Chapter 3

In that moment, I froze.

The air around me felt thick, like stagnant water, and my breath caught in it.

My face had gone dead white from the lack of oxygen.

Bryan noticed none of it. He kept talking, kept trying to reason with me.

"Eugene does kickboxing. In a situation like that, nobody would dare go up against him head-on. Even if I'd been there, it would've been the same!"

"Bonnie's just a girl. She can't even lift anything. What did you expect her to do for you?"

"The evidence your dad gathered is already enough to prove Bonnie's innocent!"

"If you have to blame something, blame your bad luck!"

"Don't worry. From now on I'll take care of you a thousand times, ten thousand times better!"

As he said it, he moved to pull me into his arms.

But I saw it clearly, the disgust buried deep in his eyes.

Something twisted in my chest, and I stepped back on instinct, out of his reach.

"There's no need."

Then, without another word, I turned and walked away.

I took my leave slip and walked out of the office, but at the turn of the stairwell I heard Bonnie's voice.

"Bryan, you're so good to Gertie. Do you really not care that she'll need treatment for the rest of her life?"

Bryan sounded oddly irritated.

"It'd be a lie to say I don't care. But right now, I don't want to set her off any more, or she'll only cling harder to blaming you!"

"So you're doing this for me?"

Bryan hesitated.

"...Of course not. I just think, if even her own dad can side with you, then you're probably really innocent!"

"I like Gertie. We promised to be together for the rest of our lives. I'm going to earn a lot of money to pay for her treatment!"

I stepped out from around the corner and walked straight up to the two of them.

Bryan panicked instantly.

"Gertie..."

He reached for my arm. I dodged.

"Don't put yourself through all this trouble."

"Let's break up."

The words landed, and I went straight down the stairs and out the school gate.

I didn't go home. I went to the law firm to see my attorney.

He told me, "There's no way Eugene's avoiding prison. But if you want Bonnie held liable too, you'll need to go back over every detail of what happened that day, so I can gather evidence."

So I forced down the fear buried deep inside me and went back over that day again and again, then told him everything.

It was like tearing open a wound that had just scabbed over, again and again, to show someone else.

By evening, I finally walked out of the firm, drained to the point of collapse.

A dog darting out from the roadside was enough to stop my breath cold.

Maybe it was the heat. My stomach began to churn, and a dull ache spread through my belly.

I hunched over a trash can on the curb and threw up hard.

Only when there was nothing left did I go wait for the bus.

"Sweetie, why is your face so white?"

"Oh no, you... you're bleeding!"

The woman waiting at the stop with me suddenly cried out.

But I'd already lost consciousness, my whole body toppling straight backward.

She caught me, and a crowd gathered around us.

The ambulance came fast, and I was rushed to the hospital.

"Trauma-induced corpus luteum rupture, abnormal uterine bleeding. Young lady, have you been attacked recently? Did someone deliberately strike your abdomen?"

The doctor asked once the exam was done.

I said nothing, my face white.

Yes. That day, Eugene had kicked me in the stomach, over and over.

The doctor wrote up my admission form. "Call a family member to come stay with you. You have to be admitted for treatment, otherwise if it leaves lasting damage, it could affect your fertility!"

So it turned out that after a violent beating, beyond the visible injuries, there was this kind of serious hidden harm to the body too.

Too bad no one had ever told me.

Even my mother, an OB-GYN herself, hadn't said a single word about it in front of me.

After I was brought in, they hadn't even given me a single gynecological exam!

I picked up my phone and scrolled through the whole contact list, and still didn't know who I could call.

"Doctor, I don't have any family."

"What about your parents?"

"They don't want me anymore."

The doctor paused. "Then let me arrange a caregiver for you."