Page 69 of Make Me Sin (Bad Habit 2)
“Eric, it’s Eric, he’s in my apartment he went crazy I left him inside!”
“I’ve got you, baby.”
I’ve got you. That makes me cry even harder.
One of the neighbors pops his head outside his apartment door. “What’s all the screaming?” He sees me and gasps. “Oh my God. What’s going on?”
A.J. lifts me into his arms. I cling to him, crying into his neck. He growls to the neighbor, “We need your couch.”
There is no refusing, not if the neighbor wants to keep his head attached to his body, which he clearly understands. A.J. barges into my neighbor’s apartment, sets me gently on the hideous, plaid, cat-hair-covered sofa, kisses me on the forehead, turns to the neighbor and snaps, “Call 911. Report an assault.” He pauses for a moment. The look that comes into his eyes is murderous. “No. Report two assaults.” He turns and strides out.
Moments later, there is more screaming from down the hall.
On the ambulance ride to the hospital, A.J. and I don’t speak. So he can ride with me, I’ve told the paramedics he’s my husband. He sits next to me, gripping my hand as I lie on the lumpy stretcher with tears silently rolling down my cheeks.
His knuckles are bloody. I find a perverse satisfaction in that.
In the ER, I’m taken straight in to see a bleary-eyed female doctor, although the waiting room is full. Apparently being covered in blood puts you to the head of the line. I haven’t yet seen my face, and I don’t want to; my cheek throbs so badly I feel it in my toes. I have a CT scan, which shows a hairline fracture of the zygomatic bone, then I get fourteen stitches to close the wound torn in my skin from Eric’s ring. The doctor is concerned about the bruising around my neck; apparently swelling is a common side effect of trauma to the esophagus, and there’s a risk my air passage will swell shut.
I’m admitted to the hospital, and kept overnight for observation. A.J. is by my side the entire time, bossing people around, grilling the doctor and intake staff, scaring the crap out of the poor nurses with his barked demands. He has a bizarre familiarity with medical terms, frequently sounding like a doctor himself. One more question to add to the queue, if he ever lets me ask.
I refuse the pain reliever the nurse tries to give me. I want to be totally lucid when I speak to the police, who’ve arrived and are waiting outside.
Then I tell A.J. to call my father.
“Holy mother of God.”
Staring at me in white-faced shock, my father stands rigidly in the doorway of my room. Even at five o’clock in the morning, called to the hospital where his injured daughter is being treated after being brutally attacked, he’s showered and clean-shaven, perfectly put together in a navy bespoke Brioni suit with coordinating tie and pocket square, looking every inch the wealthy, successful businessman he is.
Until I see him, I’ve gotten myself pretty well under control. The moment he steps in the room, however, I revert to a frightened five-year-old who needs her father to check on the strange noise she’s heard underneath her bed.
My face screws up, and I start to cry. I whisper, “Daddy.”
Moving faster than I’ve seen him move in years, he runs to my bedside and takes me in his arms. He silently rocks me, letting me cry all over his beautiful custom lapel.
When I’m a little better, I withdraw, leaning back against the pillow. He hands me his handkerchief. I blow my nose into it, conscious that I’ve just ruined a two-hundred-dollar square of Hermès silk, yet taking comfort in the knowledge that my father won’t care one bit.
The third degree begins.
“How do you feel? How are they treating you? Is the doctor competent? I’ve called Dr. Mendelsohn; he’ll be here in twenty minutes.”
Dr. Mendelsohn is my family’s personal doctor, kept on retainer like an attorney for everything from annual checkups to emergency treatment. My mother is a career hypochondriac and my father can’t tolerate waiting for anything so mundane as an office appointment; hence the ridiculous luxury of a twenty-first-century house-call physician, who will travel to any location in the world to tend to his employers at the drop of a hat.
Sometimes my parents are mortifying. Right now, I’m so grateful for them I could die.
“They’re taking good care of me. I feel okay. My throat hurts. I think my face looks worse than it is.”
My father’s mouth tightens. Clearly he thinks my face looks pretty bad. “Have they fed you?”
“I got the regulation gruel half an hour ago. I’m expecting sepsis to set in any minute.”
My lame attempt at humor takes the edge off the killer ferocity in his eyes. Now he looks merely furious.
“How long have you been here?”
“Since about eleven last night.”
“And what tests have they done?”
