She always does this.
You make her weak.
Don’t start a circus.
The doctor lowered his voice.
“But we also found signs of blows. Some recent.”
I stared at him.
“Blows?”
He did not answer too quickly.
That was how I knew the answer was worse than the question.
He looked toward the exam room, where Emily was trembling beneath a thin hospital sheet with her chart on the counter and her cracked phone tucked into the pocket of her hoodie on the chair.
Then Michael’s voice hit the reception desk.
“I’m her father. I want to see my daughter now.”
My body reacted before my mind did.
My shoulders pulled inward.
My hands went cold.
Even there, surrounded by nurses and lights and forms and witnesses, my body remembered the rules of our house.
Michael strode toward the hallway like the hospital belonged to him because his name was on Emily’s birth certificate.
