The sky outside had turned the color of bruises, and somehow she matched it. She looked thinner than I remembered, as if life had been feeding on her slowly. Her blouse was buttoned to the neck even though June heat pressed against the windows. Makeup covered part of her face, but not enough. There was a bruise on her cheekbone. Her mouth tried to smile and failed.
She sat down across from me with a small basket of fruit. Even the oranges looked bruised.
“How are you, Nay?” she asked softly, like she was afraid her own voice might break.
I didn’t answer the question. I reached for her wrist instead. She flinched.
“What happened to your face?”
“I fell,” she said too quickly. “Off my bike.”
I looked at her hands then. Swollen fingers. Red knuckles. The hands of someone who had tried to shield herself.
“Tell me the truth.”
“I’m fine.”
I grabbed her sleeve and pulled it up before she could stop me.
The room went cold.
Her arm was covered in bruises. Some yellow with age, some purple and fresh, deep enough to make my teeth clench. Finger marks. Belt lines. The kind of injuries that don’t come from accidents, only from repetition.
“Who did this to you?”
Her eyes filled immediately, but she still tried to hold back.
“Lidia.”
She cracked apart at the sound of her name.
“Damian,” she whispered. “He hits me. He’s been hitting me for years. And his mother helps him. His sister too. They treat me like I’m not even human.”
My body went still.
Then she said the words that woke something old and vicious inside me.
“He hit Sofi too.”
I stared at her.
“Sofía?”
She nodded, crying openly now. “She’s three, Nay. He came home drunk. He lost money gambling. He slapped her. I tried to stop him and he locked me in the bathroom. I thought he was going to kill us both.”
For a moment, the hospital disappeared. The walls. The nurses. The years. All of it.
All I could see was my sister sitting in front of me with a little girl at home learning terror before she had even learned safety.
I stood up.
“You didn’t come to visit me.”
Lidia blinked through tears. “What?”
“You came here for help.”
Her face changed, confusion turning into fear as she understood what I meant.
