lips that it issued.
Geoff managed to hold Wesley, contact the police, and call an ambulance. Within moments, sirens were moaning into silence outside the door and the highrent neighborhood was temporarily, uncustomarily awash in a pulsating swirl of blue and red lights.
Aunie barely remembered the ride to the hospital. She floated in a dim netherworld of acute pain and hallucinogenic colors that flashed behind closed eyelids.
The emergency room was a whirling confusion of glaring, white lights and loud voices all talking at once. One voice kept asking her over and over if there were anyone they could call for her. She dimly remembered giving her mother’s number.
She was oblivious to the prick of a needle that pierced the soft skin of the inside bend of her elbow, but the pain began to recede and a lightheaded sensation of floating overtook her. The next thing sheknew, she was awakening in a quiet private room. For a moment, she couldn’t recall how she had come to be there. All she knew for sure was that she hurt.
God, how she hurt.
In fits and starts her memory returned, and with it came a paroxysm of acute anxiety. Wesley would have maimed her; she didn’t doubt it for a moment. The nurse who came in to take her vital signs commented on her heightened blood pressure and rapid pulse. She urged Aunie to stay calm and then dispensed pain medication. Her lawyer and her mother arrived within moments of each other, and two doctors stopped in to discuss her prognosis, administering professionally cheerful encouragement for a complete recovery.
By the time everyone finally left and she was once again all alone, the physical pain was in abeyance. The fear that remained, however, went deeper than a transient battering of her flesh. Jordan had assured her that Wesley’s brutality would guarantee him a good, long stretch behind bars. She wanted desperately to believe him.
But Jordan hadn’t lived with Wesley; he didn’t fully comprehend the charm her ex-husband could exude when it suited his purpose to do so. Neither had he looked into Wesley’s eyes this afternoon. Aunie had, and she couldn’t afford to take any chances.
Against the doctor’s advice, she checked herself out of the hospital and went home to pack.
“I feel like I’ve been raped by the system, but I suppose I shouldn’t be all that surprised to hear of his acquittal,” she said in a dull, defeated voice, speaking more to her hands folded on the tabletop than toeither James or Lola. “My own mama was appalled at the damage he’d done to my face, but once the doctors assured her there would be no permanent scarring, she insisted it must have been some sort of mistake.” She laughed, a brief, humorless exhalation of breath, and shook her head. “She and the rest of the family had pretty much washed their hands of me once I decided to divorce Wesley, of course, but a mistake? I know they never believed I had a brain in my head, but even I know the difference between a methodical beating and a slight error of judgment.” She closely studied the bend of her thumb, a cynical smile twisting one corner of her mouth. “I wonder if Mama sat behind Wesley at the trial to demonstrate her support.”
“Feeling a little sorry for yourself, Aunie?” James asked in a voice lacking any trace of sympathy. As he had been doing all evening, he ignored the reprimand in Lola’s eyes. Privately, he thought Aunie’s mother sounded like a real piece of work, but he knew better than to say so. It was one thing, he had learned a long time ago, for a person to gripe about their own family members. Hell, everybody did it at one time or another. In most instances, however, it was something else entirely to have someone outside the family do the same. So he swallowed the words he was dying to say, buried the cold rage he felt for what she had endured, and hoped to shock her out of her lethargy. It was a waste of time to dwell on the wrongs that had been done to her,
Geoff managed to hold Wesley, contact the police, and call an ambulance. Within moments, sirens were moaning into silence outside the door and the highrent neighborhood was temporarily, uncustomarily awash in a pulsating swirl of blue and red lights.
Aunie barely remembered the ride to the hospital. She floated in a dim netherworld of acute pain and hallucinogenic colors that flashed behind closed eyelids.
The emergency room was a whirling confusion of glaring, white lights and loud voices all talking at once. One voice kept asking her over and over if there were anyone they could call for her. She dimly remembered giving her mother’s number.
She was oblivious to the prick of a needle that pierced the soft skin of the inside bend of her elbow, but the pain began to recede and a lightheaded sensation of floating overtook her. The next thing sheknew, she was awakening in a quiet private room. For a moment, she couldn’t recall how she had come to be there. All she knew for sure was that she hurt.
God, how she hurt.
In fits and starts her memory returned, and with it came a paroxysm of acute anxiety. Wesley would have maimed her; she didn’t doubt it for a moment. The nurse who came in to take her vital signs commented on her heightened blood pressure and rapid pulse. She urged Aunie to stay calm and then dispensed pain medication. Her lawyer and her mother arrived within moments of each other, and two doctors stopped in to discuss her prognosis, administering professionally cheerful encouragement for a complete recovery.
By the time everyone finally left and she was once again all alone, the physical pain was in abeyance. The fear that remained, however, went deeper than a transient battering of her flesh. Jordan had assured her that Wesley’s brutality would guarantee him a good, long stretch behind bars. She wanted desperately to believe him.
But Jordan hadn’t lived with Wesley; he didn’t fully comprehend the charm her ex-husband could exude when it suited his purpose to do so. Neither had he looked into Wesley’s eyes this afternoon. Aunie had, and she couldn’t afford to take any chances.
Against the doctor’s advice, she checked herself out of the hospital and went home to pack.
“I feel like I’ve been raped by the system, but I suppose I shouldn’t be all that surprised to hear of his acquittal,” she said in a dull, defeated voice, speaking more to her hands folded on the tabletop than toeither James or Lola. “My own mama was appalled at the damage he’d done to my face, but once the doctors assured her there would be no permanent scarring, she insisted it must have been some sort of mistake.” She laughed, a brief, humorless exhalation of breath, and shook her head. “She and the rest of the family had pretty much washed their hands of me once I decided to divorce Wesley, of course, but a mistake? I know they never believed I had a brain in my head, but even I know the difference between a methodical beating and a slight error of judgment.” She closely studied the bend of her thumb, a cynical smile twisting one corner of her mouth. “I wonder if Mama sat behind Wesley at the trial to demonstrate her support.”
“Feeling a little sorry for yourself, Aunie?” James asked in a voice lacking any trace of sympathy. As he had been doing all evening, he ignored the reprimand in Lola’s eyes. Privately, he thought Aunie’s mother sounded like a real piece of work, but he knew better than to say so. It was one thing, he had learned a long time ago, for a person to gripe about their own family members. Hell, everybody did it at one time or another. In most instances, however, it was something else entirely to have someone outside the family do the same. So he swallowed the words he was dying to say, buried the cold rage he felt for what she had endured, and hoped to shock her out of her lethargy. It was a waste of time to dwell on the wrongs that had been done to her,
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