And I realized then that it was too late.
I was in too deep. The time to walk away had ended. I think it was over the moment it began.
Wakan and Daniel were planted inside of me and they were growing there, like a garden bursting into life. Roots plunging and anchoring me, vines twisting and flowers pushing from the earth and blooming in my soul, filling me up.
And I never wanted to leave.
Forget wanting to end things. I couldn’t even picture getting in my car tomorrow to drive home. Everything that wasn’t this felt hollow and meaningless. I couldn’t be the one to end it.
It would have to be him.
I’d have to tell him that this was a dead end and let him decide if he wanted to stay the course. I decided this all in a split second of Daniel’s lips on my mouth, everything changed.
He broke away from the kiss, breathless, and looked at me with his hazel eyes. He licked his lips, and his mouth parted like he was about to say something—and then screeching wheels snapped us out of the moment. A police cruiser had skidded to a halt at the end of the block diagonal from us.
The petals turned to stones and they fell.
Liz was in the passenger seat. Jake had the back of her head by the hair.
My stomach plummeted.
We watched in horror as he shoved her sideways by the nape of her neck, flung his door open, and stormed around to the passenger side of the car. He yanked her out by the arm, and she fell hard on her knees. “Fucking walk home,” he growled, jerking her up to her feet and dragging her to the side of the road.
He pushed her into the curb and left her there.
It was over in less than thirty seconds, and by the time he was peeling out, we were already running.
Daniel flew to her side. “Liz!” He gathered her up as the sound of wheels on asphalt faded into the distance.
She trembled almost uncontrollably, choking on her sobs.
“Let me have a look,” I said, crouching in front of her.
Daniel shook his head. “Jesus Christ, Liz. He’s gonna fucking kill you.” His voice cracked.
“He’s done this before?” I asked.
Liz couldn’t answer. She was trying to catch her breath. But Daniel made eye contact with me and gave me a look that told me everything I needed to know.
Of course Jake had done this before.
Before Neil I hadn’t known about the kind of abuse that could be whispered. But I knew about this.
I saw this all the time. Every day. It came in and out of my ER. And sometimes the ambulances didn’t bring patients. They brought bodies.
I gave Liz a quick once-over. She had road rash on her knees and a little gravel in the palms of her hands. I flexed her wrists for pain. She didn’t have any. I needed to get her home to clean her wounds.
“Daniel, I need to get her back to your house. Should we pick up her car?”
“She doesn’t have one.” Daniel stood and dragged a hand through his hair. “I’m calling the police in Rochester.”
Liz snapped out of her hysteria in a split second. “No! Daniel, you can’t!”
He shook his head at her. “Liz, enough. He’s never gonna stop, we have to do something.”
She looked panicked. “I just need to go home. He didn’t do anything. He was mad, but he didn’t do anything.”
I dipped my head to look her in the eye. “Liz, you’re bleeding. We were here for the whole thing. We can tell them what we saw.”
She looked at me, her eyes wide. “I fell. I fell getting out of the car. That’s all. He didn’t hit me. I just fell out of the car when he was helping me out.”
I wanted to put my face in my hands.
“Is there anywhere for you to go?” I whispered.
Her chest was rising and falling like she was riding the edge of hysteria. “No,” she said. “He would find me.”
We walked Liz back to Grant House. I cleaned her up and checked her over more thoroughly. She had fading bruises on her left arm in the shape of a handprint. Probably from a week or so ago. A healing cut on her neck. One of Doug’s fishhook sutures? She must have been pretty desperate to let him sew her up in such a sensitive area without lidocaine. But going to an urgent care would mean questions and a paper trail.
I didn’t even need to see one to know what an X-ray would show me. Healed fractures. Bones set wrong or not at all because she was afraid to go to the ER—or Jake was. He wouldn’t want there to be evidence.
I gave her some Advil and we put her in the living room with some ice packs for her knees. Then we went to make her some tea.