Page 21 of Malice

As I prepare for bed, washing my face and brushing my teeth, I catch glimpses of myself in the mirror. My lips are slightly swollen, my eyes bright with a happiness I haven’t seen in weeks.

I slide between the cool sheets of my bed, pulling the blanket up to my chin. The apartment is quiet, but I’m not afraid. Instead, I feel a sense of peace settling over me, a feeling of excitement.

Chapter 6

Trixie

Just past noon, Karen catches my eye near the nurses’ station, her face unusually serious.

“Trixie, there’s a domestic assault case in Exam Room 3.” She leans in, her coffee breath warm and close. “The police brought her in. She’s finally pressing charges against her husband.”

My chest tightens, not out of fear, but that cold, sharp focus of knowing what I’m about to walk into.

“Kids involved?”

“Two little ones. Social services have them in the waiting room.” Karen lightly touches my arm. “I thought you’d want to handle this one. Given your… history with these cases.”

She means before. When I could step into a room full of broken lives without feeling the cracks in my own.

“I got it,” I say and straighten up.

The examination room is dim, the fluorescent light buzzing so sharply it makes my teeth ache. My patient perches on the edge of the table, swallowed by a hospital gown too big for her. Her face is a map of someone else’s rage, bruises fading from yellow-green at the edges to purple-black at their centers. A fresh cut on her lip glistens, still raw.

I notice her eyes most. Hollow, exhausted, but with something new flickering underneath. Something small and stubborn.

“Hi.” I let the door click shut behind me. “I’m Trixie. I’ll be taking care of you today.”

She looks up. “You look young.”

“I get that a lot.” I move to the sink, running the water warm before I soap my hands. “I’m tougher than I look. How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been hit by a truck.” A pause. “Again.”

There’s no humor in her voice. Just the exhausted truth.

I dry my hands and turn toward her. “The police said you’re ready to press charges this time.”

Tears come quietly, one tracking the other down the undamaged side of her face. “My kids saw everything.” Her voice fractures on the last word, then steadies. “I can’t let them grow up thinking this is what love looks like.”

My throat closes around something I can’t swallow down. I know what it costs to say that out loud. To name the thing you’ve been protecting everyone else from seeing.

“I understand,” I say, and I mean it in a way I couldn’t have six weeks ago.

The examination is methodical. I’ve done this a hundred times: the careful documentation, the photographs, the evidence collection. My hands move with practiced steadiness, my mind cataloging every detail. Fingerprint bruising on her upper arms. Defensive wounds on her forearms. A healing rib fracture she didn’t report the first time.

He’s been doing this for a long time.

I seal the evidence bags. I label them. I keep my face neutral.

“You’re being very brave,” I tell her.

She presses both palms flat against the table, as if she needs to hold on to it to stay still. “I keep thinking if something happened to me, who would protect them from him?”

I open my mouth to answer.

The door doesn’t just open, it fucking detonates. The handle slams into the wall, leaving a crater behind, and the sound is a gut punch that sets my adrenaline on fire. My patient lets out a tiny, choked noise, and before my brain even catches up, I’m between her and whatever hell just walked in.

The bastard in the doorway is of average build, his face flushed like a goddamn emergency light and his eyes wild and unfocused, like he just crawled out of a bottle. His face twists into something ugly.