Page 164 of Edge of Unbroken

“I don’t remember. Maybe six weeks or so?”

“Did it affect your ability to do schoolwork or play hockey?”

“Not really. I’m left-handed, so I still did all my chores and stuff.”

Ronan’s mention of chores causes the attorney to shift focus. “Tell me about those chores, Ronan. What things did you do at home?”

“Pretty much everything,” Ronan says dryly. “I started doing the laundry when I was maybe six or seven. I did the dishes, vacuumed, mopped, fed our dog, cleaned up after her, and took her for walks. I did whatever my mom told me to do. I always tried to make sure the house was clean and tidy.”

"Why?"

“I just… I did whatever I could to keep my mom from being mad at me,” Ronan says, his voice cracking. “I did my homework immediately after coming home from school, tried to always get good grades, I worked my ass off at hockey. I just tried to keep things as civil as possible, but…”

"But what?"

“It was never enough,” Ronan says heavily. “She still found reasons to pick me apart.”

“Ronan, you testified earlier this morning that you broke your collarbone and your mother set it. Do you recall that?”

Ronan nods. “Yes.”

“And remind me again how old you were when that happened?”

“I was eight or nine. It was when my dad was stationed in Japan.”

“How did you break your collarbone?”

“My mom beat me with the frying pan because I was too noisy coming down the stairs. She started just hammering the damn pan into me.”

“Did you go to the doctor for this injury?”

Ronan responds in the negative.

“If you didn’t go to a doctor, how do you know your collarbone was broken?” Mr. Cooley asks, not with a tone of dismissiveness but inquisitiveness.

“It was very obviously displaced. When she was done hitting me, she sent me to my room. I went upstairs, tried to calm down, but the pain just wouldn’t go away. Eventually I looked in the mirror and things just didn’t look right. I tried to suck it up, but… it wasn’t getting better, no matter what I did. After maybe an hour or so I went back downstairs and told my mom my shoulder felt weird,” Ronan chokes. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have to seek help from the person who inflicted the pain in the first place.

“What did your mother do?”

“She looked at my shoulder. She said my collarbone was displaced, that she needed to set it. I had no idea what that meant, but… I figured it out quickly.”

“And you testified earlier that your mother would set or relocate bones and joints at home, without any anesthesia or pain medication or any sedatives. Was that the case when she set your collarbone?”

“Yep,” Ronan says through gritted teeth. “I almost passed out from the pain.”

“What happened after your mother set the bone?”

“She put my arm in a sling and gave me some pain meds and ice. There isn’t much you can do for a broken collarbone, honestly. Just minimize movement and alleviate pain.” Ronan shrugs.

“How long was your arm in the sling?”

“A couple of weeks, maybe.”

“Ronan, when your mom would hurt you, did you ever ask her to stop?” the attorney asks, solidly rooted to the spot he has been in, continuing to block Rica’s view of Ronan.

“When I was little, yeah.” Ronan nods. “I’d beg her to stop hurting me, but it just made her angrier and would draw out the punishment. So, I stopped. I stopped begging, I stopped crying, I just… let it happen. I let her do what she was going to do, just hoping she’d get it over with quickly.”

“How old were you when you stopped asking her not to hurt you?”

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