Home to Me

by Bybee, Catherine

  Her phone rang a second time and she used more caution climbing out from under the sink. “Hello?” She didn’t take the time to look at who the caller was. She had one hand on the phone and the other one reaching to the back of her head.

  “It’s me.” It was Renee. She sounded off.

  Erin sat with her back resting on the cabinets.

  “It’s not good, is it?”

  “There’s lots to talk about, but I want to know how you liked the butter cookie recipe I sent you.”

  Their code. “It was great.”

  “Are you sitting down?”

  Erin looked at the floor around her. “Yeah.”

  “The judge lifted the protection order. I’m sorry.”

  Air caught in the back of her throat. “I guess we knew that was coming.”

  “I tried. Desmond’s arrogance was in his eyes, but I think he’s been taking acting lessons.”

  Did she really want to hear this? Much as she wanted to just hang up and put this past her, Erin knew she had to collect all the knowledge she could on her husband’s actions in order to stay one step ahead of him. Or twenty, if that was possible.

  “What happened?”

  Renee sighed. “He stood beside his attorney and let him do most of the talking. I honestly didn’t think he was going to talk on his own behalf, but then he asked to be sworn in. He gave quite a performance. He stood in front of that judge and told him the reason you’d asked for the order was prompted by the results of your head injury after the accident. His attorney asked about the physician documentation about your amnesia right after you were taken to the hospital. He went on to plea that once you started to recover, it was obvious that your memory didn’t completely return.”

  “So he repeated everything he did the first time.”

  “Yeah, only this time he managed to bring up tears for the judge. Said that he loved you dearly and couldn’t bear the thought that you were out in the world alone thinking he’d tried to harm you. Said you needed psychological help. It took everything in me not to laugh.”

  Erin could actually picture Desmond’s pretend tears that went along with his bullshit story. She’d seen it many times while he stood beside her in emergency rooms and clinics.

  “What happened next?”

  “I countered, of course. Asked him to explain the multitude of injury reports from the past. He kept the same story only this time said several doctors had suggested that mental illness might have played a role. I objected. He then talked about the medication you took after each trip to the hospital. Since that was in the original documentation, I couldn’t object. He said that every time you hurt yourself the doctors gave you more painkillers—”

  “I took only a fraction of those pills.”

  “Nothing we can prove,” Renee told her.

  Erin’s head started to really pound.

  “He suggested Munchausen syndrome.”

  “What the hell is that?” Erin cried.

  “A condition where someone intentionally hurts themselves, or fakes illness, for the attention and medication.”

  She wanted to throw up. “So now Desmond is a doctor?”

  “Actually, there was one file where an ER doctor mentioned it in his documentation. I don’t think Desmond’s attorney caught it the first time.”

  “So let me see if I have all this straight. I’m mentally ill, hurt myself for attention and drugs, and Desmond is the victim here.”

  Renee released a long-suffering breath. “That’s the picture he painted.”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, I don’t think the judge bought everything he tried to sell. What the judge did do was look at the past year, saw there was no contact between you both and that the divorce should act as another means to stay away from each other. Since Desmond was never brought up on spousal abuse charges and lacked any police reports, he dismissed the protection order.”

  She was quiet for several seconds.

  “We knew this would eventually happen, Maci,” Renee said.

  “I know.”

  “You’re going to be all right.”

  Erin felt the tears well behind her eyes. “Okay.” She was numb.

  “I’m going to reach out to his attorney before I leave the office today and get a finger on the pulse of where we are in the divorce. My guess is I won’t hear anything until Monday.”

  “Okay.”

  “Try not to think about this. He doesn’t know where you are, and if he so much as peeked his head into your life, I would drag him back in front of this judge so fast he’d have whiplash.” Renee was trying to lighten the mood. But what she failed to understand was that if Desmond showed up in her life, she wouldn’t be around to press charges.

  “Okay.”

  “I’m calling you on Monday.”

  Erin hung up and dropped her phone on the floor beside her. Her legs, which she’d curled up to her chest, fell in front of her and knocked down three of the bottles of cleaning supplies.

  Slowly, the tears started to fall and her breathing increased to short, staccato pants. That son of a bitch. You always win.

  “You always win,” she said out loud as she kicked one foot. Her toe caught a plastic cleaner bottle and sent it skidding across the kitchen.

  She kicked a second bottle. “Asshole,” she yelled.

  Her head was pounding, tears were streaming, and she yelled and kicked at the bottles until they were broken and spilling their contents all over the place.

  “How dare you!”

  Big blubbery sobs over the injustice of it all kept coming.

  The pounding in her head became an actual noise that came from her front door.

  “Erin?” It was Matt, and he was yelling her name. “Open the door.”

  “I’m okay.” She looked at the mess she’d made and tried to get to her feet and instantly regretted it. Her heartbeat raced in her ears.

  “Open the door, Erin.” He wiggled the lock, his voice frantic.

  She slipped in the mess on the floor, caught her fall with her right hand, and pain spiked up her arm.

