Desperate Measures(15)

 

Aimee swallowed hard, trying to manage the sick feelings that were rising up from her stomach. “No. Because I didn’t. Like you said to me when you took that vase you bought for me for my birthday last year and gave it to Tiffany – everything we bought when we were together is joint property. What’s yours is mine.”

 

She wasn’t prepared for his sudden response, so he had a good head start on her. He raced around the island, nearly getting to her before she took off running. She tried to keep the large granite barrier between them, but the spilled orange juice foiled her plans. She went down with a solid thud, her head hitting the tiled floor with a loud crack. She only had a couple seconds to relish the intense pain ripping through her skull before Jack made it over to her.

 

He grabbed the front of her shirt and pulled her up, screaming in her face. “Where are my fucking golf clubs, you bitch?!”

 

Luckily darkness came and took her. The last thing she remembered was a fuzzy vision of an angry monster floating above her, bits of his spit hitting her face, before she passed out.

 

Aimee came-to later and found herself alone. She was still lying on her back on the floor, her hair stuck to something on the tile. She sat up gingerly, wincing at the hair being pulled out of her head, fighting off the waves of nausea. She looked back and saw that her head had been stuck to a disgusting combination of blood and gooey orange juice.

 

She reached up slowly to gingerly touch the back of her head. Her hair was matted in one spot – the place that had smacked the floor – and she could feel wetness there. She got onto her hands and knees and crawled over to the sink, using the edge of the counter to pull herself up while holding off the dizziness. She turned the water on to lukewarm and then leaned over, using the removable nozzle of the faucet to rinse out the worst of it from her hair. She winced at the pain caused by the flow hitting her open wound. Trying to feel the injury with her fingers, all she came up with was more blood and a terrible stinging pain.

 

Dammit. I think I need stitches.

 

She shut the water off, put a dishtowel over the back of her head, and shuffled over to the front hall table where she’d left her purse. She found it on the floor, its contents spilled out all over the place. She sent out a thank-you to the universe that she’d thought to leave the money in the car. Her fears sent her to the front door where she peeked out the window to see if it was still there. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that it was parked where she’d left it, and that it appeared to be unmolested. Unlike herself.

 

She went back to her purse, putting everything that wasn’t broken back inside, awkwardly with one hand. Jack had apparently decided her phone wasn’t necessary and had destroyed it. The front was broken, and it wouldn’t power up. She tried pushing the button several times, but nothing happened. She sighed, throwing it in her purse anyway. Tomorrow she was going to use Jack’s golf club money to buy herself a new one ... in red, to commemorate the blood seeping out of her wound. She had some decisions to make, now that he’d acted out like this. Staying in this huge house was no longer an option. She couldn’t afford the mortgage payment anyway, and Jack had a key. Unfortunately, she didn’t know the law well enough to know whether he was right when he said it was his house and he could come and go as he pleased. And she couldn’t afford a lawyer to tell her otherwise.

 

Aimee stood up and walked out to her car, not even bothering to lock the front door. What was the point? The thieves had keys anyway.

 

She arrived at the hospital at ten o’clock. The emergency room was packed. She sat in a corner with an icepack given to her by one of the nurses, wrapped in her kitchen towel and held to her head. She watched as men, women, and children came in, suffering from illness, accidents, and who knows what. She hated that she had to be here. She was a statistic now – a battered woman. When Jack had gotten violent with her once before, he hadn’t even remembered it the next day. He said he didn’t believe her when she told him what he’d done. The bruise on her arm from him grabbing it and squeezing it that time could have been from anything, he’d said. But he stayed away from her after that when drinking. And he drank rarely. She knew that deep down inside, he didn’t believe in his innocence any more than she did.

 

Jack was a liar and a cheat. Aimee prayed that he would see the truth about himself when he woke up in the morning and looked in the mirror. She wanted to hate Tiffany for taking him away from her, but at moments like this, she had perfect clarity and knew the truth – Tiffany had done her a favor. The thought made her smile. And it almost made her feel sorry for Tiffany. Almost.