I had finally done the opposite.
I had pulled it back.
And everything changed.
Over the next day, the doctors continued treating me while monitoring the damaged tissue and the infection. The fever finally began to come down. It didn’t happen all at once. It happened by degrees, slowly enough that I was afraid to celebrate.
But the number on the monitor changed.
Then 101.
Then below 100.
For the first time in a week, I woke without feeling as if my entire body were burning.
Detective Hall came to see me that afternoon.
She told me the investigation was continuing and that the recordings had been preserved. She also told me that the evidence from the dressing, the bottle, the messages, and the home security system would all be evaluated together.
She didn’t promise me a particular outcome.
She didn’t
need to.
She had already given me something I had been missing for seven days.
She believed what I was saying.
Before she left, she asked whether I wanted to speak with Luca.
I looked at my phone.
There were dozens of missed calls.
I shook my head.
“No.”
It was the easiest answer I had given all week.
Several weeks later, I still remembered the exact moment Dr. Marcus lifted the dressing and froze.
At the time, I thought the most frightening thing was that something was wrong with my ankle.
I was wrong.
The frightening part was discovering that the person standing closest to me had been controlling what I was allowed to see.
I had spent seven days believing tomorrow would bring the care I needed.
It was a stranger in a cab, a triage nurse, a doctor, and a detective who finally brought me into the present.
And there was one lesson I couldn’t forget.
When your body is telling you something is wrong, you don’t need someone else’s permission to listen.
I had waited for tomorrow because my husband told me to.
I survived because, on the seventh day, I stopped waiting.
