Then at her.
Then back at me.
“Has anyone hurt you recently?”
Maia’s fingers tightened around the blanket.
“No.”
The doctor didn’t move.
“Anyone at all?”
Maia’s eyes filled with tears.
I felt something cold settle in my stomach.
The doctor stood.
“I’d like to speak with you both about something.”
A few minutes later, another woman came into the room.
She introduced herself as the hospital safeguarding lead.
She was calm.
Professional.
Almost frighteningly gentle.
She looked at me.
“Mr. Beckett, I’d like twenty minutes alone with your wife.”
I stood.
“I’ll stay.”
She shook her head.
“That’s not how we do this.”
I looked at Maia.
She didn’t look at me.
The woman said it again.
“Twenty minutes.”
So I walked out.
I sat in a plastic chair in the corridor.
And for the first time that night, I was alone with my thoughts.
I thought about the blood.
The fish bones.
The chair.
My mother’s voice.
Then I remembered something.
A conversation Maia and I had had months earlier.
It had lasted less than a minute.
She’d been standing in our kitchen.
I’d been making coffee.
She’d said:
“I don’t want your mother coming here when you’re not home.”
