Chapter 6
The social worker didn't sit in the doctor's chair. She pulled the small plastic stool over close to the bed and sat so her knees were lower than mine. Her name tag said Ms. Alvarez and she wore a soft blue cardigan that made a little shushing sound when she moved.
I kept looking at the bruise on my arm. Dr. Chen hadn't covered it back up. The white gauze was folded down below it, and the air felt cold on that spot. My breathing was still fast and I tried to slow it down the way Ms. Alvarez had shown me, in through my nose and out through my mouth.
Ms. Alvarez asked if it was okay to talk about how my arm got hurt. I nodded but I didn't look at her right away. I stared at the tile wall.
"The note says you fell," she said quietly. "On the playground. Is that what happened?"
I felt my chest get tight. I didn't answer. Dr. Chen stayed by the counter. He wasn't holding the shears anymore. His gloves were off and his hands were empty.
Ms. Alvarez waited. She didn't fill the silence. The fluorescent light hummed above us and the air conditioner clicked on.
"He said to say that," I said finally. My voice was small. "If anyone asked."
Ms. Alvarez nodded just a little. "Who told you to say that?"
I swallowed. I didn't say his name. I just tipped my head toward the door, even though the shadow wasn't there anymore. My hand was shaking.
Dr. Chen took a step closer but not too close. "You're safe to tell us what really happened, buddy," he said. "No one's going to be mad at you for telling the truth."
I looked down at my upper arm again. The four finger marks were darker at the top. The palm part was wider and purplish near my shoulder. I lifted my other hand without thinking about it. My fingers were spread. I hovered them over the bruise but I didn't touch it.
"Like this," I said. I turned my hand and showed them. I grabbed at the air above my arm and then twisted a little. "He grabbed. Here. And twisted. Hard."
My fingers shook when I did it. I made the grip shape again, slower this time, and Ms. Alvarez watched every inch of the movement. She didn't reach out to stop me. She just breathed with me.
"Can you show me one more time how his hand was?" she asked softly. "Was it over your shirt or on your skin?"
"On my skin," I whispered. "My sleeve was up. He... he was mad. He pulled me back. He squeezed."
Dr. Chen crouched down so he was eye level with my arm. He didn't touch the bruise. He just looked, and then he looked at Ms. Alvarez.
"That matches the pattern we're seeing," he said quietly to her. "Four fingers and a palm. No scrapes, no swelling you'd expect from a fall. A fall doesn't leave a handprint."
Ms. Alvarez nodded. She wrote something down in her notebook in small, neat letters. "And a playground fall," she said, "wouldn't twist the skin like that. Right?"
"Exactly," Dr. Chen said. "If he'd fallen forward, we'd see redness on the palms, maybe the knees. Not a grip mark wrapped around the upper arm. The shape tells us how it happened."
I listened to them talk about it like it was something they could see clearly, not something I had to prove. My eyes started to water and I wiped them fast with the back of my hand.
Ms. Alvarez turned back to me. "Thank you for showing us. That took a lot of courage. The story about falling — that was something you were told to say to keep you safe, wasn't it?"
I nodded. My throat hurt.
"I didn't want to get in trouble," I said. "He said I'd get in big trouble if I told. He said no one would believe me anyway."
"You believed him before because you had to," Ms. Alvarez said. "You don't have to now. What you showed us helps us keep you safe."
Dr. Chen pulled the little rolling table closer and picked up a clear ruler and a small camera. "I'm going to take some pictures now, just to document what we see, okay? So we don't have to keep asking you to show us. Is that okay?"
I nodded again. The camera flashed and I blinked. He measured next to the bruise but not on it, and his voice stayed even the whole time.
When he stepped back, the room got quiet again. I looked from him to Ms. Alvarez and back. My hand found the edge of the bedsheet and I twisted it.
"Don't leave me with him," I said. It came out fast and broken. "Please don't leave me alone with him again. Not in the hall. Not after. Please."
Ms. Alvarez didn't hesitate. She reached out and rested her hand gently on the rail of the bed, not on me, close enough that I could see it if I needed to.
"We won't," she said. "You're not going back with him alone. That's why Dr. Chen and I are here. We are going to make sure you stay in a safe place tonight."
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Dr. Chen nodded. "You did the right thing telling us. We have to write down what really happened now, exactly how you showed us. Because what your arm shows and what you told us are the same thing. And that means we have to keep you protected."
I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding. It shivered on the way out. For the first time since the gauze came off, I stopped trying to hide my arm under the sheet. I just let it rest there, purple and clear in the bright light, and let them see it.
