Chapter Twenty-Nine Hailey #2
It’s enough. I roll away from him and manage to get to my feet, using the wall for support. My vision is blurry, and the world is spinning around me, but I have to keep going.
He’s going to kill me if I don’t get away.
“Come back here!” Lars shouts, but when I glance back, he’s bent over and stumbling forward, holding his nose as it gushes all over the concrete.
I run for the stairwell door, my balance poor but adrenaline carrying me forward. Behind me, I hear him trying to follow, but he’s moving slower now.
I burst through the stairwell door and immediately start screaming as loud as my voice will go. “Help! Someone help me! Call the police!”
My voice echoes in the stairwell. I hear car doors slamming. I keep descending, not sure if Lars is still behind me but not willing to risk a glance to find out.
I reach the ground-level exit and spot two police officers running toward the building. Someone heard me screaming.
I’m not alone.
Relief shudders through me as the last of the strength in my legs gives out.
“Help,” I gasp, falling to my knees. The edges of my vision darken, a gray haze falling over my eyes. “He attacked me. Lars Winters. There’s a restraining order—”
“Where is he?” someone asks, though I can’t see straight.
Everything goes black before I can get out another word.
…
The night passes in a blur of police, paramedics, and the surreal experience of being wheeled into my own emergency department—a patient this time, rather than a doctor. I see colleagues I work with every week, but from an entirely different perspective.
Dr. Chen is working tonight, and her professional mask slips for just a moment when she sees it’s me on the gurney.
“Hailey? My God, what happened?”
“Lars Winters,” I tell her, my voice hoarse from screaming. “P-parking garage.”
Dr. Chen’s expression hardens as she listens to the EMT’s verbal report.
She orders a CT of my head—some distant part of my brain knows she needs to clear my neck before they remove me from the board—then gently palpates my abdomen, checks for feeling in the soles of my feet, and orders a nurse to start rinsing out my abrasions with saline.
To no one in particular, yet to everyone in the vicinity, she says, “Tell security that if Lars Winters shows up here tonight, he’s to be detained immediately. ”
The examination is thorough. They’re as gentle as they can be. Three broken ribs. Grade two concussion. Deep cuts and scrapes on my hands and knees that require sutures. Bruising around my throat. A black eye already swelling shut.
The police interview takes at least an hour. I describe everything I can remember about the attack, but it’s hard. Details are fuzzy. They tell me he escaped before they could search the parking garage thoroughly, but they have security camera footage that proves it was him.
The officer says there’s already a warrant out for his arrest.
“We’ll find him,” she assures me over and over again.
I’ve heard that before.
It’s well after midnight now, and I’ve been admitted for the next twenty-four hours at the very least. Rachel has been called.
She’ll be here soon. The resident on shift—Kim, whom I’ve worked with a hundred times—has dimmed the lights and brought me water and told me to rest, which is something I tell my own patients.
Until right now, I’ve never appreciated how impossible that instruction actually is.
I lie in the hospital bed and stare at the ceiling.
The police have been “on this” for months. I filed the report after he keyed my car. I filed after the brick. I filed after the hospital threat. I got the restraining order. I did every single thing they told me to do.
He still found me. He still caught me alone. He almost killed me tonight in a place I went because I wanted to stop being afraid.
The system doesn’t work. Not for me. Not for this.
Somewhere under the painkillers and the ringing in my head, I think about Cole.
Not the way I’ve been thinking about him for the last twelve weeks. Not the soft ache of missing him, not the grief for what we could have been, not the contradiction I’ve been trying to sit with in Dr. Martinez’s office.
I think about what Cole would do, if he knew.
Cole would know where Lars Winters runs to when he’s hurt and bleeding and looking for somewhere to hide. Cole would already be in his car. Cole would find him before the cops do.
Cole wouldn’t stop until Lars wasn’t a problem anymore.
That is the thought that echoes in my mind, and I’m too full of hospital drugs to pretend I don’t hear it.
I was right to question Cole all those weeks ago. I was right to be angry. I was right to ask for space.
But I was also relying on a system that has failed me at every single checkpoint.
I’ve been polite. I’ve been patient. I’ve filed my reports and sat through my hearings and done everything the way the law said to do it.
And I am still lying in this bed with three broken ribs and a concussion, because Lars Winters does not care about paperwork.
Cole doesn’t care about paperwork, either.
For the first time since I closed my door on him, I want that. I want someone in my corner who doesn’t care about doing things the legal way. I want someone who will put their hands on the problem and not ask permission from a court.
The man who terrified me with how far he’d go to keep me safe is the man I need right now. And I am done pretending I don’t know that.