  Matt started pounding again.

  She forced herself off the floor and opened the door. Tension sat in his jawline, and his eyes were sharp as a bird of prey looking from above. “Jesus!” He pulled her to his side as he wrapped his gaze around the room. “Where is he?”

  “What?”

  “You were yelling at someone. Where are they?”

  “There’s no one—”

  Matt wasn’t listening. He let her go and ran into her room only to return and duck into the bathroom.

  “Matt, no one is here.”

  He was back at her side in three strong strides. His hands reached for her face . . . his thumbs wiped at the tears in her eyes. When he brushed her hair back he blew out another round of expletives. “Damn it, Erin. You’re bleeding.”

  “What?” She reached for the back of her head and pulled her hand away. Indeed her fingertips were slick with blood. So many memories rushed forward and that’s what made her knees go weak.

  Matt caught her and walked her over to her sofa.

  “I hit my head under the sink,” she explained.

  He moved quickly into her bathroom. The sound of a faucet turning on followed.

  Her head spun. Emotions . . . it was adrenaline dumping in her system and emotions that were getting the best of her.

  When Matt returned to the room, he positioned himself so he could look at her head.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing. I barely feel—ouch!”

  He dabbed the wet washcloth against whatever was open back there and made her jump.

  “You hit it pretty good.” He kept dabbing and moving her hair out of the way. She felt his fingers following the length of her scar. “Looks like you opened an old wound.”

  “Do I need stitches?”

  He pressed the towel against her head. “I think so.”

  “D
arn it.”

  “Do you have any bandages?”

  “There’s a first aid kit in my linen closet.”

  He took her hand, brought it up to the back of her head. “Hold this.”

  She knew the drill. Reached up with her right hand, winced, and used her left.

  He returned and replaced the cloth with a bandage, and by now they had both appeared to have caught their breath.

  “What happened? Who were you yelling at?”

  She turned her head—yeah, that didn’t feel good—and waved at the kitchen. “I was cleaning under the sink. My phone rang, startling me. I moved too fast, hit my head. That’s it.”

  Matt blinked several times and the owl quality in his eyes bore deep. “You’re upset.”

  “I hit my head. It hurts.”

  “Are you nauseous?”

  “A little,” she confessed.

  “Did you pass out?” His questions sounded like that of any first responder.

  “No.”

  “Did you slip on the floor?”

  “Yes. Twisted my wrist.”

  His gaze narrowed. “Why does it look like a toddler went crazy with the Windex?”

  She glanced at the massacre on aisle five on her kitchen floor. “The phone call. It was bad news. I might have taken it out on the closest inanimate objects within reach.”

  Her answer gained a partial smile from Matt’s lips. “You were yelling.”

  “It was upsetting news, Matt.” Keep it simple and keep it private.

  “Wanna share?”

  A small shake of her head.

  His expression told her he wasn’t surprised. But he didn’t press. “Okay. Let’s get you to the emergency room and get you checked out.”

  “I’m sure a simple urgent care will—”

  “I know the people in the ER. I’ll make sure you get in and out fast.”

  Holding your cool when all you want to do is explode takes some serious fucking effort. And right now, Matt was exercising all kinds of patience.

  Erin was not only nauseated, she was light-headed. She blamed it on not eating. Once he positioned her in his truck, he hightailed it across town to the local hospital. Even though he wasn’t a paramedic, he had assisted on enough runs to know many of the veteran staff of the ER.

  It was still early enough that the place wasn’t wall-to-wall people.

  He parked just outside the ambulance bay and used the code to go through the back door.

  “We can go through the normal entry,” Erin told him.

  “It’s okay. They know me here.”

  Several people turned to watch them walk in. Four staff members were in direct sight. Sadly, he didn’t know any of them. Except one. “Dr. Brown.”

  “Hey . . .” From the look on Dr. Brown’s face, he knew he wasn’t placing him.

  “Matt Hudson. I come in with 123 quite a bit.”

  Recognition followed with a nod. “Right, right.” Dr. Brown’s hand shot out to shake his. “I don’t think I’ve seen you since that nasty one up in Castaic.”

  Matt remembered. Way too many cars thinking they were on a ride at the county fair on the interstate resulted in lots of casualties. “That was a hell of a night.”

  Dr. Brown nodded, smiled, and looked at Erin. “What happened?”

  “My friend here. She hit her head. Nauseous, dizzy—”

  “I’m feeling better now.”

  Matt looked at Erin briefly, turned to Dr. Brown. “Stubborn. One-inch laceration.”

  “Any LOC?” the doctor asked.

  Matt started to shake his head when Erin said, “I didn’t lose consciousness.”

  Dr. Brown narrowed his eyes. “Are you in the medical field?”

  “No,” she told him. “I just know what LOC means.”

  “Let’s get you looked at.” Dr. Brown turned to one of the nurses. “Lisa. Can you get her in a room, triage her?”

  Lisa was short, thirtyish, and all smiles. “Twelve is open.”

