Mirror glass litters my hair. Awe hell… I roll over and my hand comes down in a nest of shards, but I barely feel them pierce the skin or grind their way in as I push upright. That would be the remains of the Mom’s hall mirror. After she died, Jake hung it in the hall instead of the living room, thinking it maybe wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire of Dad’s moods. Damnit.  

     I get a glimpse of my jigsawed reflection in the broken glass: greasy, brown hair matted with blood; hazel eyes eclipsed into squints by swelling flesh. As I try to regain my feet, a gust of dizziness informs me my equilibrium is off. The ringing in my left ear and sticky warmth that greets my fingers when I touch its hollow tell me why. Busted eardrum. And a suspicious swelling at my crotch says I caught a cheap shot. Walking should be loads of fun. Dad did a number this time round.  

     I look down the hall, and I see Jake right where Dad left him--lying outside the bathroom door, out cold from having his skull bashed against the bathroom sink. Or at least he should be out cold...  

     He’s groaning. Get your ass moving, Nick.  

     I hobble down the hall. Fall to my knees at his side. His eyes are open, but the whites keep rolling into view.   

     “Jake?” I ask in a whisper. Can’t let Dad hear me. He could still be in the house. “Jake?” I hazard a hair’s breadth louder.   

     Involuntary motion lurches him into my arms, and he vomits in my lap. It’s then I see the swelling at the back of his skull. Oh God…this is bad.   

     I have to call 911. But what if Dad’s still in the living room?   

     “Nick…” he whispers. He can still speak? Jake’s hand slaps to the back of my neck, and he drags my head down until my ear is even with his lips. “Get—out—” He gasps it. The words catch in his throat. He gags them past his tongue. “Never come back. Run.”  

     My brother’s hand slips, and I guide him gently to the floor. His eyes fall shut, but his chest still rises and falls raggedly.   

     He’s dying.  

     But if I don’t obey him, Dad will kill me too. I don't want to leave Jake here like this...but I can't help him. What if the hospital can't help him either? Then I'll be stuck here. But only till senior year. But will I even make it to graduation? What if next time...   

     When I force myself to my feet, I keep my eyes focused on the walls because if I look back down at him, I won’t be able to do this. 

     It's only hours later at the bus station, when I'm getting stared at by a cue-ball in a motorcycle jacket with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, that I realize I left the house barefoot and still wearing my bloody clothes.  

     I spend that night at the hospital with my ER nurse shaking her head wearily at me because she knows I'm lying about the origin of my injuries. 

 

#

 

NINETEEN YEARS LATER 

 

     “You fell down the stairs?” 

     The girl lying in the center of the hospital bed can’t be more than fifteen. In fact I’d hazard younger since she’s got those out of proportion limbs native to middle school. I glance at her chart. Thirteen. Thirteen years old and already lying to cover the hurt.  

     I use writing my name on the whiteboard--Nick Walker, RN--as an opportunity to mask the sneer threatening at my lip. She’d think the expression was directed at her. I mean it for her abuser. It’s not her fault she’s unaware that I’ve played both sides of this pantomime. I gently turn her arm to track the path of the faint ring around her bicep. The bruise is worse than the day-shifter who gave me report intimated. Course since the kid is African American, her complexion tends to mask bruising. But only if you’re not looking very hard. Amanda is a lazy nurse. I’m not remotely surprised.  

     Glancing sideways at the girl, I note a scar bisecting her bottom lip. 

     “You get that scar from a belt buckle?” I ask.  

     Her head jerks around, fast and frightened. Suspicion lights her eyes, but at the back of them I see it. A glint of pleading hope. 

    I lean against the bed rails to lessen my height. At six four, I intimidate without effort, which is the last thing I want to do to her. Bending slightly, I touch my right earlobe. “My dad ripped it open with his belt when I was nine. Bled like an s.o.b..” I flatten my left hand, spread out all the fingers so she can see the misshapen ones where the breaks healed poorly. “Slammed my bedroom door on that hand. He caught me trying to sneak out and get food cause he’d made me skip dinner.” From my peripheral vision, I glimpse her swallowing hard. Something’s connecting. I’m not sure how much. Finally, I push my hair back from my hairline where a net of scar-tissue webs its way along my forehead.  

