I don't know how long I was unconscious.
Time had stopped making sense before I lost awareness, and there was nothing afterward that I could use to measure it.
I remembered the floor.
I remembered the light.
I remembered Richard's voice becoming distant.
Then there was nothing I could describe honestly.
I have tried to fill in that gap in my mind.
I have imagined what happened in the hallway.
I have wondered what Richard did when he realized I was no longer responding.
I have asked myself whether I heard anyone arrive.
But those are questions, not memories.
I cannot tell you what I did not witness.
What I know is that the signal had already been sent.
My phone had recorded the emergency.
My location had been attached.
I had done the one thing I could do before my body gave out.
The next thing I remember clearly is not a complete scene.
It is a fragment of awareness.
Sound came first.
Not words I could understand.
Just voices, distant and indistinct.
I tried to open my eyes.
The effort felt enormous.
For a moment, I could see only light.
I blinked.
The light broke into shapes.
I couldn't tell where I was looking.
My head hurt, and my shoulder seemed to belong to someone else.
I tried to move my hand.
Pain answered immediately.
I stopped.
The room came into focus in pieces.
A section of wall.
The edge of the kitchen table.
A shadow moving beyond my line of sight.
I couldn't put those things together at first.
Then I remembered the apartment.
The broken door.
Richard.
The memory returned so quickly that my breathing changed.
I tried to sit up.
Someone told me to remain still.
I could not make out every word, but the voice was not Richard's.
That mattered.
I stopped trying to rise.
I let my head rest where it was.
The voice spoke again, calm and firm.
I heard movement nearby.
I wanted to ask what had happened.
My mouth was too dry.
I tried to swallow.
It hurt.
I closed my eyes briefly, then opened them again.
I did not want to disappear into the darkness a second time.
I was still frightened.
The fear had changed, though.
I was no longer trying to figure out how to get a signal out.
That part was over.
I had to trust that other people could take over the things I could not do for myself.
It was harder than I expected.
I had spent years making sure I could manage on my own.
I had built my routines around independence.
I had learned not to ask for help unless I had exhausted every other option.
Now I could not even sit up without making the pain worse.
I hated that.
I also knew it was not something I could fix by being stubborn.
I heard another voice.
This one seemed closer.
Someone asked me a question.
I tried to answer.
My words came out weak and unclear.
I couldn't tell whether the person understood me.
I tried again.
My name was the first thing I managed to say clearly.
“Ava.”
I wasn't sure whether I had spoken it aloud or only thought it.
A voice answered.
I listened.
I could not understand every detail, but I understood that I was not alone in the room anymore.
That was enough.
My attention drifted toward the kitchen.
The phone was somewhere near the table.
I remembered the cracked screen and the emergency message.
For a moment, I worried that I had imagined it.
Then the memory settled into place.
Three taps.
Hold.
Transmit.
The message had appeared.
I had seen it.
I had sent for help.
That was real.
I let my head rest again.
The voices continued around me.
I could hear movement, but I could not follow what everyone was doing.
I did not try.
I had spent the first part of the night calculating every possible danger.
Now I had to accept that I could not know everything at once.
I had to let the people around me work.
I had to stay as calm as I could.
I thought about the uniform in the closet.
I wondered whether it had fallen.
The thought was absurd.
I had been attacked in my own home, and I was worrying about a uniform.
But it was not really about the uniform.
It was about the ordinary life I had expected to wake up to.
I had wanted to make coffee.
I had wanted to get dressed.
I had wanted to walk out of my apartment without thinking about Richard Lawson.
I had wanted one quiet morning.
Instead, I had been forced to confront how little control I had over another person's choices.
That realization hurt in a way my injuries could not explain.
I had done everything I knew to do.
I had moved away.
I had stopped answering.
I had built boundaries.
When he crossed them, I had sent for help.
There was nothing more I could have done in those moments.
I repeated that to myself.
There was nothing more I could have done.
For years, I had carried responsibility that did not belong to me.
I had tried to make Richard's anger manageable.
I had tried to keep my mother from having to choose sides.
I had tried to prevent the next argument.
None of those efforts had made me responsible for what he chose to do.
I needed to remember that.
The voices around me became clearer for a moment.
Someone said my name again.
I opened my eyes.
The room was still difficult to see, but I could distinguish the shapes of people nearby.
I tried to focus on one voice.
I didn't ask where Richard was.
I didn't ask what would happen to him.
I asked the only question I could think of.
“Am I safe?”
The answer came before I could ask anything else.
I held on to those words.
I was still hurt.
I was still confused.
I still had no idea what the coming hours would bring.
But I did not have to face Richard alone in that apartment anymore.
For the first time that night, I let myself believe it.
Click here to continue reading: PART 8: I Had Asked Whether I Was Safe Before I Asked What Would Happen Next, and That Answer Was the First Thing I Could Finally Believe
I Thought Three Years and a Locked Door Had Put My Childhood Behind Me, Until Someone Began Beating on My Apartment Door at Two
Part 7 of 20
