Page 53 of The Wife
“Help.” I don’t know if he heard me. It didn’t matter.
Abruptly the weight Bobby had been using to hold me in place was gone. I turned around to see him running, and then Jake was tearing after him. Chrissy, who had followed Jake out of the door, came over to me.
“Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod. Are you okay?”
No. I was shaking. I tugged up my jeans and buttoned them back up. I looked to where Jake had gone after Bobby. Jake had caught him fairly quickly and now he was very clearly beating the shit out of Bobby.
“Help me. We have to stop him.”
“Uh…I don’t think we’re going to stop Jake.”
“We have to stop him, Chrissy!” I started to run but my legs felt like noodles so it was more like stumbling. I got close enough to hear the sound of Jake’s fist impacting with Bobby’s face.
“Stop!”
“What the fuck did you give her?” Jake screamed at him.
“Fuck you,” Bobby groaned. “She wanted it.”
Jake hit him again and blood spurted out of Bobby’s nose.
“Jake, stop…”
“WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU GIVE HER?”
Except this time Bobby couldn’t answer, not with his mouth filled with blood.
“Jake.” I couldn’t stand anymore. I could feel myself falling, my ass hitting the gravel hard, even as my hands tried to brace my fall. Chrissy tried to help me up, but I was too heavy for her.
“You are fucking going to jail for this, you little shit,” Jake told Bobby, who was now crumbled in the fetal position in the dirt, moaning.
At least he was still alive. I didn’t think Jake would get in trouble for hitting Bobby, but if he had actually killed him I’m pretty sure that would have been bad. Then Jake was bending over to help pull me up. I managed to get to my feet, but he lifted me into his arms.
This was much better.
“Chrissy, you go back inside and stay with Karen and Lisa. I’ll make sure Doug knows what to do with Bobby.”
We didn’t go back through the bar. Instead he walked me around the outside of the two buildings that were connected. I was grateful. I couldn’t have handled going back inside. Jake carrying me in his arms, everyone knowing what Bobby almost did to me. What he seriously almost did to me. I started crying, and even doing that my brain still felt wrong.
Jake got me settled in his truck to the point of fastening my seat belt. That’s how out of it I was. Then he was gone—for how long I couldn’t tell, but each minute was this tiny agony without him.
Finally, he was back and the relief was palpable.
“Okay, listen to me, Ellie. We’re going to have to go to the urgent care.”
“Noooo,” I cried. “Home.”
“I’m sorry, baby. I want them to get a blood sample now, while it’s still in your system.”
Gosh, needles really? After I was almost… I couldn’t even form the word in my mind. If I did, then it would have made it too real. While I was still in this hazy reality, I could pretend it was all a dream.
Jake being Jake, there wasn’t a choice. He drove me to the clinic and carried me inside. I told him I thought I could walk, but he wasn’t having it. Fortunately, it was empty except for Dr. Jenkins and Mary, who recently graduated from nursing school. Technically she wasn’t a nurse yet because she hadn’t passed the boards, but in Riverbend she was considered good enough.
They led Jake, who still wouldn’t put me down, to one of the two exam rooms and I sat on the edge of the examination table. Mary was nice. She didn’t say much. She cleaned up my palms, which I had scraped when I fell.
Dr. Jenkins shone a light in my eyes and asked me to try and describe how I felt.
“Sort of euphoric. Dreamy a little, too. Like I need physical contact, except I’m not a touchy kind of person. It’s so strange.”
