Page 29 of Sinful Sorrow

“Nurse?” I stop in front of one and force her focus up from a report that she reads while she walks. Startling her, I show her my hands as her eyes spring wide and her brain, for a moment at least, assesses the danger that stepped in her way. “I’m sorry. My name is Charlie Fletcher. I was called to collect a patient.”

“Fletcher?” She thinks, thinks, thinks as names and charts and numbers and all sorts of shift information flitters through her mind. Then it hits. “Oh! Fletcher! Detective. Yes.” She steps to the side and points the way I was already heading. “Go to the desk down there and tell them you’re here for Jada Watson. She said she was a Fletcher when she arrived, but her ID says something else.”

“We were married.” I draw a deep breath and try not to exhale on the poor woman merely attempting to get through her shift. “She never changed her name, even while we were married. But in social settings, she was a Fletcher. Our daughter is a Fletcher.”

“Yeah, well…” She shrugs. “Glad we found you. Head on down and ask for more directions. She didn’t want us to call anyone else, so I hope your divorce was amicable.”

I cough out a short, silent laugh as a way to cover the anxiety swirling in my stomach. Then I follow her orders and stride toward the bean shaped desk where nurses work, filing paper or prepping charts. Whatever it is nurses in the wards do.

“Detective Charlie Fletcher,” I repeat, drawing three sets of eyes from three overworked women who have little tolerance for interruptions. “I’m looking for Jada Watson? Someone here called me.”

“She’s in three-oh-three,” the nurse on the left, Carman, according to her tag, says. She tips her chin to her right. “She came in kinda messed up. But they transferred her up from the ED a couple of hours ago for obs. You’re still the next-of-kin on her paperwork, though she told us you aren’t married anymore.”

“Are you good to go in there?” Nurse Number Two inserts. “I’m divorced too. From a cop, even. No way I want him to come save me from the hospital when I’m vulnerable. She’s not thinking with complete clarity, so her requesting we call you could be a number of things: confusion, for one. Familiarity.”

“Coercion,” I supply. “Abuse?”

She firms her lips in defiance. “Could be. It’s our job to keep our patients safe.”

“I’m not her abuser.” I gently push away from the desk, my eyes on the numbers on the doors. “I’m not an unsafe person to her. Believe it or not, but I actually want her to be healthy again. For our daughter.”

“Says every abuser,” she mumbles, just loud enough to catch my ears and earn a scowl when I glance back. She’s bitter. Angry. And she clearly has a hard on for cop ex-husbands. But I’m not hers, and despite Jada’s absolute fuckery these last few years, I still love her enough to save her, time and time again.

More importantly, I love my daughter enough to keep catching her mom and propping her up. So I let the nurse’s harsh words roll off my back and drag my attention around to read the labels outside each room.

Three-oh-one. Three-oh-two.

I lick my dry lips and swallow to wet my parched throat. I prepare myself as I approach three-oh-three, because maybe I’m walking in on a woman tied to her bed. Maybe she’s coming down from her last trip. Fuck knows, maybe she’s still pissed at me and thinks I’m a selfish asshole for not staying married to a woman who would fuck my coworkers and neglect my daughter.

Whatever is waiting for me is bound to hurt. So I draw a heady breath and fill my lungs until bursting. I pat my shirt down and tap the gun strapped to my body. A habit I’ve developed after years of walking through doors that scare me. Finally, I exhale and ignore Nurse Nasty as she stares at the back of my head. Then stepping into the room, I push the curtain aside and reveal my ex-wife—the love of my fucking life—sleeping in her bed. Heart rate monitors beep-beep-beep, the sound filling the room with a melodious confirmation the woman who looks damn near dead, isn’t.

My eyes itch as they scour her small dancer’s frame. Her too-thin, hundred-pound body, black and blue all over. What was once a gloriously beautiful face, is now bruised and beaten. Split lips. Sunken eyes. Her cheekbone is raw, with a long scrape I don’t want to know how it got there. Her hair is matted, cut with shears, I can only assume, and not at a salon. Her ear, where she once wore stud earrings, is torn, and the jewelry gone.

My heart thunders in my chest because she’s my daughter’s mother.

My daughter’s twin in a lot of ways.

I draw my eyes down to her arm held in a sling, and knuckles, scabbed and with broken skin.

“What the hell happened to you, JJ?” Swallowing, I turn back and close the curtain again, to buy us privacy and me, a space to lose my fucking shit in the quiet. Then I move toward her bed, taking her hand in mine and biting down on my rage when I find two of her fingers secured in a splint.

Once a dancer, destined for fame.

Now a… what? Junkie fated to be beaten to death by her current boyfriend.

Her nails are chipped and broken. Her wrists, bruised as though someone grabbed on and refused to let go. Her hair is knotted in some spots, held in clumps by drying blood, while in others, it’s thinning so much, I can see her scalp.

My heart aches for what has become of a woman who was once vibrant and the definition of alive. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever known. The sweetest. Funniest. Kindest.

“Charlie?”

I sniff quickly as my eyes shoot up to stop on her battered face. On her closed eyes, but fluttering lashes.

“JJ?”

Her lips curl. Barely. Infinitesimally. And then they stop when her split widens and a hiss rolls along her throat. But her thumb gently strokes my wrist, the way she used to when we were younger. “You haven’t called me that in a really long time. JJ,” she sighs. “I miss it.”

“What happened?” I reach with my free hand and brush strands of hair from her face. I’m careful not to touch her flesh. Terrified I’ll hurt her more. “The hospital called me. They said you asked them to.”

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