11. Melissa
11
MELISSA
Bridget
$2 bottles and cans at the bar today. You gonna stop by?
F uck. I hated getting that text. My blood boiled as I grabbed the backpack I kept hidden under my bed. I slid my feet into a pair of slippers and fired off a response.
Melissa
Yeah, I’ll be there.
I had to hustle. If Kyle caught wind that Bridget was hanging out at my apartment, he’d go ballistic.
I tiptoed out of my bedroom, careful not to wake Jase. He was stretched out on the couch, dead to the world. He hadn’t even stirred when I came in from my overnight shift. I was thankful for that.
It had been a hell of a night.
The emergency department had been a dumpster fire. I hadn’t even begun to process what had happened while I was on the clock. But right now, Bridget was more important than those occupational demons.
I held my breath as I snuck to the front door and slowly turned the knob.
Silent as a church mouse, I slipped out and closed the door behind me, racing down the stairs to the parking lot. Bridget was waiting beside my car, wearing a ballcap pulled down low.
Bile rose in my throat. She was in her Jokers tank top. No visible marks on her arms. That meant the bastard went after her in the places where no one would see.
“Bee—” My voice cracked. I was fairly desensitized to seeing people in pain, tending to gruesome injuries, and witnessing the worst of humanity. But treating the aftermath of domestic violence never got easier. It was never less weighty.
“I parked across the street and left my phone in the car,” she said, pointing to the gas station across from my apartment. “But I still need to hurry.”
We usually did this behind closed doors, but Jason occupying the real estate that was my couch complicated things.
I had begged and pleaded with her to tell Jase—or to let me tell him—but she wouldn’t budge.
She needed to let someone help with more than Band-Aids and ace bandages.
“I still can’t believe that motherfucker tracks your goddamn phone,” I spat.
Bridget didn’t disagree. “Is Jase up?”
“No. He’s out like a light.”
Bridget stripped out of her tank top, standing in the parking lot in nothing but a pair of jeans and a black sports bra. Luckily, not too many people were milling around at seven in the morning.
We had gone through this routine so many times. Too many goddamn times. Once was one too many .
A black and purple shoe print in the size of a men’s eleven bruised the pale skin of her ribs and back. She had probably been in the fetal position when he did it. My hands shook as I raised my phone and took pictures from every angle.
With every snap of the shutter, fury built in my bones.
There were smaller contusions, too. Some faded from weeks past; others were new but not as severe. Like every other time we had done this, Bridget slowly turned and let me document every mark.
Silently, she pulled her shirt back over her head, wincing as she covered the large hematoma. She pulled off her ball cap as I dug a pack of makeup remover wipes out of my bag and handed one to her. Carefully, she wiped layers of concealer and foundation off her neck.
My blood ran cold. There were four deep bruises on the left side of her throat and one on the right.
He tried to choke her.
That—
“Please, just get it over with,” she whispered, tipping her chin up.
I snapped more pictures before pocketing my phone. “Is that everything?”
Bee nodded.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
I grabbed my stethoscope out of my bag, listening to her lungs as I prodded the tender spot where that dick weasel had stomped her body. The last thing I wanted was to send her on her way with a punctured lung.
“You need to go to the ER or urgent care for imaging,” I said, though I knew it would fall on deaf ears. “There could be internal?— ”
“No,” she clipped, sliding into the passenger’s seat of my car. “You know what will happen if he sees a hospital bill.”
I sat in the driver’s seat and charted everything I’d photographed. Bee sat on the other side and reapplied another coat of makeup from the stash I kept on hand. Kyle didn’t let her out of the house unless she covered up his handiwork.
“Bee, you need to leave him,” I pressed as I wrote down the sickening things that shitstain had done to her. I closed the thick file and held it up. “We’ve had enough evidence in here for a while. Evidence that would put him away for a long, long time. You need to get out and let the cops take care of him.”
“I’m working on it,” she said as she dabbed the makeup sponge along her jaw. “Jase coming back complicated things.”
Her saying yes to Kyle’s proposal complicated things.
The night Kyle showed up at the bar and outed their engagement made me contemplate how bad life in prison would be.
