The Wall

Thank God for Deshi. Deshi… the guy who got squeamish at the sight of blood, and stood back when I was attacked by that lynx. He saved us both.

He ran to me and shook my shoulders. My body was rigid and didn’t react to his light attempts. “Joe. Snap out of it. She’s alive. Come here.”

She was alive. I waited for the feeling of relief but it didn’t come. Deshi went in to Orry, returning with a tightly wrapped, upset but unharmed, baby. “Is he…?” I asked.

“He’s fine,” Deshi answered but his eyes were dark as tragedy as he looked at my girl. My son was safe. Thank God for that. I knelt down next to her, cupping her shoulder as gently as I could. She looked broken and folded, like the tiniest disruption would make her body collapse. But I knew this wasn’t possible. I had to get on the other side of my panic. “Rosa?” I whispered, my voice sounding breathless. The air in the room felt thin, like we were on top of a mountain.

She managed a moan but she didn’t open her eyes. I turned her over and tried to stretch her out, which was no mean feat. She was clinging to that hammer like it was part of her and I couldn’t pry it out of her hands. I gently shook her tiny wing of a shoulder. “Rosa, it’s Joseph, can you hear me?”

She mumbled something. It sounded like, “Not in my home.”

My heart sank like a lead weight. Whatever happened here, it could have been stopped. I should have been here to stop it. Anger rattled me but I pushed it down. Right now, I needed to help her.

I scooped her up as gently as I could, noticing that one arm was hanging limply at a strange angle. It was definitely broken. She was also bleeding from her scalp and had several cuts and bruises starting to form over her face.

Rosa, what happened to you?

We walked as quickly as we could towards a slowing spi

Deshi touched my shoulder and I flinched, every muscle tensed. It jerked me back to reality. He leaned back like he was afraid of me.

“Joe, breathe. If you keep holding your breath like that, you’re going to pass out. I can’t carry the three of you on my own.” He smiled weakly but his eyes had no humor in them.

I lifted her unbroken arm. Her fingers were bleeding; tiny splinters were jammed under her nails like she’d been gripping into the wood for dear life. Her chin was grazed with splinters too. She squeaked and I realized I was holding her too tightly.

How did this happen? The thoughts ru

“It’s all right,” Deshi said, trying to calm me down. “I think she’s going to be ok… most of this looks superficial.”

I stared at him, scared to utter the words I was thinking, “But what if they…” I stared at her torn clothes, grief drying up my words. I couldn’t even say it. Even if she was going to be fine physically, how would she be emotionally?

“Don’t say it, Joe, don’t even go there. We don’t know what happened. We won’t know until she wakes up and tells us. And she will wake up. She will be ok.”

We rode the rest of the way in silence. I just watched her breathe. I watched the air pass quietly through her beautiful, parted lips and tried to ignore the red splotches of skin that were fast turning purple all over her tiny body.

Deshi rocked Orry and reached out to stroke Rosa’s hair every now and then. I was wrong about him, his feelings for her ran deeper than I realized.

Is this what it felt like for you? When you watched me collapse in front of you , did it feel like everything was being stripped away, dreams turning to dust, nothing but grey ash covering the earth? Were you angry? Did you blame me?

You ’re so much stronger than you know.

She’d been under sedation for a day now. Matthew showed me her scans. Her arm was indeed broken near the wrist but it was a clean break. They set it easily. She had a pretty bad concussion and a hairline fracture in her skull that would heal on its own. The scan also showed a previous break in her jaw that had been repaired with a great deal of skill. Matthew told me it was at least a year old and asked how it happened. When I told him I didn’t know, he looked perplexed and I felt inadequate.

When they rolled her onto her side, her gown slipped away, revealing one big bruise spreading over her perfect skin like someone had spilled ink on her. It was like someone had picked her up and dropped her from a height. The insides of her elbows were a blackish purple too. He couldn’t tell me if she had been assaulted in any other way. He was not going to do an exam without her permission, and for that she had to wake up.

Whoever did this was a monster.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with it when she did wake. I wanted to hold her, cover her in kisses but Matthew warned me that if she had been assaulted, she might not want to be close to anyone for a while. That terrified me. And then I felt guilty that I was worried about something so stupid.

What I felt was powerless. I had all this anger, all this pain, and I didn’t really know where to put it.

Watching her now, people would say she is so small. Frail even. Not to me. To me, she was a storm brewing and I knew as soon as she opened her beautiful eyes, she would be a thunderous force.

I just worried and wondered where the lightning strike would be aimed.

My head felt crackly, sounds were sharp and then descended into buzzing. I kept my eyes closed and tried to focus on one thing at a time. Lifting my arm. It felt heavy and clumsy, not my own. Turning my head. That proved more difficult. I could do it but the pain was intense, like there was something jammed in my skull and when I moved it, the object wiggled and grazed my brain.

Then the reason why I felt this way came back to me in a giant and solid assault on my memory. Cal. That bastard. Anger filled me from my toes to the top of my aching head, like hot oil boiling in my blood; it sizzled and popped its way up my body until I could no longer keep my eyes shut.

They pinged open, harsh, white light trying to force them ajar, and the first thing I said was, “I’m going back to get my mother.”

Joseph’s head was dipped and he had his hands folded across his knees like he had been or was about to be sick. And when I spoke, his eyes lifted. They took my face in, and then my words, so his expression went from relief to surprise and then confusion, all in one shutter speeding display. As his face returned to a more calm façade, I could see myself reflected in his eyes. They said more than he could. I looked awful.

I blinked uncomfortably and ran my hands over my lips. Everything felt dry and alive.

Joseph took my good arm carefully, the one that wasn’t encased in plaster, and held it between his own. “It is all right. You were attacked. You’re in the hospital now. You’re safe. Orry’s safe.”

“I know where I am,” I snapped, although the effect was muted, my voice felt like it hadn’t been used in months. “Water, please,” I said more kindly. This couldn’t be easy for him. And I tried hard to remember that but things kept slipping as the knock-knocking in my head started to drown out my thoughts.

I took a sip, slowly, the water sliding down my throat like paint. Trying not to turn my head, I noted the bag attached to my arm, the circle of empty chairs. I took in the normal, easy-to-process things in an attempt to calm my nerves but it didn’t help. I dragged my elbows up to sit but I was dizzy, weak. Anger was all I could feel because to me, it was like I had been on the floor one minute and was now awake and looking for the culprit.