Reduced to Ruin

Chapter 19

The next thing I remembered was waking up on the floor, facing the front door. Pain was pulsating through my body, and I tried not to cry because it hurt even worse when I did.

Very slowly I got on all fours and then stood up. More pain all over. I walked to my bed. Rolled onto my side. More pain. I stayed on my stomach and noticed the time was 4:17 a.m.

Please let sleep take me, I begged. Or death. But the pain wouldn't subside. It came in rhythmic waves, checking in on all parts of my body. My back pulsated with stings.

I lay there restless for hours, only getting up once to go to the bathroom. As I walked back to the bedroom, I caught a glimpse of the person looking back at me from the mirror. She was hideous, and I couldn't help but cry for her. Her right eye was swollen shut. The cheekbone wasn't even visible. Her lip was cut and had dried blood down the chin.

I pulled up my shirt and pulled down my pants. The welts seemed endless.

Time crawled slowly. It was 10:42 a.m., and the pain wasn't subsiding. I wanted some painkillers so badly, but James hadn't come upstairs. He probably wouldn't give them to me anyway.

Too much pain to sleep, too much pain to get up . . . Despair and disappointment filled me. I was such a fool for trying to escape. But deep down I could still feel a pull, a longing to not give up. That pull was the same one that got me into all of this mess.

Why couldn't I have left things as they were? James was going to kill my dad now.

He was right. He had treated me so nicely. But I threw it all away.

Around 5 or 6 p.m. the door opened and Dr. Manning walked in. He was a sight for sore eyes, and I tried to smile at him with my swollen lip, so relieved to see someone who could help me.

But what I received back was burning eyes.

He sat down on the bed without his usual warm smile.

"Hi," I ventured.

"I see you've gotten yourself into a huge mess."

"Yes, sir," I replied in shame.

He did an examination of my face and torso, checking for damage and any broken bones. My ribs yelped in pain.

It was killing me to be on my back, lying on the welts. I lifted my legs up a bit to relieve the pain. He said nothing to me the entire time. I felt like a child being scolded by her father. I had let down a man who, somehow, I admired.

I had no one on my side if Dr. Manning was angry at me. I wanted him to be my advocate; I had envisioned he could be the bridge between James and me. But that was fading.

"Turn around," he said curtly.

My welts must've looked horrible; they felt as much. He took out some ointment that smelled like rubbing alcohol and a rag. He didn't prepare me for the painful stinging as he roughly scrubbed the wounds. I screamed and cried. The ointment was enough, but to scrub it in was merciless. It was probably another part of my punishment.

"Please, Dr. Manning, can I have something for this pain?" I pleaded.

But he said nothing. He continued to clean, and when he was done, he began putting everything away without a word.

"Please, Dr. Manning, talk to me," I said between the sobbing.

"What do you want me to say, Corrine? You had us fooled? Good job last week at Thanksgiving?"