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I looked at Naelle in the backseat of my car. She didn’t look like she had a concussion.
I could easily have my driver take us to a clinic. With a phone call, I could wake up a doctor and have her properly checked out.
If I really thought that she was hurt, I would do that immediately. I had a doctor on speed dial, but it wasn’t necessary.
I meant what I’d said about checking on her to make sure that she didn’t have a severe concussion. I could keep her up all night.
I was willing to take her home, of course, but I’d check her out first. I’d done my time in the military after going to military boarding school. I was trained as a medic, so I knew the basics, although I was a little better at tying a tourniquet than I was at caring for a concussion.
And then we were finally at my house.
“Is that your house? It’s huge.”
I looked at my home, trying to see it through the eyes of a stranger. I had lived here since I was a tiny child.
“It’s okay, I guess.”
She curled in on herself a little bit, and I frowned. I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable.
I gave a nod to my
driver, who took the car around the back. The garage was next to the servant’s quarters.
“Come on in,” I said. “I can check you out properly.”
The two of us went inside of the house. I went to the medicine cabinet of the downstairs bathroom.
She sat on the toilet seat cover and waited.
“Did he touch you? Are you bruised? Any lacerations?”
“No, I don’t think so. He grabbed me by my upper arms.”
“Show me your arms.”
She was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, and she tried to roll the sleeves up, but she couldn’t roll them high enough.
“I think that I’d have to take off my shirt if you needed to see that area.”
I looked at her. “I promise that I’ll never touch you in a way that you don’t like.” I couldn’t promise that I would view her as dispassionately as a health professional. My mother had pressured me towards becoming a doctor, given my rudimentary medical training, but my father had expected me to go into business, which I did.
She took off her shirt.
I stared at the angry marks on her upper arms.
“I’m going to kill them.”
“No…they’re long gone.”
I didn’t want to touch her bruises. I knew that it would hurt her, so I knelt beside her and got a very close look at them.
They were clearly hand-shaped, and it made me insanely angry to see the marks.
“Anywhere else?” I forced my voice to be normal.
But it must’ve been on my face, because she backed up half an inch.
“I’m not angry at you,” I said in the gentlest voice I could manage. “I want to go out there and find them.”
