Daniel wasn’t allowed to follow me into the imaging room. For twenty minutes, laying on that cold, hard table beneath the humming machinery, I was finally away from him. I stared up at the ceiling tiles, praying that whatever was wrong with me would just take me quickly.
I was so tired of fighting. When they wheeled me back into the curtained ER bay, Daniel was pacing. He immediately rushed to my side, grabbing my hand again, ensuring his grip was a silent warning. We waited in absolute, suffocating silence for forty-five minutes.
Finally, the curtain pulled back. Dr. Aris, a tall, imposing man in his late fifties with severe, graying eyebrows, stepped into the room. He didn’t have the gentle, reassuring bedside manner he had displayed during triage. His face was a mask of cold, hard stone.
He was holding a large manila envelope and a tablet. He didn’t even glance at me. He looked dead straight at my husband. “Well, Doctor?” Daniel asked, his voice dripping with faux anxiety. “Is my wife okay? Was it the fall?” Dr. Aris slowly pulled an X-ray film from the envelope and snapped it up onto the glowing lightbox on the wall.
“Mr. Miller,” the doctor began, his voice dangerously calm. “Your wife has suffered a severe ruptured ovarian cyst, which is the cause of her acute abdominal pain. We need to take her into surgery to stop the internal bleeding.” Daniel let out a loud, theatrical sigh of relief.
“Oh, thank God. I mean, it’s terrible, but thank God it’s just a cyst. I was so worried when she fell down those stairs.” Dr. Aris didn’t blink. He stepped closer to Daniel, invading his space, the tablet held tightly in his hand. “The cyst is completely unrelated to any trauma.
But since we ran a full skeletal and abdominal scan to check for internal bleeding from this supposed ‘fall down the stairs,’ we found some other things.” Daniel’s rehearsed posture stiffened. “Excuse me?” The doctor pointed a pen at the glowing X-ray. “This image shows her ribs, her collarbone, and her forearms.
What I am looking at is a roadmap of trauma. I see a healed spiral fracture on her left ulna, consistent with a defensive wound from about three years ago. I see hairline fractures along her third and fourth ribs that healed improperly roughly eighteen months ago.
I see micro-fractures on her right cheekbone.” Daniel’s face began to drain of color. He opened his mouth to speak, but the doctor cut him off, his voice rising in volume. “Stairs do not cause chronological, perfectly spaced, defensive injuries over a five-year period, Mr. Miller.
Stairs do not grab a woman by the forearms tight enough to crack the bone. But that isn’t even the part that interests me the most.” Dr. Aris tapped the tablet, swiping to a new medical image.
