It was, and remains, the best thing about me.
Chapter 6 — Please Help Me
A few minutes later the door opened again, and Gabriel slipped back in alone, and when he saw my open eyes he went white.
I lifted one finger to my lips.
“Please,” I whispered.
“Help me.” “Do you want me to call the police?” he asked, glancing at the hall.
“Right now?” “First,” I said, “help me get out of here.” Because I understood something in that moment that Gabriel did not yet: that the clinic was the trap, that the record they were building of my “fragility” was the weapon, and that if I stayed one more night as Christian’s fragile, medicated, tucked-away bride, every hour would become another entry in a file designed to make me unbelievable.
I could not fight from inside the story he was writing about me.
I had to get out of it first, into a place where a real doctor could put on the record the one fact that would eventually undo him: that there was nothing wrong with me at all.
Gabriel looked at the door, and looked at me, and I watched him understand that Christian still believed, fully, that he owned this room and everyone in it.
“All right,” he said quietly.
“All right.”
Chapter 7 — The Honest Doctor
Gabriel got me out that night.
The official story, entered into my chart, was that I’d been moved to a specialized facility for rest.
In truth, a car took me to a quiet clinic in Cincinnati and a physician named Dr.
Jocelyn Pratt.
Dr.
Pratt read the charts Christian’s team had built, and her face went hard.
“Three days,” she said, “of a healthy woman being documented as ‘fragile,’ ‘unstable,’ ‘not to be agitated with questions.’ Who ordered this?” Gabriel lowered his eyes.
“Her fiancé’s team.
The instructions were to keep her — quiet.” Dr.
Pratt turned to me, and there was something fierce and kind in her face.
“I don’t care who ordered it, Genevieve,” she said.
“No one decides who you are but you.
