Free No, Daddy, Don't! by Irene Pence Page B

Michelle’s blood that had baked on the sidewalk. Then, in horror, she watched a few tufts of blonde hair circle in the afternoon breeze.
     
     
    The green scrub-clad emergency team at Presbyterian hospital hurried Michelle’s gurney up a ramp and through the double doors that led to the emergency room. The metal wheels of the gurney squeaked over the shiny vinyl tile floor.
    Covered with blood, Michelle was rolled past other waiting patients and immediately taken into an examining room where the doctors began assessing her wounds. Sliding in and out of consciousness, she managed to ask that her baby-sitter be called. Although speaking was painful and difficult, she also told one of the nurses to notify her parents in Baton Rouge.
    She didn’t want the doctors to wipe off any blood until her picture had been taken for evidence, but her bleeding was so profuse that the doctors needed to find the source, and were forced to clean off her face.
    An orderly wheeled her into surgery. In minutes, a doctor found her vein and inserted a needle to administer a general anesthetic. The doctor then popped her nose into place and packed it with cotton to stabilize the cartilage, and bandaged the bridge where the broken bone had burst through the skin. Examining her jaw, the doctor saw that it wasn’t broken, but was severely dislocated. He wired it into place, fearing his patient would suffer temporomandibular joint disorder and a lifetime of pain because of the injury. It would be a month before Michelle could eat solid foods.
    Of all her injuries, the doctors were most concerned about her eye. Michelle had told them earlier that when John first struck her, it felt like her eyeball was hitting the back of her skull. There was nothing they could do for it now because the area was so severely swollen.
    After surgery, she was checked into the hospital and wheeled to a private room. A sympathetic woman from a battered women’s shelter came and took her photograph.
    “We’re here for you,” the woman said, as she patted Michelle’s hand. She left a card from the shelter on a table by the bed.
    The anesthetic caused Michelle to keep dozing off. A nurse came by periodically to slip ice chips in her mouth.
    Then she was awakened by a uniformed officer who had come to take her statement. He had introduced himself, and his name sounded familiar. After trying to answer his questions, she realized that he was the same policeman who had taken John’s complaint when he filed an assault charge against her.
    The connection dawned on the policeman as he wrote her name. He said, “Oh, you’re the gal who beat up your husband.”
    Michelle groaned and closed her swollen eyes.

E LEVEN
    On the evening of the attack, Michelle’s parents flew in from Baton Rouge and rushed from the airport to Presbyterian Hospital. When they reached their daughter’s room, the sight of her shocked them. They walked in quietly, barely recognizing the once-pretty face that was now shaded black and purple. Her swollen eyes, nose, and jaw rounded out her features, making her look like a balloon. They hovered by her bed most of the night, not wanting to leave her side.
    The next day, on Thursday, Mark Weisbart visited Michelle at the hospital and brought her the Texas Penal Code. She was anxious to begin her research. She wanted to find something solid so the police could charge John with a felony assault and arrest him immediately.
    After Mark left, she pored over the Code, but everything classified her beating as a misdemeanor. She glanced at her swollen face in her compact mirror and scoffed. The bruises didn’t look like a misdemeanor to her. Finally, she found a passage about breaking someone’s nose. That constituted a felony assault. She called the police.
    On Friday, after two days in the hospital, she checked out and spent the weekend with her parents at their hotel. She couldn’t bring herself to return home until John had been arrested. Now she was