Part 3
Two days later, I left the hospital with my arm in a sling and a bruise-colored exhaustion that made the world feel slightly unreal. Ruiz drove me straight to her apartment instead of back to my father’s house. She didn’t ask if I wanted to. She just did it like it was a tactical decision.
Her place smelled like chili powder and old books. Gunnar, her aging German Shepherd, pressed his head against my knee like he was taking attendance. I sat on her couch with ice packs and pain meds and listened to the quiet—real quiet, not the tense, watch-your-mouth kind.
Ruiz laid out my phone, a legal pad, and a cheap black notebook on the coffee table. “We start building a timeline,” she said. “Every incident you can remember. Dates if you have them. If not, seasons. Holidays. Anything that anchors it.”
I stared at the blank page. “I’m not sure I can—”
“You can,” Ruiz said, voice firm. “You’ve survived worse than a pen.”
So I wrote.
Thanksgiving: acceptance letter humiliation.
The “therapy” pitch Evelyn tried to sell me on during my first leave.
Finding casino demand letters in Thomas’s desk drawer.
Dylan “accidentally” destroying my things.
The uniform.
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