He Hits You? Suck It Up So I Locked Them in With My Abusive Husband novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Old Bones

The ER scan shows six healed fractures, Jean says it aloud to a stranger, and Diane's lawyer threatens her with eight counts as Conway's bail is posted.

The X-ray hung on the lightboard in County ER, and the doctor did not say anything for a while.

She was tired and about fifty, with reading glasses on a cord.

"Mrs. Slocumb," she said. "How did you break these?"

She touched the screen with her pen.

"Four ribs on the right, two on the left, and the small bones in your left hand."

"They've all healed," I said.

"They healed badly," she said. "Because nobody treated them."

Nate stood by the door with his arms folded.

He had clocked out an hour ago and had not gone home.

The doctor turned her chair to face me.

"I'm required to file a report," she said. "But I'd rather hear it from you. Did your husband do this?"

I had practiced the answer on a bathroom floor for four years.

I had never said it to a person.

"Yes," I said.

My voice came out small.

"Fifteen times. He only does it at home, after he's been drinking."

"Never my face. Never where it shows."

"Afterward he cries and says he's sorry, and in the morning there are flowers."

"My mother says it's the drink. His mother says it's the drink. His pastor says to pray."

The doctor wrote for a minute.

When she looked up, her eyes were wet.

"I believe you," she said. "I'm going to say that again later, to a lot of people."

Something in my chest let go, and I started to shake.

Nate crossed the room and crouched beside the bed.

He did not take my hand.

He held his open on the blanket, and waited.

I put mine in it.

"No pity," I said, when I could breathe. "If you're here, I want you here for me. Not for what he did."

"Understood," he said.

"I mean it."

"I heard you," he said. "No lies, either. Not even kind ones."

"Fine."

His thumb moved once across my knuckles, and I did not pull away.

The curtain snapped back.

A man in a gray suit stood in the gap with my mother behind him.

"Mrs. Slocumb," the man said. "I represent the Slocumb family."

The doctor stood up.

"Visiting hours are over," she said.

"This will take a minute." He held out a paper to me. "Eight members of the Slocumb family are prepared to forget tonight."

"Forget," I said.

"Sign this statement that you were confused, that Mr. Slocumb was provoked, and that the door was an accident. The charges against him are dropped."

"And if I don't?"

He smiled thinly.

"Then they file eight counts of unlawful imprisonment against you in the morning."

Eight counts.

One for every person who had told me to suck it up.

My mother twisted her handbag strap in both hands.

"Jean, sign it," Carol said. "Please. For me."

"You slapped me an hour ago."

"I was frightened."

"Of what? You said he never hurts anyone but me."

She looked at the floor.

"Sign it, honey. Come home. Tomorrow we'll all sit down and talk like a family."

"Like a family," I said. "Fifteen times, and we never once sat down."

The lawyer put the pen on my blanket.

I picked it up.

Then I put it in the trash can beside the bed.

"No," I said.

"You are making a serious mistake," he said.

"I made it five years ago. I'm done."

"Out," the doctor said, and held the curtain open.

Nate stepped up beside her.

He was a head taller than the lawyer, and he did not say a word.

The lawyer's phone buzzed in his pocket.

He read it, and he looked at me with something close to satisfaction.

"Well," he said. "That was quick. Mr. Slocumb's bail was posted a few minutes ago."

My stomach turned over.

"He's out?"

"He'll be home before you finish this paperwork. I'd think about where you plan to sleep."

My mother put her hand on my arm and I shook it off.

"I'll be at his house," Carol said. "If you want to talk."

She followed the lawyer out.

The curtain swung back and forth.

"You're not going back there," Nate said.

"I have nowhere else."

"I have a couch."

"I have a husband who knows where yours is," I said.

Somebody was running down the hall in rubber-soled shoes.

Lucy Abbott burst through the curtain in her scrubs, with a duffel bag over one shoulder and her red curls coming out of her clip.

Lucy worked the front desk beside my chair at the dental office, and she had once driven forty minutes to bring me soup.

"Your text said you locked them in and I shouldn't call," she said. "So I called every hospital in the county. I have a key, a couch and a deadbolt my dad installed. Get up, Jean. You're sleeping at my place."

She looked at Nate and sized him up from his boots to his scar.

"Who are you?"

"A friend," Nate said.

"Good. Carry her bag."

My phone buzzed on the blanket.

It was a text from Conway, sent from our home number.

*I'm home. Dinner's cold. Come home and I'll forgive you.*

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