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I have heard panic.
I have heard people lie, beg, threaten, and break.
But I had never heard my wife sound like she believed pain was the reasonable price of staying in the room.
Helen stood halfway.
“Mr. Hayes,” she said, smoothing her scrub top as if that mattered, “your wife became emotional again. She insisted she felt contaminated. We were trying to calm her before she upset herself.”
I did not answer her at first.
I was looking at Audrey’s arms.
There were marks there that no medical chart could turn into anxiety.
Yellow bruises.
Violet bruises.
Greenish shadows where fingers had gripped too hard and too often.
The room did not move.
The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen.
A pear slice sat abandoned on the plate.
Outside, somewhere down the street, a dog barked once and stopped.
I said, “By calling her disgusting?”
Helen’s eyes flickered.
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