“I’m choosing my wife and child over the person who did this to them.”
Security escorted her into the hallway while she protested that she had only been trying to protect him.
The door closed.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then my mother stepped toward my bed.
She had been silent since the nurse wiped the first streak of black pigment from my baby’s ankle. Her face was wet with tears, and the hand that had slapped me earlier was trembling at her side.
She whispered my name.
My husband moved between us.
“No,” he said. “You don’t get to hug her yet.”
My mother stopped.
He pointed toward the chair across from my bed.
“Sit down. Now tell my wife why you hit her before you even asked what happened.”
My mother lowered herself into the chair.
I looked at her, still unable to understand how quickly she had turned against me.
