Page 3 of Finally Mine
“I’m sick of hearing it!” he said. His face was fire-engine-red with rage. He gripped her by the throat, lifting her off her feet.
Her air was cut off. She felt the pressure build in her head, watched the black creep in on the edges of her vision. Her feet swung uselessly, inches from the ground. It couldn’t end this way. Her life couldn’t stop at his brutish hands. She wouldn’t be just another sad statistic.
Weakly she reached for the hand around her throat. Everything was starting to go gray as her lungs screamed for oxygen.
With the last of her strength, she lashed her foot out and connected with his bad knee. At the same time, she saw a flash of blonde, and Glenn was dropping her to the ground. She landed in a crumpled heap. The gravel bit into her legs, her side, but she was too busy sucking in broken breaths to notice.
There was a commotion behind her—shouts and curses—but it sounded so far away. She rolled over onto her back and stared up at the spring sunset coating the sky in pinks and oranges.
Never again.
2
The stiff paper covering the exam table crinkled under her legs. She was cold in the anonymous gown designed to make examining bodies easy, impersonal. The curtain dividing bed from door was made out of the same threadbare, blue material. There was a poster of a basket of golden retriever puppies on the wall. Innocent and happy. Tongues lolling.
In that moment, Gloria felt as though she were a stranger to innocence and happiness.
She thought about her alter ego, The Gloria Who Left Glenn After the First Time. At this very minute, that girl would be meeting friends for beers—no, martinis—in some swank bar that no one had ever heard of in a city that everyone wanted to live in. She’d proudly walk inside in shoes that would make other women whisper, “I don’t know how she does it.” Pay for a round of drinks with her own money. Spend the rest of the night laughing and dancing.
But this Gloria? Was someplace else entirely.
Her body ached, but the pain felt dull, far away. As if it belonged to someone else. She was empty, cold. There was no sense of the victory, the pride she’d expected to feel. She’d done it. Almost died in the process. But she’d left Glenn Diller. And others had paid the price. The blonde woman from the parking lot had been knocked unconscious. Luke Garrison had stepped into the fight. And now the town doctor had kindly canceled her evening plans to examine Gloria’s bruised and battered body, saving her an expensive trip to the emergency room. She wondered if her freedom was already a bigger inconvenience than her abuse had ever been.
Why couldn’t she feel anything?
The door to the little room opened, and Dr. Dunnigan poked her head around the curtain, her frizzy, strawberry-blonde curls rioting above her ivory skin.
“I hope this means you finally left the bastard.”
Sturdy and brisk, Trish Dunnigan suffered no fools except for the perennially foolish Gloria Parker. The woman had given Gloria her booster shots in elementary school. And for the past few years had met her in the grocery store parking lot—one of the only places Gloria was allowed to go—to examine and treat her injuries.
Dr. Dunnigan had been the voice of judgment-free reason when everyone else had given up or been chased off.
He will kill you. He’s escalating. It’s a textbook abuse cycle. He’s going to kill you, Gloria. Soon.
She’d told Gloria that a week ago while fixing her dislocated shoulder. Still she’d stayed. It hurt too much to think about leaving. About doing anything different.
And then last night, it had all changed.
It was just a kid and his friends playing music a little too loud in his first car two trailers down. But to Glenn, it was a reason to posture. He’d ripped him out of his car, thrown him on the ground, and screamed in his face about trying to sleep and peace and quiet and respect.
Humiliation. He dealt in it. Gloria. His co-workers. His mother. Strangers who served him food or expected to be paid for services. There were people in this world who couldn’t feel big unless they were making someone else feel small.
He’d dehumanized her, made her so small she’d all but disappeared. And when she’d tried to stop him last night, he’d thrown her to the ground next to the boy and spat on them both. Stripping them both of their power, their humanity, their worth.
He’d waited until she’d followed him back to the trailer before he slapped her and pushed her down, kicking her once. But he’d spent most of his anger on the boy and, deeming her of no consequence, sat back down to finish watching TV.
And then today, she’d packed her things, retrieved her small stash of cash she’d hidden behind the trailer’s broken skirting, and left the bastard.
“It’s over,” Gloria returned numbly.
All business, Dr. Dunnigan checked her pulse, the dilation of her pupils. She pulled out her stethoscope, cool green eyes skimming what Gloria knew was a necklace of bruises forming around her throat.
The door flew open and bounced off the wall, temporarily obscuring the basket of puppies. Sara Parker, still in her hair-stylist apron, burst into the room. For a woman never prone to dramatics, it was quite the entrance.
“Oh, God. Gloria.Mija!” Gloria didn’t want to see the pity in her mother’s eyes. Didn’t want to acknowledge that her pain hurt her mother as viciously as if it were her own. “When I got that phone call, I thought he’d killed you.”
The words broke down the walls of her shock, and hot tears spilled over onto her cold, pale cheeks. “I’m sorry,” Gloria whispered as the thin, strong bands of her mother’s arms welcomed her.
