Chapter 26 Lila
Lila
The hospital room ceiling has exactly forty-three tiles.
I’ve counted them three times now, tracing the fluorescent lights that make everything too harsh, too real.
My ribs scream with every breath, a constant reminder of how close I came to never breathing again.
The hospital gown scratches against my skin, and I can feel the weight of bandages wrapped around my wrist. But it’s the weight of my phone in my good hand that feels heaviest of all, the messages it contains, the decisions I need to make, the future waiting on the other side of these sterile walls.
I shift slightly, wincing as pain shoots through my side. The doctor said I have two broken ribs, a sprained wrist, and enough bruises to make me look like a walking watercolor painting. Plus a mild concussion that has my head throbbing in time with my heartbeat. All courtesy of my loving husband.
My eyes catch on a small black dome in the corner of the ceiling. A security camera. I stare at it for a long moment, wondering if he’s watching. Not Eli… they wouldn’t let him near computers in jail, but my other watcher. My stalker. My masked man.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you today. I should have been there sooner.’
His text still burns in my mind. Hours later, and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. Grateful? Angry? Confused? All of the above, plus a heavy dose of painkillers making everything fuzzy around the edges.
The camera’s small red light blinks steadily, a mechanical heartbeat. Is he watching me now, seeing me broken and bandaged? Something in my chest aches at the thought, and it’s not just my ribs. But then I remember his last message:
‘Take all the time you need…I’ll be here when you’re ready.’
No, he wouldn’t watch me like this. Whatever else he might be, he’s decent enough to give me privacy when I’m at my most vulnerable.
The room feels emptier without Mia and Valerie.
They stayed as long as they could, Mia holding my hand while the doctor explained my injuries, Valerie pacing by the window, fury radiating from her like heat.
Mia left first, apologizing profusely about some family emergency.
She wouldn’t say what, just promised to be back first thing tomorrow.
Valerie stayed longer, only leaving after I’d gotten that text and insisted I needed rest.
“I’ll be back at eight,” she said, gathering her purse. “With coffee and those croissants you like from the bakery by the print shop.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Shut up,” she cut me off, but gently. “I’m bringing you croissants. Deal with it.”
I smiled then, despite the pain it caused in my bruised cheek. Having friends who love me enough to bulldoze through my protests is a luxury I’d forgotten I deserved. I would do the same for them.
Now, alone with the steady beep of monitors and the distant sounds of the hospital at night, I can’t stop my thoughts from circling back to him. To my stalker. My protector? The man who’s been watching me for months, who touched me on those steps, who made me feel alive in that VIP room.
I should be horrified by him. That’s what any normal person would feel. But nothing about my life has been normal for so long that the thought of him. Of his hands on me, his voice in my ear, brings a warmth that has nothing to do with my injuries.
‘I’ve removed all of his spyware from your phone. He can’t track you or read your messages anymore.’
I check my phone again, scrolling through the messaging app.
It looks the same as always, but something feels different.
Lighter, somehow. For years, I’ve typed every message with the awareness that Eli might read it.
Now I could text anything to anyone, and he’d never know. The freedom is dizzying.
The TV remote sits on the bedside table, just within reach of my good hand. I grab it, needing a distraction from the throbbing pain that’s starting to break through the medication. The TV mounted on the wall flickers to life, sound low enough not to disturb the quiet of the hospital night.
A game show where contestants scream over spinning wheels. Click. A cartoon with bright colors that hurt my eyes. Click. A cooking competition where someone’s crying over a fallen soufflé. Click.
Nothing holds my interest. My mind keeps drifting back to the moment at the top of the stairs. Eli’s face twisted with rage, his hands in my hair. The sickening feeling of falling, of impact after impact. The certainty, in those seconds, that I was going to die.
I turn off the TV, plunging the room back into semi-darkness, lit only by the machines monitoring my vitals and the soft glow from the hallway. In the sudden quiet, a question pounds in my head, louder than the pain: How the fuck did I let it get this far?
Ten years. Ten years of my life given to a man who could throw me down a flight of stairs and then try to rape while I’m that bloodied and bruised. A man who tracked my phone, read my messages, controlled my bank accounts. A man who made me believe I deserved nothing better.
