Chapter 3
The ER bay was too bright after the morgue. I remembered that first. The light hurt. It bounced off white tile and stainless steel and made my eyes water.
They wheeled me in on the same steel table. My veil had slipped down and was tangled under my shoulder. I could feel the lace sleeves damp against my arms and the cold of the table through the back of my dress. A nurse called out vitals and someone pulled the curtain around us. The attendant from the morgue didn't leave. She stood at the foot of the table with her goggles pushed up on her head, her gloves gone, her hands clenched around the rail.
"Stay with me?" I said. My voice was hoarse.
She nodded. "I'm right here."
The ER attending came in, a woman in navy scrubs with her hair pulled back. She didn't look at my dress first. She looked at my face, then at the monitor they were attaching to my finger.
"I'm Dr. Chen," she said. "You came from downstairs. Can you tell me your name?"
I told her. She repeated it back while she checked my pupils with a small light.
"Can you tell me what happened?" she asked.
"He injected me," I said. "Before the altar. In the dressing suite at the church."
She didn't react right away. She reached for a small plastic ruler and a camera with a hospital tag on it. Her movements were calm and exact.
"I need to look at your neck," she said. "There's a mark here. I'm going to photograph and measure it, okay?"
I nodded. The movement pulled at the spot near my ear.
Dr. Chen put on gloves and gently turned my head to the right. The attendant stepped closer so I could see her.
"Small puncture," Dr. Chen said quietly to the nurse beside her. "Right lateral neck, anterior to the ear, approximately two millimeters. Minimal surrounding redness."
The flash went off. Once, twice. She held the ruler next to the red dot without touching it. My earring caught the light. I had forgotten I was still wearing them.
"Did you see anyone give you an injection? Do you know what it was?" she asked me.
"I felt the pinch," I said. "I didn't see the syringe. He stood behind me. My husband."
The nurse's hand paused over her notes. Dr. Chen just kept looking at the mark, then at me.
"We're going to draw blood for toxicology," she said. "That will tell us what was in your system. You were presumed without a pulse for some time, so this is time-sensitive. Can we do that now?"
"Yes," I said.
The nurse tied off my arm and I watched the blood fill two vials. It was darker than I expected. She labeled them at the bedside and called out the time for the record.
Dr. Chen capped her pen. "Who should we list as your emergency contact?"
"Not my husband," I said. My throat was dry and the words scraped. "Don't call my husband. He did this."
She looked at me steadily. "We won't call anyone you don't want us to. Do you have someone else? Family?"
I shook my head. "She was there," I said and looked at the attendant. "She heard me. She heard what I said downstairs. She can tell you I was awake and I said not to call him."
The attendant stepped forward. "I was with her in the exam room," she said to Dr. Chen. "She said, clear as day, don't call my husband. And that he injected her before the altar. I charted it."
Dr. Chen wrote that down verbatim. She asked me, "Is it okay to list her as your witness for now?"
"Yes," I said.
She turned back to the dress. This was the part I had been dreading.
"I need to preserve what you're wearing," she said. "Your dress and veil are evidence. If you consent, we will remove them here, bag them, and log them with security so nothing is lost. We can give you a gown. Is that okay?"
I stared at the lace on my sleeves. The floral applique I'd picked out months ago. I had loved it in the store with the bright lights and the pedestal.
"Do you have to cut it?" I asked.
"We can try not to," the nurse said gently. "We can help you sit up and slide it off if you can move."
I could. Barely. They helped me forward and the nurse and attendant eased the dress over my shoulders and down. The veil came last. It caught on my earring for a second. Dr. Chen held open a large paper bag and the nurse folded the dress in carefully, not shaking it out. The veil went into a second bag. She sealed both with tape and wrote across the seals, then had me confirm my name on the labels even though my hand was shaking.
"One more item," Dr. Chen said. She looked at the tray the attendant had brought up from the morgue. The smartphone with the dark blue case was still there next to the tweezers, screen black.
"That was on the tray beside her," the attendant said. "It was with her things."
"Is this your phone?" Dr. Chen asked me.
I nodded. "Yes."
"We're not going to open it," she said. "We'll log it with hospital security as personal property held for evidence. It stays in chain of custody. No one calls your husband from it. Okay?"
"Okay," I said.
She bagged the phone separately in a clear property bag, sealed it, and handed all three bags to the security officer who had stepped just inside the curtain. He signed a form and the nurse signed after him. I watched him write the time and the bag numbers in careful block letters.
When the curtain settled again, Dr. Chen pulled the blanket up over me. I was in a thin hospital gown now. The table was gone and I was in a bed. The monitor beeped steadily.
May you like
"Your blood is on its way to the lab," she said. "The photographs and the measurement are in your chart. What you told us is in your chart. Dress, veil, and phone are secured. No call has been made to your husband. From here, the hospital will contact law enforcement to take your statement when you're able. You don't have to do anything else right now except breathe."
I lay back. The light still hurt, but less. The attendant's hand rested lightly on the bed rail near mine. I didn't feel awake so much as held in place by all the things they had written down.
