Every Little Thing

35

The nurse asks Reed to leave the room after that. She says we have some things to discuss personally, and it's not in my best interest to have him present. He hesitates, meeting my gaze with such worry that I wonder if he thinks I'll fall apart without him there.

Maybe I will.

But Mrs. Bracket insists, and eventually, he caves.

"For how long?" he asks, as she's beginning to shoo him out.

"Ten minutes, tops," she promises. Reed looks over at me one more time before he leaves, and his eyes ask me if I'm going to be alright.

I blink, and there's just a flicker of a smile crossing his face before he leaves. Mrs. Bracket sighs and makes her way back over to me, looking slightly exasperated.

"That boy has had a lot of girls on his tail in his lifetime, let me tell you," she mutters, pulling her chair closer to me, "but none of them—none of them—have held his attention like that."

The words alleviate something in my chest; I feel myself deflate a little as she tears a few sheets of paper from her journal and hands them to me, along with a pen.

"This is going to be the hard part, Evelyn, but you can keep things to a one-sentence minimum."

She wants me to tell her what happened.

"I know I'm not as handsome as Reed, but I'm here to help you," she vows, and despite myself, I feel a little better after hearing her attempt at a joke.

I blink. Okay. I can do this.

She smiles and says, "I'll make it easier by asking you direct questions. But you do have to tell me—is there anything I should know in particular? Anything important that might help me understand what happened?"

I swallow, pointing to a thick, hardcover book that sits on the coffee table. She hands it to me without hesitation, and I use it as a desk as I write, my hand shaking as I go.

He tried to choke me.

The sentence, written in my own handwriting, is just beginning to register in my mind. Greg tried to choke me. I was at the mercy of his huge, unrelenting hands for—for how long?

And that's how I know what I need to write next. I swallow and scrawl another line of script, right below the sentence before it.

I passed out. The last thing I remember is not being able to breathe because his hands were on my throat.

"And you don't remember anything after that?" Janet asks, her voice slightly tremulous. I know she's trying to mask it, but to no avail.

Blink, blink.

A sigh escapes her lips. She runs her hands over her pants, as if trying to rid them from sweat.

"Well, the passing out must have been due to lack of oxygen," she murmurs, writing in her notebook again, "But if you don't remember anything, I—I need to do a full examination. Evelyn, you know this could mean..."

Neither of us can bring ourselves to say the word—or, in my case, write it—but we're both thinking it.

Mrs. Bracket cups my cheek in her hand, clucking her tongue.

"Poor, poor baby," she whispers. "We'll know for sure in just a minute, okay? For right now, I just need you to breathe."

Everyone keeps saying that, just like my mother used to—just breathe, Evelyn. Just breathe.

What they don't realize is that my world is spinning, being turned upside down and inside out, and while everyone keeps telling me to just breathe, I am slowly running out of oxygen.