Page 44 of The Fixer

“Thought you could get away from me, did you?” Nathan rasped in my ear. “I’ve got news for you, Eliza. You’re not ever getting away. I own you. Every last inch of you. And now I’m going to prove it.”

* * *

Dr. Goode’s office was on the second floor of the College of Human Sciences. I had to limp through the crowded halls and up the stairs, only to find out her office hours weren’t for another two hours. I wanted to curl up on the hard tile floor and weep. At the pain. At the cruelty of my life.

It just wasn’t fair.

Turning, I intended to make my way back downstairs to the courtyard, thinking I could get a little study time in before class. But as I rounded the corner, I crashed wrist-first into a body and yelped.

“Eliza!” Dr. Goode grasped my shoulders to keep me from stumbling to my knees, then lowered me gently to the floor. But that hurt just as badly as my throbbing wrist. “It’s broken,” the woman told me, that left eye glinting as she looked me over, as if the pain she’d once felt could search out all the pain inside of me. “You do realize that, don’t you?”

“It’s fine,” I all but whimpered, but my professor wasn’t having it.

“Come to my office,” she said sternly, pulling me off the floor. She supported my weight as I cradled my hand and walked with a crooked gait. She didn’t question me when I refused to sit on her couch, but offered me a bottle of water from her fridge.

Everything inside me screamed to yell at her as she stared me down. To screech and holler and wail, as she sat at her desk without word. “I’m here,” my heart demanded. “I did what you asked!” But the woman wouldn’t be hurried as she sipped at her drink.

“Eliza, what are you doing here?”

My brow dipped and I blinked back tears of rage. “You told me to come.”

“No,” she said, sitting up in her chair. “What are you doing here at this school? What is it you want with your life?”

Though we’d had this discussion before, when I first entered the Children and Family Services program, I was too exhausted to fight. “I want to help battered women,” I told her. “I want to help them get out of bad situations before it’s too late.”

“Like your mother.”

A hot poker jabbed the back of my throat. “Like my mom.”

“And Nathan? How’s he fit in?”

“He’s my fiancé,” I murmured, attention on the rug.

Dr. Goode stood and rounded her desk, stopping in front of me. “And he’s on board with your wishes? With helping other women out?”

“He—” I couldn’t finish that thought. The truth was, I was sure I knew the answer to her question, but I’d ignored it like the pain in my wrist.

Dr. Goode carefully took my hand, pushing back my long sleeves and examining my swollen arm. “How would he feel about you helping yourself?”

“I… I don’t know what you mean.”

“Your wrist is broken. From the looks of the bruising, he grabbed you and twisted until it broke. Your skin is covered in old bruises, and you seemed to be walking much easier at the party yesterday afternoon.”

“You said this was about my grade,” I tried, forcing my voice through my tight throat, pulling my wrist out of her grasp.

“It’s about more than your grade, Eliza. It’s about your life. I have trouble believing you want to follow in your mother’s footsteps.”

The words were a brutal kick to the chest.

My mother was murdered by her abuser, Benjamin Bell, when I was just fifteen years old. Though he was my grandfather, I’d never met the man. I’d never been allowed. My parents had told me he was a bitter, violent man that couldn’t be trusted with a child. Somehow, he’d tricked my mother. Coaxed her into meeting him. And he’d taken out twenty years' worth of anger and rage on her, beating her, doing horrible things to her, until she was gone.

The tender places between my legs throbbed painfully, as if they were telling me to listen to Dr. Goode. I had been walking easier yesterday. But that was before. Before Nathan dragged me by my hair to his aunt and uncle’s bedroom and forced himself into me the way he said he would.

Somewhere in the back of my head, I knew I was in a bad place. But I ignored it. What started as a whirlwind love story had gradually turned into emotional abuse. Nathan beat me down with his words until I believed him that I was nothing. Then the hitting began.

As Dr. Goode stood in front of me, memories of the day my mother died came rushing back. I’d done this for her. I’d pushed aside my father’s dreams of a child to follow in his footsteps at Westbrook & Murphy and followed in my mother’s footsteps instead. I wanted to help women overcome the mental anguish that came with abuse.

I’d never expected to experience it first-hand.