Chapter 1 - The Hospital Floor“You better start earning your keep!”
Franklin’s voice filled the hospital room before I could even turn my head.
I was three days out from emergency surgery.
My appendix had ruptured before doctors at St. Vincent Medical Center in Indianapolis got me into the operating room. Infection had already spread far enough that the surgeon warned me recovery would take longer than a routine appendectomy.
No lifting.
No warehouse work.
No driving while taking pain medication.
Rest.
Franklin apparently heard none of that.
“Monday,” he said, grabbing the rail of my bed. “You’re back on shift.”
I stared at him.
“I can barely stand.”
“You stood yesterday.”
“With a nurse.”
“So?”
“So I just had surgery.”
His mouth tightened.
My mother stood near the window wearing the same gray cardigan she had worn since the night I came into the emergency room.
“Frank, the doctor said several weeks.”
He did not even look at her.
“Doctors say whatever keeps people in beds.”
Dana moved closer.
“He had a ruptured appendix.”
“And I have a warehouse with three people out.”
I looked at my stepfather.
“I’m not going.”
For a second, nobody moved.
Franklin hated the word no.
He hated it from employees.
He hated it from my mother.
But most of all, he hated it from me.
Since marrying Dana two years earlier, he had treated everything I used as an account he personally maintained.
Food.
Electricity.
Hot water.
The old truck I drove to work.
“You’re nineteen,” he reminded me constantly. “Nobody carries a grown man for free.”
It did not matter that I had been working forty hours a week at Mercer Freight Solutions since graduating high school.
It did not matter that Franklin took six hundred dollars from every paycheck for “household expenses.”
It never counted as enough.
He stepped beside the bed.
“Get dressed.”
“No.”
His hand closed around the front of my hospital gown.
“Franklin.”
My mother grabbed his arm.
He yanked me forward.
Pain tore through my abdomen.
I shouted.
The IV line pulled tight.
“Get up!”
“I can’t!”
The slap came so fast I barely saw his hand.
My head snapped sideways.
My shoulder struck the bed rail.
Then he pulled again.
My legs tangled in the blanket.
I fell.
The tile slammed into my cheek.
My incision burned like someone had cut it open again.
The IV ripped from my arm.
Blood dotted the floor.
Dana screamed.
“Frank!”
I reached toward the nurse-call button lying beside the bed.
Franklin kicked it away.
“Stop pretending you’re weak!”
He grabbed my wrist.
I tried to pull back.
He dragged me several inches across the tile.
My stomach felt as though it were tearing apart from the inside.
“Please stop.”
I hated hearing myself say please.
Dana grabbed the back of his jacket.
“Leave him alone!”
Franklin turned and shoved her.
She crashed into a medical cart.
Metal trays hit the floor.
The door burst open.
Nurse Carla Jennings came in first.
She was thirty five, small, fast, and suddenly terrifying.
Franklin raised his arm again.
Carla caught his wrist.
“Get your hands off my patient right now!”
He jerked away.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Step away from him.”
“He’s my stepson.”
“I don’t care who he is.”
An orderly appeared.
Then hospital security.
Franklin pointed at me.
“He fell.”
“No.”
My lip was bleeding.
My voice shook.
“He hit me.”
Franklin lunged one step.
“You little liar.”
Carla moved directly between us.
Dana began crying.
Security forced Franklin toward the wall.
Someone called police.
Officer Elena Ruiz arrived with another officer less than ten minutes later.
By then a doctor was checking my incision.
The stitches had held.
Barely.
Ruiz crouched beside me.
“Ethan?”
“Yes.”
“Did Franklin Mercer strike you?”
I looked at my mother.
Dana stared at the floor.
Then she nodded.
“Yes,” I said.
“Has he done this before?”
Silence filled the room.
Franklin shouted from across it.
“Don’t you dare.”
That answered more than he intended.
I looked at Ruiz.
“Yes.”
Franklin’s face went white.
The officers moved him toward the hallway.
He twisted around.
“You ungrateful liar! I paid to keep you alive!”
Something fell from his jacket.
Folded paper.
Carla picked it up.
She glanced at the header.
Then froze.
“Officer Ruiz.”
Ruiz stopped.
“You need to see this.”
Franklin changed instantly.
“Give me that.”
One officer tightened his hold.
Ruiz unfolded the paper.
Hospital logo.
My name.
Patient identification number.
Then she read the first line.
REQUEST FOR DISCHARGE AGAINST MEDICAL ADVICE.
I stared.
“I never signed that.”
Ruiz looked farther down.
A signature was there.
It looked like mine.
Almost.
Then she looked at the timestamp.
Her expression hardened.
“Ethan.”
“What?”
“Why does this paper say you requested to leave the hospital three hours before your emergency surgery?”
I stopped breathing.
Franklin stopped struggling.
May you like
And that was the first moment I understood he had come to St. Vincent with more than anger.
He had come with paperwork.
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