THE GIRLS HAD taped a large calendar onto the wall in my hospital room, close enough to my bed that I could see it whenever I was awake. Every morning, when one of them arrived, she would mark a big red X over that day on the calendar, helping me to see how much longer until I would be discharged.
I had to go to therapy in the mornings, but the girls made sure I had guests every afternoon of my stay, to help keep me calm and sane. I wasn’t sure if they’d worked out a rotation to be sure that every day was covered, but whoever was visiting me at any point in time always knew who would be coming next. I was rarely alone other than in the middle of the night when I ought to be sleeping.
Not that I was able to sleep normally. I woke at all sorts of random times, sometimes due to the nurses coming in to take my vitals and other times for no discernible reason at all. I’d lie awake in my bed for hours, flipping channels on the television and hoping to land on something that would distract me from the combination of horrifying memories and the depressing reality I lived in, but it rarely worked.
Most any time of the day or night, I could find reruns of Criminal Minds or Law and Order: Special Victims Unit playing back to back to back, but I couldn’t bear to watch either of those shows for long.
They portrayed events far too similar to the recent happenings in my own life; I didn’t need reminders of what I’d been through.
More often, I settled on Food Network, but that only made me hungry for something better than what the hospital cafeteria was feeding me.
Plus, they ran the same infomercials through the late-night and early-morning hours every day, so I’d seen the ads for Cindy Crawford’s new makeup line and for the air fryer contraption so many times I could quote them verbatim.
But at least with Food Network shows, I didn’t have to think too hard. I could watch without really paying attention, distracting myself from the tedium of so many days cooped up within the same almost-bare walls of the hospital.
I hadn’t felt the heat of the sun on my face for what felt like a lifetime, and it was making me crazy—crazier, even, than the drugs that had caused me to hallucinate. And I wasn’t entirely sure how much of it had been hallucinations and how much had really happened.
“Did I take my walker and my IV pole and go to the hospital across the street because I liked their nurses better?” I asked Tallie one afternoon.
“No, honey. There isn’t a hospital across the street. And no one would let you get out into the hall by yourself right now, anyway, let alone all the way across the street. Do you have any idea what kind of traffic is out there?”
I didn’t know anything about the traffic, so I took a look out the window in my room. There was no way I could cross that street with a walker and an IV pole. And there wasn’t a hospital over there, anyway. Tallie was right.
Another time, I asked London, “Did someone bring in a bunch of puppies one day?”
“Puppies?” She gave me a side-eye look that said I was crazy.
Maybe I was. But still… “There were puppies climbing all over me and barking and licking me. And one of them peed on my bed and they had to change my sheets again.”
“Pretty sure the only one peeing on your bed has been you. And you haven’t done that in a while, anyway.”
That was true. The more time that passed, the better I was able to control my bodily functions. And with time, I was starting to recognize the difference between reality and what I could only describe as hallucinations.
I never asked anyone about the worst hallucinations—the ones where Hayes and his buddies burst into my hospital room, ripped all the tubes out of my arms, and hauled me away by the hair to start over again where they’d left off.
Although, those might be better described as nightmares than hallucinations.
One afternoon, when I had about a week left before being discharged, a couple of women I didn’t know came into my room along with Ethan. A tight knot of worry settled into my chest, until Ethan took a seat next to my bed and reached for my hand.
It felt tiny within his, but I immediately started to breathe more freely. I always felt more relaxed when he was with me. He made me feel safe, somehow, even though I didn’t think I’d ever truly be safe again.
“Hi, Natalie,” the first woman said, reaching out a hand as if to shake mine, but I could only grasp her hand limply and let her do the shaking. “I’m Joanne Sharp from the district attorney’s office. This is Eileen Jacobson. She’s a notary who works at the hospital. Mr. Higgins, here, asked us to come to you today so we could help you file a few protective orders against the men who did this to you.”
I nodded and struggled to sit up straighter in my bed.
Ethan reached out a strong arm and put it around my waist, almost effortlessly shifting my body into a more comfortable position. Somehow, he always seemed to know what I needed, and he took care of things without even being asked.
Like with bringing these women here to help me out. I hadn’t even thought of it, but he’d made all the arrangements already.
They asked me several questions about the various ways Hayes had abused me, how long it had been going on, when Alex and Jason had taken part in it, and the like. I answered, the words coming out of me almost by rote. Speaking about it wasn’t anywhere near as difficult as living through it had been. In a way, I felt as if I were floating up above all of this, watching it take place somewhere below me, somewhere in the distance. Was it the drugs still in my system? Or maybe it was because I feared this was just one more of my hallucinations.
Because nothing could truly protect me from Hayes. And certainly not some piece of paper, whether it was issued by the court or not.
But this felt a bit more solid than the hallucinations had, somehow. I’d started to recognize a different feel during the times I was hallucinating, as if everything around me had a strange, shimmering quality.
Nothing was shimmering now. And Ethan’s hand was still resting on the bed next to me, his fingers just skimming the edge of my forearm. I could feel his presence, strong and soothing, and that never happened in the hallucinations. In them, I was alone, me against the world.
With him here, I never felt alone. I felt protected, almost, even though I knew there was no way for anyone to protect me. Not really.
I finished telling these women my story, and I signed where they indicated. They shook my hand again, and Ethan followed them out into the hall, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
I still didn’t know where I’d go once the doctors allowed me to leave, but I was so anxious to get away from the tubes and machines and the sterile smells that I hadn’t been able to bring myself to worry about trivialities like that.
I just wanted to be free.
Maybe I wasn’t behind bars or chained to my bed, but I might as well be, considering my inability to move around on my own. They’d gotten me up and moving some, typically with a walker, but now they were trying to get me to use crutches.
