I gritted my teeth and nodded, wishing I had taken Mark up on his offer to come with me. After Jess and Melissa had left in the morning, I had tried to hobble around after the kids, telling myself it would be better by the evening. But the day came and went, and by the time Mark came home, I could barely move off the couch. Every time I so much as twitched my leg, I would yelp like a neurotic, unsocialized Chihuahua. Mark took one look at me and told me I needed to go to urgent care, and he would call his parents to come over and watch the kids.

After thirty minutes of arguing that I did not want to call them—mostly because I couldn’t figure out how to explain how I got the injury, but also because I didn’t want to hear his mother’s judgments on the state of the house and how the dish towels were no longer folded in the drawer as she had done it last, I finally agreed to go, but only if he dropped me off, and I would text him when I was done.

The receptionist gave me a pitying look as I hopped up to her desk to check in, no doubt wondering why I didn’t have any family or friends to help me. “No babysitter and my mother-in-law judges my kids’ unfolded underwear drawers,” I whispered to her, and her look changed from pity to solidarity.

“My mother-in-law rearranges my bookcases when she comes over,” she said as she slid a clipboard across the desk.

I explained to the intake nurse that I had fallen in my backyard, keeping it as vague as possible, but she looked at me in suspicion before she left. And then the doctor came in and asked if she could “take a quick look” by peeling back the gauze pad.

I almost kicked her.

I looked away as she removed the bandage, bile rising in my throat at the earthy smell of dried blood and charred skin. The fresh air felt like needles on the wound, and I clamped my mouth shut to avoid yelping.

“How did you say you got this again?” she asked. “It looks almost like a burn injury.”

“I fell outside. In the backyard. By myself.” Which, technically, wasn’t a lie. I did fall outside, and it was in a backyard. And I was alone after Liz pushed me.