I Let Him

“Let me open it for you,” he said. 

I forced my lips to turn upward into a grin and my chin to bob up and down. Of course I would let him open it for me. 

The small teal box wrapped in a tight white bow sat on the coffee table in front of us, mocking me.

He pulled the box off the table with his confident hands and gave the ribbon a small tug. He let the ribbon fall to the floor, and put his hand in a claw around the top. He looked at me expectantly and smiled. Waited. I needed to do something, anything. I brought my palms to either side of my cheeks framing my forced grin and nodded, as I had seen my mother do so many times before.

“You ready?” He asked. 

No. No, I was not ready.

“Good,” he said, and pulled off the top of the box. 

Inside sat the most beautiful silver tennis bracelet I had ever seen. Tiffany, no doubt. Each individual chain link glinted in the light, adding up to a greater, more beautiful whole, like the hair wraps my mother used to weave into my roots with shades of blue, yellow, and glinting gold. This time, my thoughts didn’t precede my physical reaction as my lip’s parted into a small ‘o’. 

“Do you want to wear it?” He asked. My body resisted; my arms wrapped themselves tightly around my torso before they eventually obeyed. “Let me put it on for you.” 

With conscious effort, I offered him my wrist. Bile reached the back of my throat just enough for me to taste it, my body reminding me it didn’t agree with what I was forcing it to do.

He picked up the tennis bracelet from both ends and carefully locked it together around my wrist. I flitted my wrist back and forth, at first for show, but then for genuine admiration of how the bracelet shone in the light. For a blissful moment, I forgot what the bracelet stood for.

 Another apology, each grander than the last. 

I blink my eyes against the bright fluorescent lights, the foreign environment around me slowly coming into focus. I’m reminded of where I am when the pounding in my head that sleep so kindly took away creeps back in, at first a dull ache and then a full-on pulsating throb. I bring my hand to cheekbone, still numb from the shot of lidocaine. My hand feels like it is searching for something that wasn’t part of my body as I rub my fingertips up and down the swollen skin, getting tickled by stitches that zip my skin shut.

“It’s time for you to get dressed.” The nurse taking care of me pulls open the curtain of the emergency department bay with one hand, and holds a stapled packet of discharge papers in the other. “Where is he?” she asks.

I fish my shorts that I was wearing just two hours ago out of the patient belonging bag on the floor. My favorite pair of Levi’s. The two hours that separate me from then to now feel like two alternate universes. It’s hard to believe that these Levi’s exist in both.

I shrug. “Bathroom.”

She peers over her shoulder before pulling the curtain shut behind her. “Is there anyone I can call?”

I shake my head. There wasn’t. I lost them all.

“The social worker—”

“I don’t want to see a social worker.”

“I’m a mandated reporter.”

“And I’m going home.” I pull off my hospital gown and tug on my wrinkled t-shirt, the side of my face ringing with pain when I force the narrow neckline over my head. I don’t need to look at the front of my shirt to know it’s speckled with dried blood, more evidence of all that is intertwining us together.

He wears a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes when he pulls open the curtain with his gauze wrapped hand.

“I was just dropping off the discharge paperwork,” the nurse says, allowing him to pass before retreating out of the bay.

“I thought I told you not to talk to anyone without me, babe,” he says, placing his palms on the wall behind me, creating a cage. I train my gaze on the floor, my hands reflexively covering my face.

The nurse announces herself with a cough. When he releases me from his manmade cage, I lean against the wall for support, my legs turning to gelatin, unable to support my body.

She places a navy-blue extra-large sweatshirt on the stretcher. I nod in thanks before she leaves without another word; her eyes jumping between the two of us before landing on the emerald cut engagement ring on my left hand. I imagine what we might look like to her; a broken family bound together by something other than love, something more like trauma or anger or hatred. But she really doesn’t know us at all.

Before we leave, I pull the sweatshirt over my head. I feel tears prick the corner of my eyes for the first time today when I realize she’d cut the neckline so it doesn’t graze my cheek.

It really wasn’t that difficult to take care of somebody.

Heading towards the exit, something digs into the front of my thigh through my Levi’s pocket.

 I pull out a folded sticky note. I glance at his back before opening it; he was walking in front of me. He always was.

Call it. The note reads. Next to it, a phone number.

It was a number for domestic abuse.

I crumple the sticky note into a ball and house it in my fist, searching for the nearest trashcan. When I walk by one, I hold my fist over it before I shove the note back into my pocket, my fingers refusing to unfurl.

Outside, the air is warmed by the late June sun; a welcome feat against the frigid air conditioning of the emergency department. I rock on my heels as I wait for him to pull up the car, my chin tilted towards the sun. When he arrives, he jumps out of the driver side and jogs around the front of the car.

“Let me open it for you,” he says, pulling open the passenger side door.

I step back and nod. Of course I would let him open it for me. He kisses the skin on my face that’s twisted and purple and stitched shut.

With his comment, I can’t help but look at the Tiffany tennis bracelet that’s still strapped around my wrist.

Today, it looks more like a shackle than an apology.

I should have known better.