Chapter 2 - Shadows in the Linen Room
Rebecca glanced uncomfortably between Damen and Hannah, sensing the sudden, oppressive drop in the room's temperature. She smartly tapped her clipboard. "I'll... check on the doctor's rounds. Give you two a moment."
As the door clicked shut, the silence in the room became absolute.
Hannah pulled her knees up beneath the thin hospital sheet, her heart hammering against her ribs. The bruises on her arms—faded purples and ugly yellows that she had spent months hiding under thick sweaters and long sleeves—seemed to burn right through the gauze.
"How did you know?" Hannah whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the heart monitor.
"I notice things people try very hard to conceal," Damen said, stepping closer to the bed, resting one large hand on the back of the visitor's chair. "Like the way you flinched when the nurse touched your left wrist. Or the way you checked the locks on your bag twice before letting them take your coat."
"It's none of your business," Hannah snapped, her frustration overriding her fear. "People get hurt. People fall. It happens every day in the neighborhood where I work."
"Not like that," Damen countered, his voice dropping into a register so quiet and flat that it sent a shiver down her spine. "Those marks were not from a fall, Hannah. They were from a hand holding you down. A hand that believed you had nowhere else to go."
Hannah turned her head away, staring out the window toward the gray Chicago sky. A bitter, hollow laugh escaped her lips. "And what do you care? Are you a social worker? A concerned citizen who stops for every stray dog on the street?"
"No," Damen said simply. "I am a man who spent nine years regretting what happened when he didn't ask questions soon enough."
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small, heavy business card made of matte black cardstock, embossed with a single silver letter: M. He placed it gently on the edge of the bedside table, right beside her plastic water cup.
"If the man who gave you those bruises comes near you again," Damen said, his gray eyes burning with a dark, lethal promise, "you call the number on that card. You don't call the police. You call me."
Hannah stared at the card. "And why would I trust a stranger over the authorities?"
"Because the authorities have jurisdiction," Damen said, turning toward the door. "I have finality."
May you like
With that, he walked out of the room, leaving Hannah alone with the hum of the monitor and a sinking, terrifying realization that her quiet, invisible life had just been irrevocably shattered.
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