     “This is the last one he ever gave me,” I say. “He broke my head open on my Mom’s antique mirror. Ended up with a nurse picking glass out of my hair for an hour. I ran away from home after that time. Now, I only ran because my big brother told me too. I wasn’t brave enough to try it on my own. I was too used to it. Never thought I had a choice.” She watches me speak. Her expression is neutral, still hovering between listening or dismissing me to the faceless crowd of the well-meaning who’ve tried to help her before. “You can just keep on doing what you’re doing until whoever is hurting you either gets too old to hit, or kills you.” I gesture around the room. “Or you can stop it. You can let us help. We can. I will. You just have to ask.” 

     She doesn’t answer, but the wall of silence hasn’t reached her eyes. It's not much, but it’s not nothing. I stand up then make like I’m adjusting her IV. 

     “If you need anything, just press the call light. I’ll get here as soon as I can.” I pause as she locates the button. “We good?” I ask. She nods. That’s the most I’ll let myself hope for, I guess. 

     Outside her room, I head up to the nurses’ station. The charge nurse--a stocky woman with a buzz cut, no eyebrows, and name of Peggy--clocks me and holds up her patience-please-I’m-arguing-with-a-doctor finger.  

     She flings down the receiver. “If you’d answer your damn phone when you’re paged, we wouldn’t have to call a code to get you up here.”  

     “Wetcher?” I ask. That woman has a history of sleeping on night shift, patients be damned.  

     “Wetcher,” Peggy grumbles. “Whatchya need?” 

     “Got an abuse case in 213.”  

     She pulls the patient's electronic chart. As she reads, a contemptuous frown, the one she usually reserves for insurance agents and drug seeking patients, creeps into view. “Is she talking?” 

     “Not yet. We’ll see what happens.”  

     “Just document everything and make sure to talk to the social worker. Damn shame. I’d like to take her abuser and run his junk over a cheese grater.” 

     “Maybe he’ll show up so you can oblige him. Hope springs eternal,” I say.  

     Peggy chuckles at that. “That’s why I like you, Nick. Well, at least she got you for a nurse.” 

     “Don’t give me too much credit.” 

     “I’m not.” 

     “Do you see me here asking for the cops so she can press charges? I haven’t accomplished anything with her.” 

Peggy snorts. “Come on, Nick. I bet you told her your story, right?” 

     I don’t answer, but the omission is as good as an admission. Peggy’s smile shifts smugly. “See? You’re living proof that there is life beyond abuse. You better than anybody know what it means to see that.”  

     Though I only reply with a shrug, I gotta admit she’s hard to argue with. There’s a big difference between wishful thinking and concrete evidence of hope. 

     Peggy lands a playful punch to my shoulder. “Get back out there to being med-surg’s big damn hero,” she says.  

I blush, and she grins to remind me my discomfort with flattery does nothing but fuel her desire to dole it out. Typical Peggy.  

     Just as the pause stretches into awkward, I see one of the techs lean out of a room, her face a mask of controlled panic.  

     “Help!” 

     Instinct sends me running toward the room. From nursing school clinicals forward, I’ve been the guy they call for violent patients. My size alone would be sufficient to make me useful when it comes to restraining combatants, but my adolescent history has given me quick reflexes. All humans react to a hand flying at their face, but given the right patient--say a genuinely malicious character rather than a confused grandma on too much Geodon--I can anticipate them. I control them calm, and I control them fast. So I’m almost always the first one in the room.  

     But this time, I’m not prepared for the sight that greets me. 

     Becky, our petite twenty-one-year-old new grad so fresh from nursing school that she still empties bedpans instead of asking the CNAs for help, is grappling with a big, angry man in his upper 70s. He’s snatched one of his many IVs from its site and is whipping the thing across Becky’s arms and face like a lash. The plastic tubing tangles and rips out a ribbon of ash blond hair, drawing blood and a shriek from Becky. Normally, I’d be between her and the patient in a heartbeat, but I see his face first. I see black eyes filled with the sourceless anger that was a daily facet of my life until I was eighteen. My gaze flicks to his wrist where I note a purplish birthmark that wraps out of view across his closed palm. That permanently bruised fist…I’ve seen it so many times. Lost count of the blows it’s delivered… 

     I freeze. My mind is racing backward into the past. I’m twelve years old, and my father has Jake by the shirt front and is whipping him in the face with his own belt. That day, I didn’t intervene. I stood there with urine running down my legs and pooling in a reeking ring around my feet. 

