Chapter 4 - THE ACCIDENT HE REHEARSED
I woke in a hospital room beneath cold fluorescent light.
My legs were hidden under a thick blanket. They felt heavy and distant, as though someone had replaced them while I was unconscious. A plastic bed rail clicked into place beside me.
Caleb stood near the doorway wearing the same gray work shirt from the garage. His sleeves were clean now. My purse hung from one hand.
Dr. Lawson studied the blurred scans on the wall. He was forty-eight, with salt-and-pepper hair and the restrained expression of a man trying not to show a patient how bad something looked.
“She slipped while I was fixing a shelf,” Caleb said. “The drill fell.”
Dr. Lawson looked from him to the images.
“A falling tool does not damage both knees at matching angles. These were two separate, deliberate points of contact.”
Caleb tightened his grip on my purse strap.
Then he leaned toward me.
“You’re confused from the medication,” he said softly. “Tell them it was an accident.”
My mouth was painfully dry. Nurse Parker stood beside the bed, watching my face rather than Caleb’s.
“He did it,” I said.
Caleb attempted a laugh.
“She’s upset. She doesn’t understand what happened.”
“I understand.” Each word hurt. “You told me I would crawl.”
The room changed.
Dr. Lawson asked Nurse Parker to record my words exactly. She stepped between Caleb and my bed, removed him from the approved visitor list, and asked hospital security to come to the floor.
Caleb’s soft voice disappeared.
“You can’t keep me out. I’m her husband.”
I saw my keys clipped to his belt.
“Those are mine,” I said. “Take them from him.”
As security moved him into the hallway, Caleb kept insisting I would beg him to return once I understood how helpless I was.
Then another nurse brought my belongings.
My phone’s screen was cracked, but it still turned on.
A message from Caleb had been sent eleven minutes before the emergency call:
I warned you. You do not get to leave me.
Below it was a message sent from my phone to Erin after I had already lost consciousness:
Don’t come over. I changed my mind.
The door opened before I could speak.
May you like
Erin stood there holding a small brass key between two fingers.
“No,” she said, looking past me toward Caleb in the hallway. “You didn’t change your mind. You gave me this key and told me exactly what BLUE MUG meant.”
