Page 125 of The First Cut

I assume it’s the cops. The door opens before I can say anything and a doctor walks in with a serious expression on his face. He eyes me with distaste as Lola gasps, her eyes springing open.

“Hey, you’re alright. I’m here.”

She blows out a few shallow breaths before focusing on me. “I’m okay,” she whispers, her eyes flitting from mine to the doctor at the foot of the bed.

“Good to see you awake, Miss Williams. How you feeling?”

“I’ve been better,” she offers him a shaky smile.

“How’s your pain on a scale of one to ten?”

“Maybe a five or a six.”

“So it’s probably more like a seven or an eight,” I warn him.

He makes a note on his tablet. “I’ll have one of the nurses come in and give you some more pain relief.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. I don’t know if anyone has spoken to you about your injuries yet?—”

“Hannibal ran through most of it with me.”

“Did he now?” Condemnation drips from his voice, making Lola tense.

“I’m sorry. I asked him to tell me, and I knew he’d explain it in a way I’d understand.”

“And Mr. Hannibal's a doctor, is he?” he huffs. Before I can say anything, Lola glares at him. I won’t mention that her swollen eyes kind of negate the whole looking fierce thing.

“He was a medic in the army, so he knows what he’s talking about. If him being here with me is offensive to you somehow, you can leave. I’ve had it up to here with men who have God complexes.”

I bite my lip at her defense of me. It feels like a terrier protecting a Rottweiler—not that I’d tell her that.

“I apologize, Miss Williams. That was unprofessional of me.” He blows out a deep breath. “May I speak to you alone?”

“Anything you need to say, you can say in front of Hannibal. I’d only tell him anyway.”

“As you wish.”

He gives her the same run down of injuries that I did, adding his expectations regarding her healing prognosis and possible complications to watch out for. Once he’s finished, he hesitates for a moment.

“Your x-rays show a lot of…previous injuries. I assume you’re not into extreme sports, Miss Williams?”

It clicks then, the open hostility toward me. It has nothing to do with the cut per se and everything to do with the possibility that I’m an abuser. As much as it pisses me off that he thinks that, I can’t fault him for being pissed. He must see many women pass through these doors with a multitude of injuries born from domestic violence, only for him to patch them up and send them back home with their abusers.

“I never laid a hand on her, doc. I know what you found. But it wasn’t me.”

Lola looks at me before turning her gaze to the doctor. I see the moment it dawns on her. Her cheeks flush as she dips her head.

“It wasn’t Hannibal. He saved me. My…hell, I won’t call him my ex because that implies some sort of relationship. I was more like a prisoner than a partner.”

The doctor puts his tablet down on the little table at the end of the bed, focusing on Lola. If his expression was anything other than professional compassion, I’d break his neck.

“I won’t give you the details about the hows or whys. They don’t matter anymore. But yes, to answer your question, there were a lot of injuries. Some that healed fast, some that didn’t. That’s how I know I’ll be okay this time around.”

“Because you’ve already recovered from worse, and broken bones take longer to heal than bruises do,” the doctor says with a frown.

“Exactly.”