I wasn’t always this person. Before Eli, I had dreams, ambitions. I laughed easily. I made decisions without checking with anyone first. I wore clothes I liked instead of clothes he approved of. When did I disappear so completely into his shadow?
The signs were there from the beginning, I see that now.
The way he’d check my phone when I was in the shower.
The subtle comments about my friends, my clothes, my weight.
The way he’d raise his voice during arguments, just enough to make me back down.
Small things that grew so gradually I didn’t notice I was being consumed until there was almost nothing left of me.
I think back to our early days, when he still wooed me with grand gestures and promises. He seemed so perfect. Successful, handsome, attentive. By the time I realized the attention was control, the handsome face hid an ugly soul, I was already trapped.
Or did I trap myself? Did I ignore the warning signs because I wanted so badly to believe someone could love me that much? Did I make excuses for his behavior because admitting the truth meant admitting I’d made a terrible mistake?
“How the hell could I have avoided this?” I whisper to the empty room, my voice sounding strange to my own ears.
The answers don’t come. Maybe there aren’t any, or maybe they’re too simple to accept.
Maybe I could have left the first time he screamed at me over a dinner I’d burned.
Or the first time he “accidentally” broke something I loved.
Or the first time he pushed me, not hard enough to hurt, just enough to show he could.
My sprained wrist throbs, the bandage too tight and too loose all at once.
I adjust it with my good hand, wincing at the pain that shoots up my arm.
At least the physical wounds will heal. The doctor said six to eight weeks for the ribs, less for the wrist and bruises.
The other wounds… the ones you can’t see on an X-ray. I’m not sure about those.
Tears burn behind my eyes, but I blink them back. I’m done crying over Eli Fischer. He’s taken enough from me.
My phone screen lights up with a notification. It’s not a text, just a reminder from my calendar app about a print job due next week. Something so normal, so mundane, it almost makes me laugh. The world keeps turning, even when yours stops.
I open the browser on my phone and type “Maryland divorce papers” into the search bar. The state website comes up first, and I click it, watching as the page loads. There they are, PDF forms with titles like “Complaint for Absolute Divorce” and “Financial Statement.”
My thumb hovers over the download button. Once I start this, there’s no going back. But then, there was no going back the moment Eli threw me down those stairs. Maybe there was no going back years ago, and I just couldn’t see it.
I download the forms, a small act of defiance that feels monumental.
Tomorrow, I’ll ask Valerie to print them at the shop.
She can mail them as soon as I’m discharged.
I don’t need a fancy lawyer, at least not yet.
This is just the first step, filing the paperwork myself to make it official that our marriage is over.
My stomach churns at the thought of Eli’s reaction when he’s served with divorce papers.
But then I remember the police officer stationed outside my hospital room door, the restraining order they helped me file this afternoon, the charges stacking up against Eli.
Assault. Attempted sexual assault. False imprisonment.
The detective mentioned they’re looking into other potential charges as well, though he couldn’t elaborate.
For once, Eli can’t hurt me. He’s in a cell, and I’m free. Broken and bruised, but free.
The pain medication in my IV is starting to work again, dulling the sharp edges of my injuries. My eyelids grow heavy, but I fight the drowsiness. I’m not ready to sleep, not ready to risk the nightmares I know are waiting.
Instead, I open my e-reader app, scrolling through my library for something to distract me.
My finger pauses over a dark romance I’d been reading before.
.. before everything. The irony isn’t lost on me, escaping into fictional tales of obsession and dangerous men while living my own twisted version.
But these stories always had one crucial difference: the men in them, no matter how dark, never truly hurt the women they loved.
I open a different book instead, a mystery I’ve been meaning to read for months. Something with no romance, no obsession, just a puzzle to solve. The words swim before my eyes as the medication pulls me deeper toward sleep.
As I drift off, my thoughts turn once more to my masked man. To the promise in his text:
‘I’ll show you who I am. No more masks, no more secrets.’
Part of me is afraid of that revelation, afraid that the reality won’t match the fantasy I’ve built in my head. But another part, growing stronger by the minute, is ready to see him again, without the mask.
The phone slips from my fingers, landing softly on the blanket covering my legs. Tomorrow will bring Valerie with croissants, Mia with her fierce protectiveness, and the first steps toward my new life. For now, I let the medication pull me under into darkness.
My last conscious thought before sleep claims me is simple: I survived. And that’s enough for today.