3. Eli
Eli
I woke the next morning to a cold bed.
For a moment, I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe properly. I just lay there, waiting for my body to remember how to exist without fear or pain.
It came back slowly, in layers. My cheek hurts, and my throat feels raw and tight.
This time, he had felt different. The change was not like something that had simply happened in a moment of rage. More like something he’d allowed himself to do. Something he’d let build. There was a coldness in it that hadn’t been there before, a certainty that made my stomach tighten.
I pushed myself upright carefully, moving slowly so I didn’t undo whatever fragile balance was left in me. The bathroom mirror waited, and I knew I shouldn’t look, but I always do.
For a second, I didn’t recognize the person staring back.
Little cuts from the whiskey glass pepper, the skin which is already pulled tight across my face by my older bruising.
Beneath my eye sits a bruise, dark and layered, purple sinking into yellow edges.
Fresh finger-shaped marks circled my jaw, imprinted too clearly to mistake for anything else.
My split lip, barely healed, has split open again.
I looked away because the mirror felt like it was judging me for staying. For accepting that this was my fault.
I pulled off my clothes and nausea rolled through me, slow and heavy. Memories follow. Not all at once. Just fragments.
His hand around my throat and the pressure of it. The moment his voice stopped sounding like anger and started sounding like something colder.
I drag in a breath as deep as my already damaged ribs will allow and slide a hand over my stomach.
My breath catches instantly. An old bruise wraps across my side, wide and dark, one of Adrian’s warnings and another reminder it was my fault.
My ribs flare beneath my fingers, sharp enough to make my vision blur for a second, and my body feels the exhausting ache that has settled deep into my bones.
The thought doesn’t feel like a conclusion; It just feels like gravity. And that scares me more than the bruises.
My mind flickers back to the other night, the moment his boot had come down one final time. It was the instant something in him stopped listening. That was when it changed, not when it started, but when it became final.
A part of me still waits, hoping every day that he will stop, that he won’t raise a hand or his boot. And that I’ll wake up still loving him, and somehow be safe inside that love too. But I know it won’t. I know he won’t stop.
I pray sometimes that it will all be different, and that he will just love me, for me.
Because he does love me.
Right?
* * *
I walked into the kitchen and found Adrian cooking breakfast. Eggs in a pan. Butter in the air. Like nothing had happened.
He looks up as I shuffle in…
“Morning,” I croaked. My lip opened again, and I felt the warmth of the blood bloom on my lip, causing Adrian’s gaze to drop immediately to it. I wiped at it fast.
“Sorry.”
The apology is already out before I’ve even thought it. He turned off the heat and walked toward me. My body went still, already bracing for impact. He sees my reaction to his movement. He always sees it.
He lifted his hands and cupped my face, causing me to flinch. His expression changed at once, barely, but enough. A small crease between his brows.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he said softly. He pressed a gentle kiss to my forehead. It shouldn’t have hurt, but it did. I looked at him properly then.
He looked tired, caught somewhere between anger and danger, softened just enough to seem calm. Like last night never happened, and I wasn’t standing in front of him bruised, and shaking.
His hands stayed on my face while his eyes searched mine. I wanted him to see me. Not the mistake, or the thing that needed correcting.
Me.
My heartbeat is loud enough; I swear he must hear it.
Part of me wanted to run, but I knew what that would mean. He would follow. And I wouldn’t survive it.
Part of me, smaller, practiced, wants to fix the silence, to make it right. To apologize for last night, for the delay, for whatever I did wrong without realizing. So I did what always kept things stable.
“I’m sorry, Aidy,” I whispered. “I should have called. Please forgive me. I’ll remember next time.”
He watched me for thirteen heartbeats. Then his eyes dropped to the bruise under mine. Something shifted in his eyes; It wasn’t guilt, but something quieter. He looked distant.
Then, for the first time since I had known him, he looked away. He dropped his hands and walked out of the kitchen.
The silence he left behind hit harder than anything before it.
