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“Does anything hurt?” he asked, his other hand reaching up to wipe the tears off my cheeks.
Yes.
My heart.
God, it hurt.
But that wasn’t what he meant.
“Not yet,” I said, sniffling.
“I’ll get them to stick something in that bag before it starts to,” he assured me. “You talked to the doctor already, right? Got all the updates?”
To that, I nodded.
“I talked to Dr. Laurier,” he said, making me jerk.
“What?”
“He came to the hospital when the cops called him about you being attacked,” he explained. “He said not to worry about the clinic, that he had it covered. And just in case he needed some extra motivation, I went ahead and gave it to him,” he told me, and that cocky little smirk of his let me know that the motivation he was speaking of was likely some sort of threat of violence.
“You’re going to be okay, Ama,” he told me, his hand squeezing mine, that old steadfast reassurance of his making another wave of tears flood my eyes. “You want to talk about it?” he asked.
I didn’t mean to.
But then the words were just pouring out.
“I went to get my phone! I know it was stupid, but I don’t have a landline, and I felt almost vulnerable without it. Which, in hindsight, is really stupid.”
“It wasn’t stupid. You’re supposed to be safe there.”
“I should have known better. After the last time…”
“Ama, are you really victim-blaming yourself?” he asked, shaking his head at me. “You can’t control other people’s actions by being ultra-vigilant. The world isn’t fair like that.”
“I have to talk to the police, don’t I?” I asked, grimacing.
“Yeah. You’re going to need to talk to them. I imagine they’ll be around pretty soon, actually. Did you see him?”
“I… yes,” I said, stomach flopping over at the memory.
“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he assured me.
“He touched my phone. If I forget, remind me to tell the police that he touched my phone.”
“I will.”
“He just wanted the drugs,” I said, shaking my head. “It wasn’t personal.”
“That might be true, Ama, but he got way too fucking close to slicing your carotid last night. I don’t give a fuck how much he was jonesing, that’s not an excuse.”
“No, I know,” I agreed. And it wasn’t just about me. He could have killed my nurse too. “And now that he’s gotten what he wants twice, he won’t stop until the police stop him.”
“The neighborhood loves you. They might not typically be the type to rat on each other, but I bet they will for you.”
“He needs help.”
But the both of us knew there just… wasn’t much help to be had. Not anywhere in the country, let alone in a tragically underfunded low-income area.
