Make Me Sin

58

I’m admitted to the hospital, and kept overnight for observation. A.J. is by my side the entire time, bossing people around, grilling the doctor and intake staff, scaring the crap out of the poor nurses with his barked demands. He has a bizarre familiarity with medical terms, frequently sounding like a doctor himself. One more question to add to the queue, if he ever lets me ask.

I refuse the pain reliever the nurse tries to give me. I want to be totally lucid when I speak to the police, who’ve arrived and are waiting outside.

Then I tell A.J. to call my father.

“Holy mother of God.”

Staring at me in white-faced shock, my father stands rigidly in the doorway of my room. Even at five o’clock in the morning, called to the hospital where his injured daughter is being treated after being b