“Took nine men to keep him down,” the first orderly stated, totally invested in retelling everything going around the hospital now. “I heard your head snapped back so hard, you broke your neck. Seems like you’re doing well now, though,” he said, looking at me curiously. “You blind in that eye?”
Losing patience with it, Raoul tugged me behind him again. “Does it look like she’s got a broken neck or lost an eye? Next time you speak to your coven of storytellers, do me a favor and inform them it took five of us to get the cuffs on him, and two to arrest him. Then tell them that Rose didn’t break her neck, nor is she blind in one eye. She took the punch better than any of y’all ever would have and she didn’t complain about it once. I’ve seen grown men cry over less, so she deserves a bit of respect and admiration,” he hissed leaning forward at them. “If that’s ok with you?”
“Here, here,” Dad growled, glaring at the men with his arms crossed over his chest. Here’s the thing about my dad – he looked like a lumberjack. He was over six feet tall, had a bushy beard, shaggy hair, was barrel chested, and looked like he chewed nails instead of gum. Well, not quite, but when he was pissed he did. And that’s how he was looking at Huey and Duey who’d just been discussing his daughter like she was a freak show, so it was no wonder that they froze and stared at him when he said it. When the staring went on a bit too long for his liking, he sighed and shot the glare in my direction. “I just wasted forty-nine seconds of my life I’m never getting back looking at these fools, we moving or am I wasting more time?”
Hogan Beauregard was the nicest man in the world, I promise he really was. He was also the biggest papa bear in the world who was protective of his daughter. In one morning, he’d heard his daughter had been punched by someone, had caught her in bed with a man, seen the damage to her eye, had to take her to the police station to answer questions about her assault, had to sit and listen to his wife ask the man he’d caught her in bed with life questions… it was a lot for him, so he was short-tempered at that moment. He also hated hospitals, so all of that meant that we now had Hulk Hogan – literally.
Whether he said it to try to forge a bond with Dad, or if he really meant it, Raoul tugged me toward the bank of elevators and muttered, “Agreed, fools!”
Waving over my shoulder at the injured Townsend, Maya, and the two men who looked relieved to see the back of my dad, I stumbled along behind him. And then we got onto the elevator, an elevator that had a woman in it who was sneezing and coughing without covering her mouth. Although, she didn’t do that until it started to move, by which point we were trapped with her and her cooties.
The look Dad shot me then would have scared the shit out of the two orderlies, but instead it made me burst out laughing.We’d been at Tana’s bedside for roughly an hour when I finally asked what I’d been dying to since I’d met her the day before. “Are you going to leave him?”
Twisting the blanket around in her hands nervously, she glanced at the doorway and then started speaking. “Yes, I am. People probably think I’m weak for staying with him, but I just couldn’t do it, I couldn’t get to the door. I’d think about how everyone who saw me would judge me, and it just didn’t seem worth it,” she whispered, looking back at me with tears in her eyes. “I guess I was weak. I’m not a submissive woman normally, so it must make me pathetic.”
Reaching over, I gently took her casted hand. “My soon-to-be sister-in-law was abused by her first husband. I asked her before I came today if I could tell you about them and she said it was ok. Her ex used to hit her, but she didn’t leave him until he beat her and allowed the woman she’d caught him with to beat her, too, so he was arrested. It’s kind of funny actually, because her sister – whom she’d just met face-to-face for the first time that day – beat the chick with a breast pump,” I snorted. “Anyway, she told me her reasons for not leaving him revolved around the fact all of their assets were tied up together, and she paid for them all as well, so it seemed like an impossible wall to climb. She also didn’t want to be her mom, who’d gone from man-to-man her entire life. Then there was the fact she had no one to run to for protection - didn’t even know how to find someone - and if she’d used the internet, he’d have found it on the search history if he logged into one of her devices. Her mom was always on her ex’s side whenever there was a problem, so she was no good, and that was the only family she had until her half-sister came into her life. She didn’t really have any friends that she could get to, either. The worst bit, though, and I think you’ll understand this as well,” I told her, leaning in closer. “She was worried like you were of people thinking she was weak for staying with him, but also about retribution and him coming after her.”