“You better start earning your keep.”
That was the first thing out of Gary’s mouth as he loomed over my hospital bed, blocking the little plastic American flag that was taped to the IV pole. I was three days out of emergency surgery, still in a stiff paper gown, hooked up to enough machines to light a Christmas tree. My abdomen felt like someone had driven a snowplow through it and tried to stitch the road back together in the dark.
“I can’t work yet,” I whispered.
“The surgeon said at least two weeks.”
Gary’s jaw clenched. His bowling league championship ring flashed under the fluorescent lights as his hand came down.
The slap was so fast I didn’t even see it coming. One second I was propped up against cheap, flattened pillows; the next, the world snapped sideways.
My head cracked against the bed rail, and my shoulder slid off the edge.
I hit the floor hard enough to knock the breath out of me. Cold hospital tiles pressed against my cheek. The antiseptic smell mixed with the metallic taste in my mouth until it felt like I was breathing in pennies and bleach.
My hands trembled when I tried to push myself up.
“Stop pretending you’re weak,” Gary barked from above me. “I’m not paying for you to lie around and act helpless.”
His voice echoed down the hallway, past the nurses’ station where somebody’s Styrofoam cup of iced tea sat sweating under a little napkin.
Machines behind me began beeping in protest. Somewhere, a woman gasped.
For a moment, all I could see was that ring—thick gold, 2019 CHAMPS etched into it, smeared now with a tiny spot of my blood.
I’m Rihanna Hester, I was twenty‑nine years old, and until that exact moment on the hospital floor, I thought I already knew what rock bottom felt like. Turned out I’d just hit the trapdoor underneath it. Nurses’ shoes squeaked as two of them rushed into the room.
“Ma’am, don’t move—Rihanna, can you hear me?” one of them said, dropping to her knees beside me.
“She fell,” Gary announced, hands in the air like he was narrating a magic trick gone wrong. “She’s being dramatic.
She’s fine.”
“Sir, step back,” the other nurse snapped. “I said I’m not paying for—”
The door banged open again.
A security guard pushed in, already reaching for his radio.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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