* * *
The weekend passes too quickly, and Adrian is attentive the entire time. Not in a way that feels loud or performative. More like a constant awareness of me. Where I am, what I’m doing, what I might need before I realize it myself.
He takes me to dinner at his favorite restaurant on Saturday night. On Sunday, he has friends over for lunch, all polished conversation and easy laughter that fills the house as if it belongs there.
The rest of the time, we stay inside. He disappears into his office, and I stay in the kitchen.
I bake to breathe. One of my foster mothers taught me when I was fifteen. It became something I could hold onto when everything else felt uncertain, the measuring, the mixing, the steady rhythm of steps that always led to something warm and predictable at the end.
So, for a while, the kitchen gives me what the rest of the house doesn’t. The peace, and the space to breathe freely. A version of time where I’m not anticipating anything.
Adrian never interrupts me when I bake, so I stay there longer than I need to and make his favorite cupcakes. I made them without thinking too hard about why.
By the time I’m finished, the kitchen smells like sugar and cocoa and something almost like comfort. I set one on a plate for him after he comes out of his office, and he takes it with a small smile and thanks me with a kiss to my cheek.
Later, I found the cupcake untouched beside his coffee. Cooling.
* * *
Monday arrives too soon.
I stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror and let out a quiet breath that almost becomes a sigh. The towel sits low around my waist, barely doing its job.
Bruises still map my body in layered color. Keeping my expression neutral, I reach for the makeup kit I keep hidden (foundation first, then concealer, applied in careful layers for mornings like this). It’s almost empty, but I work with what’s left anyway, reminding myself to pick up more today.
The bruising softens under it, but it doesn’t disappear. Nothing really disappears. It just becomes easier for other people to ignore.
My eye is still swollen, and my cheekbone sits slightly wrong. Ree will notice. She always does. I pause, the brush hovering for a second longer than necessary. God, I hope she doesn’t ask.
She never actually says anything, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t see.
Ree has always seen too much. Her eyes meet mine across the room, and she gives me that look again.
It’s not exactly pity; as the corners of her mouth tighten, I know she’s trying to hold something back.
Frustration flickers first, then something heavier settles in behind it.
Sadness.
Not for what she thinks she knows or for what she can’t change. I know she wants to help; I just don’t think she knows where to begin. Or maybe it’s worse than that. Maybe she knows exactly where to start, and she’s waiting for me to be ready to survive the consequences of it.
The metal door swings with a familiar squeak as I open my locker. I’m busy storing my gear when a voice sounds from behind the open door.
“Morning, Eli.”
I close my eyes for half a second. Too late. I shut the locker and turn.
Ree.
She takes one look at my face, and her expression shifts immediately.
It’s subtle and controlled, but unmistakable.
Concern settles in like it’s found a permanent place to sit.
The makeup does its job in some places, softening the worst of it, but it can’t hide everything: not the swelling under my eye, nor the split in my lip that I’ve been careful not to stretch. Ree notices all of it.
“Morning, Ree,” I say carefully.
“Have you eaten?”
I blink. Once. Twice.
“Huh?”
It comes out before I can stop it. Of all the things I expected, that wasn’t one of them. A faint smile touches her mouth.
“Pretty simple question, Eli. Have you eaten?”
“Um… yeah. Breakfast.”
“Good.”
She hands me a coffee, and I thank her and take a sip, careful not to pull at my split skin.
“Lacey made it.”
Lacey. Fourteen, sharp as a scalpel, and already better at coffee than most of the hospital café staff.
“Thanks.”
The first sip is warm, bittersweet, and exactly right.
Ree just shrugs and walks away, but her worry lingers long after she’s gone.
It lingers not just because she sees too much, but because she might act on it: report it, confront Adrian, or say the wrong thing to the right person.
Adrian wouldn’t handle that well, and I would be the one left to live through whatever came after.
It settles between us like a quiet, persistent pressure that doesn’t need words.
An hour later, the caffeine has finally started to work its way through my system, dulling the edges just enough for me to function. Enough to pretend.
Rounds begin. Nurses. Orderlies. Patients.
