give her time alone with the doctor.

I moved past the new police officer seated in the chair outside the door, making it halfway down the hallway before stopping and leaning against the wall. I closed my eyes and dropped my head back, needing to catch my breath.

Hearing her say she thought he was going to kill her shook me to the core. Heinous visions of what she must’ve been through raced through my mind. Him slamming her into the wall. Him leaving her for dead? What happened in between? How had she endured internal bleeding? How had her ribs been broken? How could he leave her that way?

“You okay?”

I didn’t need to open my eyes to know it was Jordan who’d moved beside me. “I have no idea.”

His hand slipped into mine. “Whatever you need.”

I opened my eyes and turned my head so I could see him. “I can’t leave her.”

His gaze cut to mine. “I know.”

Tears blurred my vision. “I can’t even begin to imagine what happened in that house.”

“Em, don’t go there.” He stepped away from the wall to face me, holding my hand and caging me in with his body. “It won’t help anyone.”

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