Chapter 5 - The Triage on High Street
The trauma bay at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center was illuminated by long tubes of daylight-balanced fluorescent panels that hummed with quiet, relentless efficiency.
A young resident named Dr. Mehta stood over me, his hands moving with the steady, detached grace of a watchmaker as he irrigated the wound above my left ear with cold, sterile saline. Every squirt of the plastic syringe felt like an electric needle driving through my dura mater, but I didn't flinch. I sat on the edge of the gurney with my hands folded in my lap, staring at the small, plastic basin in his assistant’s hands where three jagged fragments of lead crystal—each about the size of a pumpkin seed—sat resting in a pool of pinkish water.
“You’re lucky, Mave,” Dr. Mehta said, his voice quiet beneath his surgical mask. “The glass struck the temporal bone at an oblique angle. Half an inch lower, and it would have severed the main branch of the superficial temporal artery. You would have lost consciousness before you hit the bottom of those cellar stairs.”
“How many stitches?” I asked. My voice sounded thin, raspy from the cold air and the smoke from the basement.
“Twenty-four across the scalp,” he replied, reaching for a curved suture needle and a spool of black nylon thread. “Another eight along the eyebrow to close the flap where the rim caught you. You have a grade-two concussion. Your pupils are reacting, but you’re going to have a migraine for three weeks and photophobia for a month.”
The curtain pulled back with a metallic rattle of brass rings.
Rosalind Mercer stepped into the cubicle. She had stripped off her high-visibility vest, wearing her tailored charcoal wool blazer, but she hadn't washed the diesel grease off the cuffs of her white shirt. In her hands, she carried two paper cups of cafeteria black coffee and a manila accordion folder that was bulging with printouts.
She set one cup on the rolling stainless-steel tray beside my bed and looked down at my face. Her dark eyes, usually as impenetrable and analytical as a railway timetable, softened for a fraction of a second into something fierce and protective.
“The younger one is in holding at the Franklin County Jail on Jackson Pike,” Rosalind said, pulling up a vinyl stool and sitting down with her knees nearly touching the gurney. “Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, felonious battery, and destruction of property. The county prosecutor looked at the body-cam footage of her holding that carving knife in the driveway and set her preliminary bond at seventy-five thousand dollars, cash or surety.”
“And my mother?” I asked, closing my eyes as the first suture needle bit into the numb skin of my hairline.
“Your mother spent forty minutes sitting on her floral sofa telling the arresting officers that you had a psychotic break because you couldn't handle your warehouse job,” Rosalind said, a dry, humorless smile touching the corner of her mouth. “She told them you smashed the wine glass against your own head to frame your sister because you were jealous of Jolene’s creative career.”
“Did they believe her?”
“The officers might have been confused for about three minutes,” Rosalind said, tapping the manila folder on her lap. “Until Officer Kowalski looked at the front door. The deadbolt had been locked from the inside with a key, and Beatrice had the key hidden in her bra. You can’t claim your daughter had a psychotic episode while you have her locked in a foyer with an arterial bleed. They cited her for reckless endangerment and false imprisonment. She’s currently sitting in an interview room with an assigned public defender who looks like he’s nineteen years old.”
Dr. Mehta tied off the final suture with a sharp, rhythmic flick of his plastic forceps, snipped the nylon with stainless scissors, and stepped back to inspect his work. “Keep that dressing dry for forty-eight hours, Mave. If you start vomiting or your speech slurs, you come straight back through that door.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” I said.
As the physician stepped out of the cubicle, Rosalind untied the cloth string on the manila accordion file and pulled out a stack of documents printed on heavy legal bond paper.
“While you were in the CT scanner,” Rosalind said, her tone shifting instantly into the razor-sharp cadence of an executive director, “I had our corporate compliance attorneys run a comprehensive forensic audit on your identity profiles.”
I turned my head carefully, the dressing on my scalp pulling against the stitches. “My identity profiles? I thought the credit cards were the only thing they touched.”
“Mave,” Rosalind said, her eyes boring into mine with a terrifying, absolute clarity. “You’ve spent three years looking at logistics spreadsheets for thirty thousand freight containers a month. You can spot an unmanifested pallet of auto parts in a rail yard from sixty yards away. But when it came to your own household, you were operating with the blinders that every abused kid wears to survive the day.”
She slid the top document onto my lap.
It was an official, certified transcript from the Franklin County Probate Court, dated July 14, 2021—two months after my father’s funeral.
At the top of the page, in bold, black legal script, sat the case title: IN RE: THE ESTATE OF ARTHUR BENNETT — FINAL ACCOUNTING & DISTRIBUTION OF SURVIVOR BENEFITS.
Beneath the title was a signature line marked: MAVE BENNETT, HEIR-AT-LAW — WAIVER OF BENEFICIAL INTEREST AND APPOINTMENT OF EXECUTOR.
On the line, written in smooth, practiced blue ballpoint ink, was my name.
Except it wasn't my handwriting.
The loop on the M was rounded, flourishing, decorative—the exact calligraphy my sister Jolene used when she addressed her fake networking invitations.
“What is this?” I whispered, my fingers trembling as they touched the dry paper.
“That,” Rosalind said, “is the reason your mother told you there was no money left after the funeral. Your father didn't just have a union life insurance policy, Mave. Arthur Bennett was a forty-year veteran of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He had an executive pension reserve, a survivor benefit annuity, and an unencumbered commercial freight certificate for three regional transport routes between Cleveland and Cincinnati.”
She tapped the total line at the bottom of the accounting statement.
May you like
The number was printed in stark, undeniable black ink: $642,810.00.
“Your father left half of that estate directly to you,” Rosalind said, her voice dropping into an arctic register. “And three years ago, your mother and sister forged your signature on a probate waiver, transferred the entire six hundred and forty thousand dollars into a private family trust, and then made you pay for their groceries while they bled the account dry.”