Not for him. For me. I was ready to put that fucker in the ground.
When I saw Bridget the morning after the engagement announcement, it was bad .
I treated her as much as she would let me, then went back into my apartment and vomited.
“How did Jase complicate things?” I snapped. “You know for a fact that if you told Jase, he’d?—”
“Do something really stupid and get thrown in jail, too,” Bridget said, interrupting me. “There’s a safe way to get out and a stupid way to get out. You need to let me do it my way.”
I didn’t necessarily agree with her not hauling ass out of Kyle’s house right fucking now, but she wasn’t wrong about Jase.
Jason would go absolutely mental if he knew that Kyle was abusing his sister.
Everyone would .
“I think Kyle knows that I might try to leave since Jase is back.” She looked down at the makeup sponge in her hand.
“If you don’t leave him today, you might leave the world tomorrow.”
It was an ugly thought, but it was true. Kyle was escalating. He wasn’t pretending to be sorry anymore. He wasn’t pretending to go to anger management. Wasn’t pretending to stay sober.
I set the manila folder on the console between us. “Bee, no one is going to judge you. And the moment you walk this—” I tapped onto the file sitting between us “—into the police station, he won’t touch you ever again.”
Tears welled up in Bridget’s eyes. It was a rare occurrence. Usually, she was ice cold after texting me the $2 beer code.
“I’m working on it.” She blinked back the tears and steeled herself. “I swear I am. It’s just… He controls everything. Joint bank accounts. My tips from the bar. His name is on the registration of my car. I live in his house. All my stuff is there.”
I pulled a stack of fast-food napkins out of the glove box and handed her one. Bridget dabbed her eyes, then flipped down the visor mirror to check that her makeup hadn’t run.
“All that is just stuff. ” I said, exasperated.
She was putting me between a rock and a hard place. I wanted to say screw it and turn the evidence in myself. But if Bridget wasn’t willing to come forward, it would only worsen things. On top of that, she wouldn’t trust me to treat her.
And if our friends found out I knew and didn’t say anything…
If Jason found out…
I would be a pariah. That was if they didn’t kill me first.
“I hate patching you up.” My confession stung both of us. “I really hate that you won’t walk out on him right now. I hate that it’s gone on this long.” Rage pummeled my heart like a shot of adrenaline. “You don’t need all the shit that he’s holding over your head.” I gritted my teeth. “Your life isn’t worth whatever is in your bank account.”
“I need you to trust that I have a plan, and it’s not going to be much longer. Just please—don’t tell Jase. Don’t tell the poker club.”
“I’m trying so hard not to kidnap you right now,” I admitted with a caustic laugh.
Bridget laughed and blew her nose. “Trust me. You’re my first call when it goes down.”
“Please call soon,” I said quietly.
Bridget hooked her pinky around mine just like we had when we were kids. “Thanks, Mel.”
“Stay safe.”
“You too.” The warning was ominous, but she didn’t give me a chance to ask anything else. Bridget opened the door and walked across the street to the gas station without looking back.
I trudged back up the stairs, a little more weary than before. I was going to sneak in, stash the bag that held proof of every vile thing Kyle Kingsley had ever done to Bridget, and then cry in the shower. If I cried in there, there would be no mascara stains on my pillow to remind me why I was crying.
“Morning, Goose,” Jason said from the kitchen. He was busy scooping coffee grounds into a filter. His gaze bounced from my fuzzy slippers to my pajama shorts to my tank top and finally to the backpack on my shoulder. A little smile played at the corner of his mouth like he was about to pretend to flirt with me.
I didn’t have it in me to deal with his teasing, even if I knew he meant no harm. Between the patient I lost overnight before and Bridget showing up looking like a punching bag, I was crumbling. Weak.
I mumbled a half-hearted good morning and trudged to my bedroom. I had just flipped the dangling edge of my comforter down, covering where I stashed the backpack, when Jase appeared in the doorway.
“You okay?”
“Long night. Just tired.” I pulled back the covers on my bed and sat on the edge, wiggling my toes until my slippers fell off.
