Story Notes:
This is for the OWDF BINGO Writing Challenge. My squares were:
Gifting, Favoritism, Affair of the heart, Balance, and In the eye of the beholder.
20 chapters, complete per contest rules. All prompts in bold.
Thank you to CharlotteAshmore for beta'ing this fic for me through the BS this last month has entailed.
Prologue/Chapter 1 - A Blessing in the ER
The lights were bright, the antiseptic smell unfortunately familiar. Even the nurses were familiar faces at this point. The young woman tearfully looked down at her body, unwilling to believe that this is what her life had turned into. Her left wrist was certainly sprained, her thumb and index finger most definitely broken. She found herself almost wishing the damage included her left ring finger. Maybe then the hospital would be forced to cut off her gold and diamond shackle. She lay there shaking her head whenever the familiar questions were fired at her, her pain and self-loathing punctuated each response.
"Does anything else hurt?"
Everything hurts.
"Can we take you somewhere safe?"
Nowhere is safe.
"Do you want to file charges?"
He would kill me if I did.
"Do you have family to stay with?"
Just him. He's the only person who will have me.
The only time she did anything other than shake her head in denial was to their typical final question.
"Are you safe?"
She nodded her head as she had been ordered to do countless times before, even though her heart was screaming no. He is going to kill me one day, but if I leave, he will find me. He will make it ten times worse.
Two hours later, she was bandaged, splinted, taped, and medicated. Gathering her personal belongings together in the standard issue plastic bag used in ERs, she exited the exam room. A kind nurse had spoken to her privately earlier. The young woman had found an unlikely ally in the older woman. Refusals of help still didn't deter her unlikely benefactor though.
The bandaged woman left the room with an envelope of cash and a week's worth of sample packs of a sleeping medication in her purse. The verbal and written advice was to take one each night for a week. The cash and raised eyebrow suggested another path, however.
She now had plans far different than apologizing to her ass of a husband, licking her wounds, and drugging herself into sleep. Once the asshole would stop his inevitable bitching about the upcoming hospital bill, the woman would make him a whiskey sour to calm his nerves. He would never taste the pills through the alcohol. Tonight, the asshole would be the one sleeping like a baby. Tonight, was her one chance to escape.