Rescued by the Mafia

Getting it off my Chest

Melody

I didn’t plan to tell him. That’s the truth.

When he asked—gently, without expectation—what I had been carrying in the hallway, my first instinct was to smile and deflect. Years of training and survival had taught me how to do that seamlessly. I was good at it. Too good.

“I’m fine,” I said automatically, the words leaving my mouth before I even decided to say them. I lifted my Dr Pepper, fiddling with the straw, focusing on the small circle it traced against the ice. “Just a long shift.”

It would have been easy to leave it there. Normal, even. People didn’t come to pizza after work expecting confessions. They came for quiet, for something uncomplicated. And God knew I didn’t want to complicate anything—especially not with a man I barely knew, a man whose presence already made me feel exposed in ways I hadn’t felt in years.

But he didn’t push.

That was the problem.

He didn’t try to fix it or minimize it. He didn’t joke it away or tell me I looked strong. He just sat there, steady and patient, like he already understood that whatever I was holding wasn’t something that could be rushed out of me. That silence—safe, unassuming—cracked something open.

“I shouldn’t get into this,” I said after a moment, my voice quieter now. “It’s… it’s a lot. And it’s not exactly first-date material.”

His expression didn’t change. No discomfort. No regret. Just attention.

“You don’t have to,” he said. “But if you want to, I’m here.”

I exhaled slowly, staring at the table between us. I could feel my heart starting to race, the warning signs my body always gave me when I was about to step into dangerous emotional territory. This was the part where I usually stopped myself. Where I chose silence over honesty. Where I reminded myself that people didn’t stay once they knew the truth.

“I need to tell you something,” I said finally, my fingers tightening around the straw. “And I want you to understand before I say it—I’m not looking for sympathy. I just… I need you to know what you saw. But more than anything, I just think I need to finally get it out in the open, especially after today.”

He nodded once. “Okay.”

“And I need you to promise me something first.” I looked up then, meeting his eyes. “What I’m about to tell you stays here. I know technically it crosses a line—I’m a physician, and I don’t take that lightly—but I trust you. I wouldn’t say this if I didn’t.”

His jaw set, not defensively, but firmly. “You have my word. Trust is something in my line of work. If you lose it, it is very hard to get back, and with you, I don't ever want to break your trust.”

The weight of that settled over me. Trust didn’t come easily to me anymore. Giving it felt like stepping onto thin ice.

“There was a patient today,” I began carefully. “Her name is Lisa. She came in for injuries consistent with abuse. She’s pregnant. And she insisted—just like so many do—that she’s safe, that it won’t happen again.”

I swallowed hard, the memory too close, too familiar.

“I told her what I’m trained to tell every patient in that situation. About resources. About safety plans. About options.” I let out a humorless breath. “But that’s not what stayed with me.”

He stayed silent, letting me find my footing.

“What stayed with me,” I continued, “is how much I saw myself in her. The denial. The fear. The way she kept insisting she could handle it, because admitting she couldn’t would mean everything fell apart.”

My voice wavered, and I paused, bracing myself. “Today is the anniversary of the day I delivered my son stillborn.”

The words hung between us, heavy and irreversible. Saying them out loud still felt like tearing open something that never fully healed.

“Three years ago,” I said quietly. “I was twenty-eight weeks pregnant. I thought I had survived the worst of the abuse by then. I thought if I just held on a little longer, things would stabilize.”

I shook my head, bitterness and grief tangling together. “I was wrong.”

I didn’t go into graphic details. I never did. I didn’t need to. The truth existed in the spaces between the words.

“He hurt me,” I said simply. “Over something so small it still feels unreal to say out loud. A PlayStation I didn’t buy. That was the excuse.” My fingers trembled slightly now. “He told me 'I didn't get what I want, so you don't deserve to have what you want.' That's when I realized him knowing that the only accomplishment I ever wanted in life was the title of mother, and he held on to use that against me like a weapon. He then pushed me down the stairs. He kicked me. And by the time I got to the hospital—”

I stopped, my throat closing.

“—it was the hospital I worked at,” I finished.

That was always the part that gutted me the most. Walking through those doors not as a doctor, but as a patient. Seeing the looks. The questions no one asked out loud but everyone thought.

She should have known better.

“I’m an ER trauma doctor,” I said, my voice tight. “I teach people how to recognize abuse. I see its consequences every single day. And yet when it was happening to me, I stayed. So when I lost my son, the grief wasn’t just grief—it was shame. Because everyone assumed I should have known. And the worst part is… they weren’t wrong.”

Silence stretched again, thick but not suffocating.

“For a long time,” I admitted, “I believed no one would ever really see me again. Not beyond my job. Not beyond what I could offer professionally. I thought whatever softness I had left died with him.”

I finally looked up at Mark then, my chest aching.

“And then today,” I said softly, “you did.”

His brow furrowed slightly, confusion flickering across his face.

“You saw me,” I clarified. “In a hallway I avoid it whenever I can. Outside a maternity ward, of all places. The one place that still feels like a wound I can’t close. And you noticed. You didn’t look away. You didn’t pretend I was fine.”

I let out a shaky breath. “I didn’t think that would ever happen again.”

I leaned back slightly, exhaustion washing over me now that the truth was out. “That’s why I hesitated. That’s why I almost didn’t tell you. Because once someone sees you like that… it changes things.”

I waited then. Not for reassurance. Not for rescue. Just to see if he would still be there now that he knew what lived beneath the surface.