Chapter 4 - Daniel’s Reckoning
The surgery lasted four and a half hours.
When I surfaced from the general anesthesia, the world was no longer green and flickering; it was the dim, heavy gray of early dawn. A steady beep... beep... beep from the telemetry box kept time with the cold throbbing in my left leg, which was now encased in an enormous, rigid fiberglass splint that reached nearly to my groin. Two plastic drainage tubes snaked out from beneath the bandage, collecting dark, serosanguinous fluid into suction bulbs pinned to the sheets.
Daniel was still there.
He had dragged a plastic chair into the corner of the room, his long legs stretched out before him, his head tilted back against the yellow cinderblock wall. His eyes were closed, his breathing deep and even, but the moment I shifted my hips against the mattress, his eyelids snapped open.
"Emily?"
"Still here," I croaked.
He rose immediately, poured water from a plastic pitcher into a cup with a bent accordion straw, and held it to my lips. The cold water was the best thing I had ever tasted.
"What time is it?" I asked.
"Six-thirty in the morning," he said, setting the cup down. "Dr. Varma stopped by twenty minutes ago. He said the reconstruction went well. He got two new plates in, four cross-pins, and cleared out the bone chips. He said your circulation looks good."
I looked at his clothes. He was still wearing the tuxedo shirt, though he had finally shed the jacket, revealing the suspenders hanging loose around his hips.
"You haven't been home," I said.
"I don't have a home right now," he answered with a faint, mirthless smile. "The townhouse has four suitcases belonging to Jessica sitting in the foyer, and three of her friends were banging on the door at two in the morning trying to retrieve her vlogging equipment. I had the building superintendent change the deadbolts while you were in the recovery room."
"Daniel... I'm so sorry," I whispered, tears suddenly prickling behind my eyes. "Your wedding day. Your whole life with her... it’s completely ruined because of me."
"Don't you ever say that," he said, his voice dropping into that fierce, absolute certainty that seemed to be his default setting. He pulled the chair closer, resting his elbows on the bed rail. "Emily, listen to me very carefully. You didn't ruin anything. You were the canary in the coal mine. If she hadn't pushed you down those stairs, she would have done something else to someone else six months from now, or six years from now, when we had kids."
He looked down at his bare left hand, where the pale indentation of the wedding band was still visible against his skin.
"I was blind," he said quietly. "I knew she liked attention. I knew she spent too much time on her phone. I thought it was just a hobby that got out of hand. I thought she was insecure, and that once we were married, once she had a stable life and a home that was entirely hers, the noise would quiet down."
"It never quiets down with Jessica," I said, remembering our childhood: the way she would hide my track trophies behind the water heater, the way she told our grandmother that I had stolen her silver locket just because Grandma had praised my high school drawings. "The noise is all she has. Without an audience, she doesn't exist."
"I found her laptop," Daniel continued, his tone chillingly even. "It was open on the vanity in the bridal suite. She had a spreadsheet open, Emily. A monetization schedule for the entire marriage."
I stared at him. "A what?"
"A spreadsheet," he repeated. "She had projected earnings for the engagement reveal, the dress fitting, the rehearsal dinner, the ceremony, the honeymoon in Bali—which she had gotten fully comped by an airline in exchange for eight daily reels—and then..." He paused, his throat working as he swallowed down a wave of disgust. "Then she had tabs for the first year. 'Pregnancy announcement: target Q3.' 'Nursery remodel: target Q4.' She had reached out to four different fertility clinics asking for free IVF treatments in exchange for exclusive video diaries before we had even discussed having children."
A cold shudder ran through me that had nothing to do with the surgical chills. "She wasn't building a life with you."
"She was casting a reality show," Daniel said. "And you... you were just an uncooperative extra who refused to follow the script. She wanted a video of her sister, 'bravely supported by the bride,' walking down the aisle with her crutches wrapped in white silk ribbon. When you told her your doctor said you couldn't do the rehearsal walk, she spent an hour screaming at the wedding planner because her 'hero bridesmaid' storyline was dead."
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"I didn't know," I whispered. "She told me she was fine with me just sitting."
"She was never fine with it," Daniel said. He reached into his coat pocket on the floor and pulled out a small black flash drive. "The detectives have the master file. But I made three copies of the venue’s surveillance feed before the manager could get cold feet. Jessica isn't going to spin this, Emily. Not this time. Not on her terms."