     Today, before I’ve even registered my return to consciousness, I’ve shoved Becky away from him so hard she bounces off the PCA pump. Bracing my elbow against the socket of his shoulder, I shove my father against the bed and grasp the wrist of the hand wielding the IV tubing. Blood splashes across my face as the tube’s end slices the air inches from my cheek. It’s only after I’ve pinned him down that the buzzing in my ears subsides enough to realize I’m screaming.  

     “You keep your fucking hands off her!” 

     Comprehension hits him the same time it does me. We stare at each other, disbelief hanging heavy and silent between us, pendulous and overripe. 

     The pause is just long enough for Becky to gather her wits and slam a sedative into his central line, the only medicinal delivery route he hasn’t torn out during his fit. It hits him faster than usual, therefore. 

     I’m shaken and scared shitless, but I still don’t—can’t—quite trust my eyes. Without transferring my gaze from the vagaling patient, I snap at Becky.  

     “What’s the name on the chart?” 

     “What?” 

     “The patient. What’s his name?” 

     “Jeffery Walker.” 

     Holy shit; I never thought I’d see him again. 

 

# 

 

     Becky and I are changing into fresh scrubs borrowed from Women’s Center since ours are spattered with enough blood to render patients uncomfortable and a hasty clean up job impossible. As I pull the drawstring, I find my hands are trembling visibly.  

     “You okay?” 

     The question comes from Becky. When I glance back at her, I see nothing of the nervous energy that possesses me. Her face and forearms might be hatched with welts, but by her attentive, unblinking expression I can tell she’s clicked into vigilant nurse mode of knowing that something is amiss with the other person in the room. New grad or no, she was born for this. 

     “Not really,” I say. No point in lying.  

     “I’ve never seen you lose it with a patient,” she says. I take a seat on the locker room bench, shrug and turn my palms up in protest. “Had to happen sometime,” I say. Why am I dodging her? The gaze she trains on me is steady, suspicious, and sympathetic. Her eyes are sky blue. Huh. Never noticed.  “I’m guessing the shared last name isn’t a coincidence?” she asks. I shake my head. She crosses the room and plops down beside me. “77 years old. Is he your Dad? Grandpa?” 

     “Father,” I say. 

     “You never talk about him.” 

     “Never had to. I haven’t seen him since I was eighteen.” 

     Her blue eyes widen at that. “So it’s a pretty special loop you just got knocked through.” 

     “You can say that again.” 

     But she can’t say that because neither of us can really say anything anymore. I mean, what's there to you say when the specter has returned to the feast? I’ve had hundreds of alcoholic patients, occasionally wondered if Dad might have drunk himself into the same condition at some point, imagined a thousand fates for him. Hell, I even imagined this scenario, but never with any serious thought. Now it’s here, and I haven’t the faintest clue what to do about it. 

     But nursing doesn’t leave much room to wallow. Becky and I spend all of about two minutes on that bench before our phones go nuts calling us back to the floor and our other six patients. Dad’s not part of my load, so I lose myself in the care of my own for the rest of the evening. Around 4 a.m. I see the coroner headed down the 200 hall. At 4:15 Becky pulls me aside. 

     “Your dad went into cardiac arrest around 3:20. The attack was so massive that it killed him instantly.” 

     I swallow, but it feels like I’m gulping ash. “They didn’t call a code?” 

     “AND.” 

     Allow Natural Death. A flicker of bitterness at the memory of who he was has me thinking the old term, Do Not Resuscitate, suits him better. 

     “Thank you, Becky.” 

     She nods, then glances at my hands and gently pulls my clipboard from them. “You take a few minutes, okay? I’ll cover your patients.”  

     I wanna tell her I’m fine. Tell her I was through with this asshole twenty years ago. That it’s behind me. But I’m still reeling from this emotional cyclone. Damnit all, I’m a big boy. I grew up. I used my second chance and earned a life I can be proud of with it. I guess I just never expected to have to face this particular ghost.     

     At 6:45, just before my shift ends, my abuse victim, Shawndra, hits her call light. By the time I reach her room, my chest is an aching snarl of panic and hope.  

     “Could I talk to somebody? Like you was saying earlier…” she says. 

     “You want me to get a social worker?” 

     “I wanna tell somebody. About why I’m hurt.” 

     It’s all I can do not to cry. 

 

The End.