Everything I did hurt. They had my leg in a walking cast, and eventually they wanted me to move on my own without relying on anything for support. But for now, I shuffled from place to place like a geriatric patient following a hip replacement. Actually, I didn’t even move as well as most of them. I knew, because there was an eighty-seven-year-old great-grandmother named Maggie down the hall who’d just had a hip replacement, and she was constantly lapping me in the halls, whipping on by so fast the nurses threatened to put speed bumps in her way for her to navigate around.
Moving from my bed to the bathroom and back exhausted me, but they insisted on me making laps up and down the hall a few times a day, just like Maggie.
Taking a shower was an ordeal, what with covering the cast on my leg and the wound on my abdomen with plastic to keep them dry. Plus the soaps and shampoos they had available for me left me feeling itchy. By the time they allowed me to get dressed again, all I wanted to do was collapse in the bed and sleep for a week.
But I was wearing real clothes again now—pj’s, really, and a bralette, but still—and every day that went by came with fewer tubes connected to my body and just a hint more freedom. The final thing to go was the IV giving me fluids, and now they had to remind me to drink regularly so I wouldn’t end up dehydrated.
I supposed, whether I was ready for it or not, I would have to start thinking about life after the hospital. Not to mention all the hospital bills and how I could pay for them.
The very idea of leaving terrified me, even though I was desperate to get out of this bed, this room, this building, this life.
Inside the hospital, I felt safe. Hayes couldn’t hurt me in here, other than occasionally when my hallucinations turned to nightmares. But none of that was real.
But out there? How would a piece of paper prevent him from hurting me?
Ethan poked his head back into the room, finally. “Got your papers,” he said, moving to take his seat next to me again. He set them down on the rolling cart in front of me. “The judge has to finalize it, still, but that won’t take long.”
“Thank you,” I said, blinking because for some reason I felt the heated prickling of tears trying to force their way through. I didn’t want to cry again. I hated crying, and I hated doing it in front of Ethan more than anything.
One of them spilled over, despite my best efforts to keep them at bay.
Instinctively, he reached out a hand and brushed the tear away with the pad of his thumb. It was such a gentle move, such a contradiction, because everything about this man screamed of strength and raw power. How could he possibly treat me so tenderly, with so much care?
He didn’t return his hand to my arm, though. I itched for him to touch me in that small way, but I didn’t want to ask. I already felt so needy, relying on him and all the WAGs and the nurses to do practically everything for me.
I looked away, because I felt more tears building and I couldn’t stand the thought of looking at him while I was falling apart. I didn’t want him to see me like this. Broken and battered and bruised was one thing, but this…
This felt different.
Ethan cleared his throat, and I was certain that meant he was about to leave. A tight knot formed in my stomach, fear and nausea and desperation all combining to steal my breath.
But then he surprised me by saying, “Carter and I’ve been talking about it. And we think you should come and stay with us once you get out of here. I’ve got a spare room. I can get it set up for you. But we’ll still have to figure out what to do when I have to go on the road with the team, because I don’t feel good about leaving you on your own. Not while you’re still healing. And especially not as long as Lennon’s free. Tallie and Dana and some of the other WAGs have said you can stay with them, though, so it won’t be too hard to figure something out that’ll work for everyone. I’ve got them sending your bills to me, too,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
“You want me to what?” I choked out. I had to have misheard him.
But Ethan looked at me in the same steady way he always did, and there wasn’t anything shimmering or out of the ordinary about the way he looked. “Stay with me. And with Carter, when he’s in town. So we can take care of you.”
Shimmering or not, I had to be hallucinating again. Because this was better than anything I could have dreamed up on my own. “I want to wake up now,” I said, and I felt tears stinging my eyes again—tears of frustration this time. This hallucination was going to gut me when I came out of it and realized it wasn’t really happening. I couldn’t bear to get my hopes up and then have the rug ripped out from under me. Not over something like this.
Ethan gave me a funny look, cocking his head to the side. “You’re awake.”
“I’m hallucinating. I don’t want any more of the drugs that make me hallucinate. Don’t let them give me any more.” The words came out in a rush, like I was begging, pleading with him to help me. “I can’t stand it, Ethan. Please.”
“You haven’t had any of those drugs in almost a week,” he said, his voice strong and steady, just like the rest of him. “They’re only giving you pain meds and some stuff to level out your blood pressure because of all the other drugs you’ve been on. I don’t think you’ll need to take either of those for much longer, though. Either way, you’re not hallucinating. This is real.” He reached over and threaded his fingers through mine, holding my hand, grounding me. “Do you feel that?” he asked.
I nodded, tears still burning as they tracked down my cheeks.
“This is real,” he said. “I’m real. And I’m really asking you to come and live with me. Let me take care of you. Please.” His voice cracked on the last word, as if he’d been the one whose vocal cords were sore from having a breathing tube in his throat.
“I’m scared,” I choked out.
“Of me?” He looked hurt.
I shook my head. “Not you. I’m really not scared of you. I’m just scared.”
“I’d be worried about you if you weren’t. You’ve been through hell. But I want to help make it better. If you’ll let me.”
How could I ever explain how much he’d already helped me? How he’d already made it better, simply by being here?
“So will you come home with me?” he asked after a charged silence.
I could only nod because that knot in my stomach had shifted and lodged itself deep in my throat.
He didn’t say anything for a long time. But then the backs of his fingers stroked my arm, a touch so light I wouldn’t have believed it had happened if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, and he nodded. “Good,” he finally said. And if I wasn’t mistaken, his voice sounded as strangled and choked as mine.