I didn’t want to answer him. I wanted to lie quiet and still. I wasn’t sure if I could talk. My throat was so dry and painful and I was so weak, I didn’t believe I could make a sound even if I willed it. I heard him walk through the apartment, search the bedroom, the living room again, the kitchen, and the bath. He knelt beside me, pulled me into his arms, and cried. He lifted my wrist, repeating, “What did you do?” But he’s not an idiot; he knew I wasn’t dead. He shook me until I moaned an incomprehensible something. I couldn’t look him in the face. I had no language for what I had tried to do.

Shame

Shame

He wrapped gauze around my arms, dressed me in a big sweater, called a cab. The taxi driver watched me in the rearview mirror the entire time. “She’s not going to throw up, is she?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” he answered plaintively, reaching for my hand.

In the emergency room, I gave the woman in the window personal details: name, social, address. She asked why I came; I choked. “Do I have to?” I answered quickly. “Can’t I just tell the doctor?”

“You have to tell me so that we can assess the urgency of your case.”

I looked around. The waiting room was full of people who looked morose, as if they’d been waiting there all evening. I eventually pulled myself together, tempered my thoughts, and said in a half whisper, “I had an accident.”

The woman in the glass cage pursed her lips. “What sort of accident?”

I lifted my arm up and showed her the wrinkled bandages, by now seeping blood.

“I understand. Take a seat over there. The doctor will be with you shortly.”

We sat on blue vinyl chairs, the arm jabbing my side when I snuggled up to him. He was my shield against the fluorescent lights and the gazes of injured people in the waiting room. “Can’t we just go home? I don’t want to be here,” I whispered.

“You have to let them look at it, then we’ll go home,” he said, tightening his arms around me.

He’d barely said the words when a young doctor called me. I looked around the room, not quite sure why I was called ahead of everyone else. The doctor led us into an exam room, where I sat on the examination table.

He took a seat in the corner. He looked so stocky, sitting there in the corner and staring at the green laminate floor.

The doctor unwrapped my right arm and said calmly, “Lilja, can you tell me what happened?”

I looked down to avoid his attentive gaze, couldn’t answer. Wasn’t it obvious? Why did I have to put up with such idiotic questions?

“You have to tell me what happened,” he continued slowly.