The corridor lights are too bright in that clinical way that makes everything feel slightly unreal. Outside, rain hits the windows in steady sheets, softening the world beyond the glass into grey movement. Inside, the emergency department carries on regardless.
Patients wait in triage. Others are already settled into curtained cubicles, family members leaning close and speaking in low voices, some people sleeping through the noise as if the hospital itself has become something they can block out.
It almost feels calm. Almost. Though I never say it out loud. I’m not stupid enough to tempt fate like that.
As I move further down the corridor, one cubicle catches my attention. The curtains are still drawn, and I slow instinctively, picking up the clipboard to scan for the name. I check the time, and something in me lifts.
Lunch break.
I tell Ree I’m stepping away, grab my food from the fridge, and head toward the cubicle with the first genuine smile I’ve managed all morning.
When I pull back the curtain, my favorite patient is sitting upright in bed, quietly reading.
“Good morning to my most adoring patient ever,” I say, my smile widening before I remember my lip and quickly wipe at it before Marge has a chance to notice.
“Well, don’t just stand there. Come here and give me a hug, honey.” Marge opens her arms without hesitation.
I lean in carefully, mindful of her lines and her frailty, and she hugs me with surprising strength. Warm. Familiar. Safe.
“How are you feeling today?” I ask, pulling back and dragging a chair close to the bed, setting my lunch down near her knees.
“Oh, I feel ancient today.”
“Marge, you say that every day.”
“And every day I’m right.”
Her laugh fills the small space between us.
I unwrap my sandwich, letting myself settle into the rhythm of it.
Talking with Marge has always been easy.
I met her six months ago when she first came into the hospital.
Cancer had already taken root by then, but it hadn’t taken her spirit; she fights it in a way that feels almost defiant, like refusing to shrink is its own kind of treatment.
Somehow, we just clicked. Nearly ninety, sharp as anything, and still managing to feel like the youngest person in the room when she laughs.
Marge’s voice pulls me back.
“You know what this reminds me of?”
I glance up. “Nope.”
“Campbell River,” she says, her eyes already drifting toward the window. “That’s where I grew up.”
Something in my chest tightens as I watch her smile at something only she can see. “That’s where I met my husband.”
I shift in my seat, trying to find a position that feels less heavy. “I bet he was handsome. Especially if he managed to marry you.”
“Oh, he was handsome all right,” she says, smiling to herself. “And he knew it.”
A quiet laugh slips out of me.
“We danced all night,” she continues. “There was a hall down by the waterfront. That’s where we met. I danced with him five times that night.”
“Five?”
“Yes, five, Eli.” Her smile deepens. “He just kept finding reasons to ask me again. By the second dance, I already knew.”
I pause. “Knew what?”
“That I loved him,” she says simply. “In my bones. In my whole being. I knew he was going to be mine the moment I met him.” Her voice softens. “It was kismet, Eli.”
The word lands heavier than it should, and I swallow hard. The room feels smaller somehow, like the air has thickened without me noticing. Marge keeps looking out the window, already somewhere else now. She in another time… another life… another version of herself I’ll never get to see.
“We would walk along the waterfront every day,” she whispers. “Even when it rained.”
The ache arrives without warning, sharp and immediate, alive in a way I can’t hold back. I look down at my hands; they’re shaking.
My vision blurs before I can stop it. I blink hard, but it doesn’t help. The tears come anyway. Not quiet or controlled ones, but the kind that break through whatever I’ve been holding together all morning, and they rip straight through me.
I press a napkin to my face, trying to stop them, trying to hide them, but my body won’t listen. Not anymore.
Marge doesn’t move at first. She simply lets me fall apart in front of her, as if she understands there’s nothing to fix except the fact that I’m still here.
Then she turns, and I know the exact second she sees it.
Her voice disappears, and the room goes quiet in a way that feels different from before. It isn’t peaceful or safe anymore. It is just still.
Her expression changes slowly: confusion first, then recognition, then something that looks like it physically hurts.
She sees the bruises. The swelling. The truth.
For several long seconds, neither of us speaks.