Her
Dr. McNeill looked down at her chart, flipping up the top page with her insurance information to reveal the sheet beneath. It was covered with ink: three identical accounts of what happened to Delilah. Each was written in a different handwriting, of course, as each had been collected by a different nurse. One of the nurses—the one with LISA on her name tag—hung back, leaning against the wall.
Without having to ask, Delilah knew Nurse Lisa remained in the room so that Delilah wouldn’t be left alone with a man.
“It says here you got wrapped up in a shower curtain.” When the doctor met her eyes, she felt his concern and knew he was thinking the same thing the nurses were: Your boyfriend beats you.
She took a deep breath and then told him the same thing she’d already said three times before, the stupid, horrible story she was committed to now: “I spilled my dinner on myself. I went upstairs to shower and tripped on the tub and got tangled in the shower curtain.”
“But only your arm got tangled?” he asked as if clarifying, even peeking back down at the accounts of the incident as if to confirm. She could hear the skepticism in his voice; he had to hear it for himself.
“Well, all of me was tangled. But just my arm got hurt.”
“I’m having a hard time picturing this.”
“I fell and it was hanging in the tub. It was plastic and sort of wrapped around me.”
“And it somehow shredded so it looked like fingers?”
“No. It wasn’t shredded.. . .” She trailed off.
He waited for her to say more, but she had no more. Her story was as weak as she felt. She could feel the heavy pressure of tears building behind her eyes, stinging across the surface.
Flipping her chart closed, the doctor sighed and rolled closer to Delilah on the wheeled stool. “Delilah.”
She swallowed, meeting his eyes.
“You aren’t alone, okay? If you need help getting out of this—”
“I know what you’re thinking, but Gavin would never do this to me.”
Dr. McNeill closed his eyes, nodding slowly. When he opened them again, he quietly asked, “Is there anyone you would rather talk to than me right now?”
Without hesitation, Delilah said, “Yeah. Gavin.”
“Your parents might ask him to stay away from you. I’ll be honest, Delilah. It doesn’t look good. If you were my daughter, I’d be questioning Gavin’s role in all of this.”
As if on cue, a voice drifted down the hall from the waiting room to where she sat on a high cot. She couldn’t make out the words, but her father’s anger came across in the volume, in the short bursts of words fired at Gavin like bullets.
“This is awful for him,” Delilah said in a choked whisper, and the tears finally spilled over as she stared at the curtain that was pulled around their small space, hiding the hallway from her view. “This is torture for him, and there’s nothing he can do. It’s killing him not being back here with me right now.”
“But surely you understand why he’s not.”
Laughing without humor, Delilah looked him square in the eye. “I’ll go home with my parents, and my dad will go watch the news and my mom will go read a book. The only person who really cares if my arm is okay is out there in the waiting room being yelled at for something he didn’t do.”
Dr. McNeill glanced back over his shoulder at Nurse Lisa. She shrugged, and he turned back to Delilah. “I want to see you back in here next week so I can make sure it’s healing right.”
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