“No.”
The answer came fast, before guilt could catch it.
My mother came back into the room then, eyes red, handbag clutched to her chest. “Emily, you do not need to answer that. You can stay with me. Logan is gone. He left.”
Bell turned toward her. “Ma’am, please don’t interrupt.”
She ignored him and looked at me instead. “He panicked. That’s all. He knows he messed up. Do you understand what happens if they arrest him? You are his sister.”
I felt something cold settle into place inside me. All night I had been dizzy, bleeding, scared, half lost in pain. But hearing that—he knows he messed up, you are his sister—cut through everything.
“And I’m your daughter,” I said.
The silence afterward was worse than if I had screamed it.
Mom blinked at me as though I had broken some sacred rule. Then her face hardened, not with anger exactly but with the defensive desperation of someone whose whole life depends on not seeing clearly.
“You always push him,” she said. “You know how he gets.”
Dr. Reeves moved before I did. “That’s enough. She is the patient. You can wait outside.”
Mom opened her mouth, but Bell stepped between us. “Now.”
She left in a brittle storm of perfume and humiliation.
I started shaking only after the door closed. Ruiz handed me a cup of water. Bell asked whether I had somewhere else to stay. I said maybe with my coworker, Nina Alvarez, if I could reach her. Dr. Reeves said the hospital social worker would help arrange it and discuss an emergency protective order.
The words sounded unreal. Protective order. Domestic assault. Statement. Evidence photographs.
But when Ruiz gently asked if they could photograph my injuries, I said yes.
When Bell asked if Logan had a firearm, I said yes, locked in the hall closet, top shelf.
When he asked whether I wanted to press charges, my chest tightened so hard I could barely breathe.
Then I pictured the hallway wall. The family photos rattling. My mother telling me not to make it bigger than it was while blood ran into my eye.
“Yes,” I said.
This time the word did not shake.
Officer Bell spoke into his radio. Officer Ruiz tore a page from her pad and gave me a case number. Dr. Reeves signed something in my chart. Outside the room, I heard the quickening rhythm of footsteps, radios, a door opening, a voice calling for another unit.
The machine had started moving.
And somewhere out in the city, my brother was still loose, maybe driving, maybe drinking, maybe furious enough to come back home before the police got there.
For the first time all night, I was not just afraid of what had happened.
I was afraid of what Logan would do when he realized I had not protected him.
Nina answered on the second ring.
“Em? Why are you calling me this late?”
I did not mean to cry, but her voice cracked something open. I pressed the heel of my hand against my good eye and forced the words out. “I’m at Mercy General. Logan assaulted me. The police are involved. I can’t go home.”
There was no pause, no awkward question, no careful disbelief.
“I’m coming,” she said. “Text me the room number.”
The social worker, Karen Patel, met me just after midnight with a folder, a soft cardigan, and the practical tone of someone who had spent years building order out of other people’s worst nights. She explained the emergency protective order, the victim advocate hotline, the next steps if Logan was arrested, and how to document any prior threats or injuries I could remember. She also asked whether I wanted help retrieving essentials from the house later with a police escort.
That made it real in a new way. Not just tonight. Not just stitches and statements.
Leaving.
Officer Ruiz returned before discharge to tell me they had gone to the house. Logan was not there, but they had spoken to my mother and secured the firearm. An alert had been entered for his vehicle, a gray Ford F-150. Because of my visible injuries, my statement, the doctor’s report, and the prior history I disclosed, there was enough for an arrest once they found him.
