“Please. Don’t involve my job.”
Patricia almost laughed.
“Your job? That’s what you’re worried about?”
Then she said something that silenced him completely.
“I raised you to protect your family, not to make your family afraid of you.”
She turned toward me.
For the first time in weeks, someone asked the simplest question.
“Does it hurt?”
I tried to answer.
Instead, I burst into tears.
Patricia immediately came to me, removed her coat, and wrapped it around my shoulders.
“That’s enough,” she said. “Not one more step.”
She put me in her car.
Carter tried to approach us, but Patricia stopped him.
“You are not coming.”
Then she drove me to the hospital.
During the ride, I stared through the window.
I kept asking myself the same question.
How had I reached the point where I believed I deserved this?
At the hospital, the doctor examined me and told me I had been pushing my body far too hard during recovery.
