I somehow managed to get medical help.
At the hospital, the doctors cut away my shirt so they could examine the damage. The room fell unusually quiet when they saw my back. The injuries were far worse than I had hoped, and the doctors immediately began treating the wounds.
But it wasn’t just my back that worried them.
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They noticed the friction marks across my belly.Relieve Pain
One of the doctors looked at me carefully and asked what had happened. He didn’t sound angry or judgmental. He sounded concerned, as though he already suspected that I was hiding something terrible.
For a moment, I couldn’t answer.
I had spent so long being afraid of my husband and his mother that silence had become my instinct. I worried about what they would do if I spoke. I worried that no one would believe me. I even worried that telling the truth might somehow destroy the family I had tried so desperately to hold together.
