Chapter 4
The nurse didn’t bring Lucas to my room. She brought a security officer, who stood just inside the doorway while another guard spoke to someone down the hall.
“He’s outside the unit,” the officer told me. “He says he’s your husband and that you’re refusing to speak with him.”
My fingers tightened in the blanket. “I am refusing.”
“I’ll make sure he understands he can’t come in.”
From somewhere beyond the door came Lucas’s raised voice, smooth at first, then sharp enough to carry.
“She’s punishing me. I’m her husband. You can’t keep me from my own family.”
The security officer stepped into the hall and shut the door behind him. The latch clicked softly, but my whole body flinched.
Thomas rose from the chair. He didn’t move toward me. He just waited, his hands loose at his sides, until I managed to breathe again.
“I thought he might try,” I whispered.
“I know,” he said.
No one told me to calm down. No one said Lucas was upset because he loved me. The guard returned a few minutes later to say Lucas had been escorted away from the unit. The quiet that followed felt less like safety than a pause in which I could hear my own heart.
A woman in a dark blazer came in after him. She introduced herself as Detective Elena Ruiz, then placed her badge where I could see it without bringing it close to my face.
“I’m following up on the call from the house,” she said. “Would you be willing to speak with me privately?”
Thomas glanced at me. I nodded.
He moved to the far side of the room, still within sight, and Ruiz pulled a chair beside my bed. She asked if I wanted the door open or closed. I chose closed.
“I know you gave an account to the officer at the scene,” she said. “I won’t ask you to repeat every detail unless you want to. I need to make sure I understand what happened and what you want recorded now.”
The word now settled heavily between us. I looked down at the blanket covering my legs. My body felt borrowed from the hospital: taped, sore, and too weak to hold the shape of the person I’d been before Thursday night.
“I want it recorded that Lucas hit me,” I said. “Diane grabbed me. I fell against the counter, and then I was bleeding. Lucas took my phone when I tried to call for help.”
Ruiz wrote without interrupting. When she looked up, her expression hadn’t changed, but her attention felt steady.
“Did either of them say anything afterward that you remember?”
“He said I wasn’t turning it into a domestic-violence performance.” I swallowed. “His mother said women spot during pregnancy all the time. He stood between me and the door.”
Ruiz’s pen paused above the page.
“Thank you. I’m sorry you have to say it again.”
“I’m tired of other people saying what happened for me.”
The words came out harder than I expected. Ruiz nodded once.
“Then we’ll use your words.”
She asked whether I’d agree to photographs of my visible injuries. The question was plain and gave me room to answer. I looked at the bruising on my arm, already darkening where Diane had grabbed me.
“Yes,” I said. “But tell me before you touch me.”
“I will.”
Ruiz explained each step before the nurse helped shift the blanket and sleeve. The camera’s small flash made my eyes water. I kept my gaze on the corner of the ceiling until it was over, then asked for my gown to be pulled back into place.
Ruiz waited until the nurse left.
“Were there earlier incidents you want included?”
For a second, I heard the old answer rise automatically: It wasn’t that bad. I don’t want to make things worse. I pressed my tongue against the split in my lip and tasted the faint sting there.
“There were other times,” I said. “I have dates. Messages. Medical notes. My father has copies, and so does his attorney, Miriam Shaw.”
“Would you like me to contact her?”
“I want you to speak with her. But I want to know before anyone asks her for anything.”
“Understood,” Ruiz said. “I’ll call you before taking that step.”
Thomas shifted at the edge of my vision. When I turned, he had a paper bag and a small evidence envelope in his hands.
“I brought clean clothes,” he said. “The phone was released after they photographed it. Is it all right if I set these here?”
I nodded.
He put the clothes on the chair and placed the cracked phone on the bedside table, not in my hand. The split across the screen caught the fluorescent light. I remembered the sound it had made when it hit the floor—the sharp plastic crack swallowed by the much bigger fear in the room.
Thomas looked at my fingers resting on the sheet.
“Can I hold your hand?”
I turned my palm up.
His hand closed gently around mine. Not a rescue. Not a claim. Just warmth, offered and accepted.
Ruiz glanced at the phone but didn’t reach for it.
“Is that the device he threw?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to tell me anything about what’s on it?”
“Not yet,” I said. “I want to know what you’re asking before I hand it over.”
“That’s fair.”
A soft knock came at the door. A nurse stepped in and told me the NICU team would update me as soon as they could. She didn’t offer reassurance she couldn’t promise. I thanked her, then watched her leave, wishing I could divide myself in two: one part here in the bed, the other beside my daughter.
Ruiz closed her notebook.
“I’m going to review what the officers documented at the house and compare it with your statement,” she said. “I’ll come back when I know more.”
The kindness in her voice didn’t make me feel safe. But she had asked before photographing me, had listened without correcting me, and had accepted my boundary about Miriam. For that moment, it was enough.
After she left, Thomas picked up the paper bag.
“Do you want me to stay?”
“Yes.”
He sat down again. The clothes remained folded on the chair, and the phone remained where he had set it. I could see both without either being pushed into my hands.
A few minutes later, Ruiz returned alone. The controlled look she’d worn before had tightened around her mouth.
“The preliminary incident report describes a possible accidental fall,” she said.
My fingers went cold against Thomas’s.
“Who said that?”
May you like
“Lucas gave that account first.”
I stared at the cracked phone on the table. He had reached the report before I’d even learned he was outside the door.
