The emergency room doors burst open before the ambulance had fully stopped.
Bright lights rushed above me as paramedics pushed my stretcher through a corridor filled with hurried footsteps, ringing phones, and clipped medical commands. Every movement sent another bolt of agony through the left side of my face.
“Twenty-seven-year-old female,” one paramedic announced. “Blunt-force trauma to the orbital region. Brief loss of consciousness. Heavy bleeding at the scene. Possible facial fractures.”
“Assault?” a nurse asked.
“Witnessed assault. Police are on the way.”
The word settled over me like ice.
Assault.
Until that moment, some foolish part of me had still wanted to call it an accident. A family argument. A terrible mistake made in anger.
But my father had picked up a brick.
He had aimed it at my face.
And after I fell, my mother had laughed.
A doctor leaned over me, her expression calm but urgent.
“My name is Dr. Evelyn Hart. Sadie, can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“Hospital.”
“Do you know what happened?”
My throat tightened.
“My father hit me with a brick.”
The doctor’s eyes changed—not with shock, but with a controlled kind of anger.
“All right. We’re going to take care of you.”
Wyatt appeared beside the stretcher, his shirt torn at the shoulder and his hands scratched from the rose bushes.
“I’m her fiancé.”
A nurse tried to stop him.
“You need to wait outside.”
“No.” I reached blindly for him. “Please.”