  “Great.”

  Matt stood back long enough to watch Erin walk with the nurse into the room. He lowered his voice once Erin was out of earshot. “So, ah . . . Erin’s really stubborn. I get the feeling she doesn’t like hospitals or answering truthfully.” Matt felt himself stretching the truth a little himself. But he really wanted to make sure she was a hundred percent okay, and that would require more than a stitch and a tetanus shot.

  “You think she passed out and isn’t telling you?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past her.” Matt felt a little devious, which should have left him infused with guilt. But since Erin was insanely quiet on the way to the hospital, he justified his actions and smiled as he walked into room twelve.

  Erin sat on the edge of a gurney and the nurse was taking her vital signs and asking questions. Did she have any known allergies or medical problems . . . asthma, diabetes . . . ? Erin said no to everything.

  “What about tetanus? When was your last booster?” Lisa asked.

  “February of last year.”

  Lisa didn’t blink an eye, but Matt found himself categorizing the date in his head. Most of the time, when people are asked about their tetanus vaccination, they have to think and round to the nearest decade. Or they remember the time they fell off their motorcycle and needed stitches.

  Matt took a chair to the side of the gurney and kept quiet.

  Lisa pulled off the automatic blood pressure cuff, wrapped it up, and tucked it behind the gurney. “Dr. Brown will be with you in a few minutes. I’ll tell clerical staff you’re here so they can generate a chart.”

  “Thank you,” Matt and Erin both said as Lisa left the bedside.

  Erin rubbed the palms of her hands against her thighs and looked around the room. “This feels like overkill,” she said.

  “Being in the ER?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe,” he told her. “But I’ll feel better knowing you’re taken care of.”

  She grinned. “Is this part of your hero complex?”

  “I didn’t realize I had one,” he teased.

  He noticed her thumbs rubbing against her forefingers, both of them in time with each other. Instead of pretending he didn’t see her nervous action, he grabbed both of her hands. “Let me go out on a limb here and suggest that you don’t like hospitals.”

  “Does anybody?”

  She had a point.

  Before he could say more, Dr. Brown came in and they both straightened their spines.

  “Let’s see what we have,” he said with ease.

  “I’m sure I just need a couple stitches. Or staples,” Erin told him.

  Lisa walked into the room with a handful of gauze, saline, and all the things a doctor needed to sew together skin.

  Dr. Brown put on a pair of gloves and patted the back of the gurney. “Why don’t you lie on your side.”

  Erin released Matt’s hands and sat back. Tension and probably pain washed over her features when Dr. Brown touched the cut.

  “What happened back here?”

  Erin took a second to answer. “Car accident.” She looked at Matt.

  “How long ago?”

  “Last year.”

  “This is a pretty impressive scar. Did you have any head trauma? Internal bleeding?”

  She blinked several times and stared at Matt as if she were afraid to answer the question in front of him.

  Much as he wanted to know the answer, and had many more questions that went with it, he found himself volunteering to leave the room. He took her hand. “Do you want me to wait outside?”

  Relief flashed. “Would you?”

  “Of course.” He kissed the back of her hand and walked outside the room.

  But he didn’t go far.

  He pulled out his phone and pretended to find entertainment in his e-mail while he listened to as much as he could hear.

  “Tell me about the accident.” Matt heard Dr. Brown’s voice.

  “It was bad. I woke up in the hospital
and didn’t remember much of anything for a few days. I was told there was swelling in my brain but it went away without surgery.” Matt digested the words.

  “Complete amnesia, or just to the event?”

  “Event,” Erin said.

  “Sounds like you were lucky.”

  Matt heard Erin’s nervous laugh. “I suppose.”

  “You hit a portion of the scar.”

  “Yeah, brushing my hair can prove interesting sometimes.”

  There was noise inside the room. “I’m just going to check a few more things,” Dr. Brown said.

  Matt found himself shuffling from one foot to the other, wondering what was happening behind the curtain.

  “Are you still nauseous?”

  “Not really. I’m nervous.”

  “Is it us? Or do you have a history of anxiety?”

  “I’ve never been diagnosed with anxiety issues. If that’s what you’re asking,” Erin told him.

  “Let me look in your eyes.” There was silence. “Follow the light with your eyes but keep your head straight.”

  He listened while the doctor completed his assessment. “Tell you what,” Dr. Brown finally said. “I’m going to order a CT of your head.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now let me look at your hand.”

  Matt smiled and took several steps away from the door.

  When the doctor left the room, Matt walked past him, smiled, and returned to Erin’s side.

  The nurse was cleaning up the bandages and tools they’d used to sew Erin up. “Can I come back in?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Erin grinned and sat up. “He wants to take pictures of my head and wrist.”

  Matt played innocent. “Oh?”

  “A precaution.”

  “Sounds reasonable. Are you feeling better?”

  “Tender, but okay.”

  “I can ask the doctor for pain medication if you need some,” Lisa said before she walked out of the room.