Jase shoved his hands in the pockets of his loose plaid pajama pants. He was shirtless. If I wasn’t past due for some shuteye, I probably would have ragged on him for walking around like that.
His easy smile turned into a hard look of concern. His brows knitted together, and the sandy stubble on his cheeks glimmered in the morning light as he clenched his jaw.
“C’mon, Mel. Don’t lie to my face like that.” He lumbered in and sat on the edge of the bed. Jase nudged my shoulder, his voice softening as he said, “Where’s my favorite little badass hiding?”
I didn’t feel like much of a badass when my feet couldn’t even touch the floor. My toes hung a few inches over the carpet while he sat, hunched over, with his arms resting on his knees.
Forcing Bridget out of my mind, I tilted my head and leaned on his shoulder. For a moment, I closed my eyes and allowed myself to rest on him. Jase wrapped his arm around my back and turned his head, tucking the crown of my head under his chin.
“Talk to me, Goose.”
Tears welled up in my eyes, so I squeezed them shut.
I got into nursing because I wanted to save lives, but death was the ugly reality. Sooner or later, it happened to everyone. Rich or poor, black or white—it didn’t matter. Death had no scruples. There were too many patients that couldn’t be saved, no matter how hard we tried. I knew that, but it never made losing one easier.
Jase’s thumb worked in gentle circles on my bicep. “Mmmkay,” he hummed against the top of my head. “We can pretend those aren’t tears.” He reached around and cupped my cheek, slowly wiping his thumb beneath my eye.
“I’m not crying. My eyeballs are sweating.” I smiled bitterly.
There wasn’t a nurse on this earth who didn’t use some kind of dark, twisted humor to cope with the demons they carried.
To my surprise, Jason didn’t laugh. He kept his arms around me, offering his strength when mine had run dry. We sat in complete silence with the warm aroma of coffee floating into the room as the pot finished brewing.
“I lost a patient last night,” I said softly. “Usually, it doesn’t hit me this hard… I usually just shake it off.”
He held me a little tighter. “I’m sorry.”
Something about the simple admission eased the burden. It didn’t take the ache away, but having someone listen made it bearable.
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“Not really.” I sniffed back a few more tears and patted my fingertips beneath my eyes to dispel any evidence of emotion. “It’s just… It wasn’t really the patient.” I sucked in a shaky breath and slowly let it out. “Usually, when we have to run a code, someone gets the family out of the way. It just all happened so fast. The family was still in there while I was doing chest compressions.”
A rogue tear rolled down my cheek, but Jase wiped it away.
“They were yelling and screaming at me for cracking ribs while I was trying to bring the patient back.” I choked on the knot in my throat. “Someone finally got the family out of the way, we intubated quickly and kept running the code, but the patient was gone. When I finally left the room, one of the family members saw me in the hallway and shouted that I killed him.”
Jason muttered a string of carefully curated and colorful profanities. “It’s shitty that they took it out on you.”
“It is what it is.” I took a stabilizing breath. “Those are the demons that make it hard to sleep at night.” I laughed sarcastically. “And the only thing the administration does is give us room-temperature pizza once a year for nurses’ week.”
He took my hand in his and laced our fingers together. “Your demons don’t know what you’re made of.”
I nudged his shoulder with my temple. “Thanks.”
“You want something to eat?”
“Nah.” I yawned as I eyed my pillows longingly. “I need to go to bed. Big date tonight.”
Jase reared back. The corner of his lip curled in disgust. “Date? Tonight?”
“Yeah, it’s kind of last minute, but he’s taking me to Revanche, so that’s a bonus.”
It was barely discernible, but something cold crossed over his usually warm features. I didn’t know why, and I was too tired to use any of my rapidly declining brain cells to figure it out.
“Then I will, uh, let you get some sleep.” He stood up as I slipped under the covers.
“Hey,” I said as he walked to the door, his hand lingering on the doorknob. I forced a minuscule smile as I reached into the drawer of my bedside table for my favorite orange and red silk bonnet. “Thanks, flyboy.”
He pulled the door closed behind him. “Night, Goosey.”