By the time the triage nurse called my name, the blood on my shirt had turned stiff and brown around the collar.
“Emily Carter?”
I stood too fast and the waiting room tilted. My mother rose with me, one hand fluttering at my elbow as if she had been the one holding pressure to my scalp all the way from our house in Dayton, Ohio. She had not. She had spent the drive repeating the same line in a tight, shaky voice.
“Logan didn’t mean to. You know your brother. He gets upset, then it’s over. We are not reporting this.”
Not reporting this.
As if my split scalp and the warm blood sliding down my neck were a misunderstanding.
Inside the exam room, a physician’s assistant cut away the sticky hair near the wound and hissed under her breath. “That’s deep.”
