Chapter 5: The Chair

"Elliot," I said. "Look at me. Please just look at me."

He did.

His eyes were red, and I understood he was past hearing.

"Eight years ago you cheated on me without one shred of shame," he said.

"Now I walk in with my wedding two weeks away, and you come back with a ring and a story, and you put your hands on my pregnant fiancée?"

"I didn't touch her."

"She has your handprint on her dress."

I looked.

There was a smear of lipstick across Courtney's sleeve and no handprint.

Courtney sobbed into his shoulder.

"Please don't, Elliot," she whispered. "She's sick. She doesn't know what she's doing."

It was a good line.

It made me the villain and her the saint, and she had practiced it.

"You hit a woman who is carrying my child," Elliot said to me.

"Then today you can find out what it feels like when someone puts a hand on what's mine."

I did not understand him.

Then his boot hit the footrest of my wheelchair.

The whole chair jerked sideways, and I grabbed the armrests.

"Elliot!" Dale shouted.

He kicked it again.

The chair spun and I slammed into the doorframe.

Pain went up my hip where the surgeon's stitches were barely a week old.

"Stop," I said. "Stop. I'm sick, Elliot, I can't..."

"Then you shouldn't have come."

He kicked the footrest a third time.

My left leg slid off the plate and hung in the air.

He grabbed the handles, and the hall went past in a blur.

He shoved me backward out of the restroom, down the hall, and into the dining room, past the white tablecloths and the staring faces.

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