—What happened to your face?
“I fell off my bike,” he said, trying to laugh.
I looked at her more closely. Swollen fingers. Red knuckles. These weren’t the hands of someone who had fallen. These were the hands of someone who had fought back.
—Lidia, tell me the truth.
-I’m fine.
I lifted his sleeve before he could stop me. And I felt something old and dormant awaken inside me.
His arms were covered in marks. Some were yellow and old. Others were recent, purple, and deep. Fingerprints, belt lines, bruises that looked like maps of pain.
“Who did this to you?” I asked in a low voice.
Her eyes filled with tears.
-Can’t.
-Who?
She broke down completely. As if the word had been suffocating her for months.
“Damian,” she whispered. “He hits me. He’s been hitting me for years. And his mother… and his sister… they do too. They treat me like a servant. And… and he hit Sofi too.”
I remained motionless.
—To Sofia?
Lidia nodded, crying now without strength.
—She’s three years old, Nay. He came home drunk, lost money gambling… he slapped her. I tried to stop him and he locked me in the bathroom. I thought he was going to kill me.
The whirring of the spotlights disappeared. The whole hospital shrank. All I could see was my sister in front of me, broken, silently pleading, already a three-year-old learning far too soon that home can be a battlefield.
I stood up slowly.
—You didn’t come to visit me—I said.
Lidia raised her face, confused.
-That?
—You came here for help. And you’re going to get it. You’re going to stay here. I’m leaving.
She turned pale.
