THE BACKUP GROOM'S BRIDE

The room smelled like old coffee and powdered authority. Three members of the disciplinary board sat across from me, their eyes avoiding mine but pretending not to. A fourth, a younger woman with a clipboard and clinical smile, typed too fast for someone who claimed to be impartial. The walls were beige, the kind that dulls your spirit before you even open your mouth. My palms were cold despite the sweat, and the leather chair they’d asked me to sit in creaked each time I shifted. I wasn’t nervous. I was tired. “Miss Leclerc,” the older man in the center began, adjusting his glasses like he couldn’t see what he already believed. “Do you understand why you’ve been called before the disciplinary committee today?” I looked at him, then at the papers in his hand—my file, my name, the sterile breakdown of everything that happened as if it could ever fit into two typed pages. I nodded once, the sound of my braid brushing my collarbone louder than anyone else’s voice in the room. “Yes.” “Then please, in your own words… explain.” My throat tightened. I wanted to say, What more do you want me to explain? But I knew how these things worked. I was a nurse, not a fool. And in moments like this, the silence of the professional world screams louder than violence. So I breathed in. Once. Twice. Then I told them. “I was on shift—night shift—on the geriatric ward. Room 312. I was catheterizing Mr. Boucher. Seventy-eight, post-op prostate. He was alert. Or so I thought.” I paused. The young woman was still typing. “He’d been making comments the whole week. About my body. My lips. The way I walked. But I brushed it off. You learn to. I’ve had my ass slapped more times than I’ve been thanked for an IV.” The older man shifted uncomfortably. The woman beside him finally looked up. I didn’t soften my tone. “I went into his room to do a sterile insertion. He said he was in pain. I explained the process again, slowly. He pretended to comply. And when I bent down to adjust the catheter, he grabbed me.” My voice didn’t break. It stayed flat. Honest. Controlled. “He grabbed my breast. Full hand. Tight. He smiled. Like it was funny. Like I was his.” Silence thickened the room. Not one of them looked at me now. That’s the part that always gets them—when the incident becomes too real for their delicate committee minds. “And I—” I exhaled sharply. “I reacted.” “Reacted how?” the younger woman asked, blinking. I turned my head and looked her dead in the eyes. “I hit him. Instinctively. Hard. In the face.” She flinched. Good. “He fell back against the bed. Alarm went off. I pressed the red button. I didn’t run. I didn’t cry. I stayed right there until help came.” Another pause. The man in the center cleared his throat. “And your colleague? Nurse Dupré, the witness, claims you were shouting.” I smiled bitterly. “I was. I asked him, ‘Is this what you think nurses are for? Do you feel like a man now?’” “He claims you punched him twice.” I tilted my head. “I only wish I had.” No one laughed. I didn’t expect them to. “What followed was an investigation,” I continued. “He denied touching me. There were no cameras in the room. Of course. My uniform was wrinkled, not torn. I didn’t have visible bruises. And I hit him. So that was all they saw.” I leaned back in the chair. Let the weight of my words sit. “You’re not here today because I broke protocol. You’re here because I broke the illusion. Because I dared to hit a patient who thought his age gave him immunity. And you don’t like that, do you? A nurse isn’t supposed to have rage. She’s supposed to smile, apologize, write reports, and stay quiet.” The woman with the clipboard finally stopped typing. Her eyes wavered. “I’m not proud I hit him,” I finished. “But I’m not sorry either.” Silence. The kind that stretches past judgment. The kind that says the decision was made before I walked through the door. “Thank you, Miss Leclerc,” the chairman said, though his voice lacked any gratitude. “We’ll deliberate and be in touch within the week.” I stood up. Adjusted my badge. Straightened my spine. My legs didn’t shake. Let them take it all. They already had. _____________________________________________________________________ The judge’s gavel didn’t even sound real. More like a tap on polished wood, like a sound effect in a play I didn’t audition for. He ruled in his favor. Of course. I didn’t flinch. Not even when Mr. Boucher’s family rose to their feet like a pack of trained animals and started shouting at me in the hallway. “She assaulted him—he’s seventy-eight!” “She probably wanted attention!” “He’d never touch a Black woman. Please. Not his type.” “Just look at her!” I kept walking. Not fast, not slow. Just steady. Like their words didn’t splinter. Like I didn’t feel every syllable sliding under my skin like glass. I’d heard worse. I’d heard softer, too—the kind that comes in the form of polite rejection, of being looked past in favor of someone more... "media-ready." Because I wasn’t that kind of Black girl. Not the kind magazines chased with cameras. Not the poster girl for dark-skin pride—skin too warm and uneven to pass as velvety mahogany. But not light enough either. I lived in that no man’s land between complexions, where makeup brands never had the right shade and people couldn’t decide if I was almost something or not enough of anything. I wasn’t tall enough to be model-tall or short enough to be petite. I wasn’t thick enough to be desired online, but a thin girl would call me curvy with envy. A thick girl would call me slim with dismissal. My thighs didn’t rub together when I walked, but they weren’t dainty either. My waist curved inward, but not like an hourglass—more like an inconvenience. And it’s not like I was hoping an old man would find me attractive. God, no. But the way they shouted—“He’d never touch you”—like I was a dog, like I should be grateful he noticed me... it twisted something in my stomach. Not because I wanted him to want me, but because I knew they meant it. I was invisible to them until I fought back. And now I was too visible. They didn’t seize my license because I lied. They seized it because I didn’t stay in my place. Because I didn’t cry in silence or shrink. I hit back. I raised my voice. I acted like I mattered. And this—this was my punishment. I had just made it through the terminal doors when my phone buzzed. Unknown number. I considered ignoring it. But something—the cold twist in my gut, the kind that never came without reason—made me swipe the green button. “Hello,” I said, my voice flat, empty. There was a pause. A quiet kind of breath. Then a voice. Male. Familiar, but distant. Clipped and exact like a blade pressed to skin. “Amaya Leclerc,” he said. “It’s time you paid your debt.” My stomach dropped. Click. The call ended before I could even react.