This fic goes along with Why We Stay so it does contain domestic abuse. It'll help if you read that one first but it isn't entirely necessary.
Disclaimer: Don't own ER or the characters.
He was drunk. Again. Neela waited for slam and it wasn't long in coming. The door shook in its frame and she wondered if the neighbors had heard. Of course they had, they always did. There had been the time they'd even called the police but when the police arrived she managed to dissuade them that there was anything out of the ordinary. It hadn't been hard to do really. The neighbors had left them alone after that.
Knowing that Michael would be angry at something or another she waited silently in the kitchen. If she was lucky maybe he'd pass out on the couch before he reached it. No such luck.
She lay on the floor blinking back tears, it hurt so badly. Searing pain coursed through her arm and she looked down at the broken glass, choking back tears she tried to forget about it. She couldn't. She couldn't forget his eyes and the cruelty she saw in them. She couldn't forget the broken bottle he'd thrown at her. She couldn't forget his fingers crushing her arm. She couldn't forget him throwing her to the ground. All she wanted to do was forget. And she couldn't.
Knowing that if he heard her crying he'd come back in even angrier she stayed as still as she could. Biting her arm she allowed a muffled sob to escape. Things had gotten past the point of being remedied. There was no love anymore. She admitted it to herself; Michael didn't love her…not anymore. Every night he came home angry and drunk. Every night she tried to help him. He hit her so often now that she wished that she could leave.
She couldn't.
She didn't want to admit that something in her life wasn't perfect, that something in her life hadn't turned out the way it was supposed to. That and the fact that she kept telling herself that she loved him; he was her husband after all. Of course she knew that she didn't…but there was no leaving now.
It was too late for that.
What do you think so far?
