Page 30 of Claimed on the Ridge

Amberly Sawyer is lighter than her brothers, fine-boned where they're broad, with steady hands and a directness in her gaze that reads as warmth until you realize it's precision.

"What brings you in?" she says.

"My ribs." The word comes out before I can wrap it in a better story. The pain is too present for performance.

"Shirt up," she says. "Let me take a look."

The words are clinical, unhurried. She's not asking permission because she already has it. I'm in her clinic. I came here. The transaction is clear.

I pull the flannel up.

The bruise is ugly. I know without looking. The original impact has spread into a mottled map of purple and green, yellow at the edges where the healing has started.

Amberly's face doesn't change when she sees it.

Her hands move to the area, her fingers cool and precise, pressing along the ribs with the competence of someone whohas palpated a hundred injuries and knows what bone feels like under skin.

"Deep breath," she says.

I breathe. The pain is a white flash behind my eyes.

"No fracture," she says. "Badly bruised, possibly a hairline crack in the cartilage. You've been aggravating it."

She steps back. Her gaze moves from the bruise to my face, and something in her expression shifts into a register I recognize because I've spent years watching people decide whether to see what's in front of them.

Amberly sees it.

She doesn't demand details. She doesn't lean in with soft eyes and say'you can tell me.'

She stands in her clean clinic with her steady hands and looks at the bruise, then at me.

The recognition that passes between us is older than language, one woman reading another's body and understanding exactly what left those marks.

"This isn't from hauling firewood," she says.

"No."

The word comes out before I can stop it. One syllable. The most honest sound I've made to a medical professional since the marriage started.

During the marriage, the doctors were different. Gary's name was on the hospital wing. His donations funded the new imaging center. The physicians who treated my "accidents" were polite and thorough and they wrote down whatever I told them because questioning the wife of their benefactor was a conversation nobody wanted to have.

One doctor, once, held my wrist a beat too long during an exam and asked'if there's anything else you'd like to discuss.'I said no. Gary sent flowers to the hospital the next week. The doctor transferred to a different practice within the month.

Amberly doesn't work for Gary. Amberly doesn't work for anyone.

"I'm going to give you anti-inflammatories and a cold pack," she says. "Ice it when you can. Avoid overhead reaching, which I suspect is advice you've given yourself already. And I need you to keep breathing deep, even when it hurts. Shallow breathing with rib injuries leads to pneumonia, and I don't want to see you back here for that." She reaches into a cabinet and pulls out a plastic device with a mouthpiece and a graduated chamber. "Incentive spirometer. Breathe into it ten times an hour. It'll keep your lungs expanded."

She hands me the spirometer, the pills, and a chemical cold pack, her movements efficient and impersonal in a way that feels like respect.

When she finishes, she washes her hands at the sink and dries them on a towel. She turns to face me.

"My mother had bruises," she says. "On her arms. Her ribs. Places clothing covered. I was young. I remember how she moved in the mornings, careful, like the air might hurt her."

The sentence is quiet and factual. It settles into the clinic like a weight placed on a shelf, carefully, in a space that was built to hold it.

"You don't have to tell me anything," Amberly says. "But if you need this clinic, for any reason, at any time, the door doesn't lock." She pauses. "My brothers are good men. Alex especially. But I understand why that wouldn't be enough for you right now, and I'm not going to tell you your own timeline."

I nod. My throat is too tight for words. The door doesn't lock, and nobody is going to tell me my own timeline. Two statements that undo more of my armor than every question Gary's doctors never asked.