Page 17 of Pen Pal

He shook his head. “Later, hun. Let’s spend some time together. How are you feeling?”

I began to regret that I never told anyone what was happening in my home. The nurse smiled as she walked away, thinking she was leaving me with a loving husband.

Mark pulled the curtains around my hospital bed closed before he whirled to me, his eyes shooting daggers at me. “What the fuck were you thinking, calling the cops? You almost had me arrested, you bitch!”

“I was thinking that I didn’t want to die,” I whispered as I trembled, tears pouring from my eyes.

“You didn’t have to tell them it was me,” he seethed, grabbing me by the hair. “Thank God the cop that showed up knows me. You pull a stunt like that again, and I’ll pay a visit to your parents, you understand me?”

I whimpered, cowering and crying out at the waves of pain radiating through my head. “Stop it! Let me go!” I shouted, desperate to get out of his grasp.

An orderly opened the curtains as Mark released me, and I collapsed back on the bed. I prayed he saw, and I could hear the monitor's beeping accelerating.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the orderly barked firmly. “You’re upsetting the patient.”

“She’s my wife,” Mark snapped. “She’s just confused. She was in our home, and she woke up in the hospital.”

“Funny because I’m pretty sure it had something to do with you yanking her hair from her scalp,” he snarled, motioning to security guards behind him. “The police also said something about no forced entry, so there was no break-in. Your knuckles are also scabbed over,” he said, nodding to Mark’s hands. “You might fool the officer from that night but can’t fool me. Now get out.”

“Your boss will hear about this,” Mark shouted as security flanked the orderly. He stormed away, and I felt myself sagging with relief. Finally, someone understood my distress.

“Thank you,” I sobbed openly, feeling broken and empty. “Thank you so much.”

“No problem, ma’am. Please tell me you’re leaving him?” he asked, looking at my chart.

“I already did,” I murmured, swiping the tears from my cheeks. “Then he did this to me.”

The orderly nodded sympathetically. “I’ll call some domestic violence shelters. We’ll find you someplace to stay tonight, don’t you worry. We’re moving you to a private room, and your ex won’t beallowed back in this hospital until you’re in the shelter.”

I nodded, wincing at the pain it brought me. “How bad did he hurt me this time? What’s the damage?”

“You have a concussion and several bruises. You had some internal bleeding that stopped on its own and some bruised ribs. Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do but wait, and then you’ll be all healed up,” the orderly frowned. “I took a look at your records. Those broken bones you came in about a few months ago …was that him, too?”

I nodded, tears welling in my eyes again. “I can’t keep living like this.”

He nodded. “We’ll get someone down here to talk to you shortly. I’ll move you to your room now.”

3

Enzo

The guards approached the many cells as they began shouting. “Mail call! Time for mail call! Anderson… Andrews… Barton…”

I sighed as the guards rattled off the names of the inmates who received letters. Since my incarceration, I never received a single one. My connection to the outside world was lost, and days rang long. I read every book in this prison twice, took every class, and did every job. I was bored out of my mind, and as the guards always said, a bored inmate is dangerous.

I’ve been locked up for most of my life. It started at sixteen when I killed my high school gym teacher, Mr. Michaels. No one knew why I did it except my little sister Sofia. She came to me crying one night, confessing that our gym teacher forced himself on her. She begged me not to tell anyone, so I promised not to. I’ve kept that promise since,and it’s not my story to tell. I couldn’t sit still and do nothing, though. I noticed Sofia didn’t come home after school one night, so I ran over there and caught him in the girls' locker room with her. I flew in a blind rage and beat his face in until I saw his brain, and Sofia’s screams filled my ears.

I did a few years in juvenile hall for that before I was moved to Ashwood Prison, a maximum security facility. Sofia had begged me to appeal my sentence, and she felt guilty. She said maybe if she came forward, they would reduce my sentence, and they probably would. But I’d seen boys my age retraumatized during cross-examination while they testified against their attackers. When they took us to court, we sat through everyone’s cases, and I didn’t want that to happen to my little sister. Mr. Michaels was dead, and he couldn’t hurt her anymore, and I wouldn’t let him do it again, especially beyond the early grave where I put him.

Her visits became few and far between as she grew up, and they stopped altogether when she moved away. She stopped taking my calls since I was a constant reminder of that traumatic night. I didn’t insist. It wounded me deeply, but I understood. She needed to move on, and I had to let her.

I began to feel jealous of the inmates receiving letters, especially those with girlfriends and wives. A few men even got married while inside, although approval for that kind of thing was rare. Itreminded me how alone I was, and how happiness and love were well out of my reach.

I found temporary respite in a pretty young intern named Amara Branson. She would shadow my lawyer until I fired his sorry ass. I was sad to see her go, but a few months later, she started writing me letters as part of a letter exchange program in church. If it had been anyone but her, I would’ve let the letters go unanswered, but I had something to look forward to for the first time in years.

I spent hours writing pages and pages to this woman, answering her questions, and taking her advice. It was the closest I ever came to being a good man. She made me think about what I’d done and how I could’ve acted differently. I didn’t regret killing my sister’s rapist, but maybe I could’ve gone down a different path.

But then she stopped writing me.

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