Hannah's List by Debbie Macomber Read Free Book Online

was a young woman named Shamika Wilson, who had a badly swollen right eye. She’d come to the clinic because she thought her arm was broken. I read over the chart and saw that she claimed her injuries had occurred as a result of falling down the stairs. An instant red flag went up. Apparently, Shamika Wilson made a habit of “falling down the stairs” because this was her thirdvisit to the clinic with possible fractures in as many months.
    The young woman refused to look my way as I started asking her questions.
    “You fell down the stairs?” I pressed.
    She nodded.
    I refrained from mentioning the number of times this had happened. “When was the…accident?”
    “Wednesday night.”
    Two days earlier. “Why did you wait so long to come to the clinic?” I asked, noting the pain she was in.
    Shamika stared at the floor. “I thought it would get better on its own…but the pain just seemed to get worse.”
    Seeing that her arm was badly swollen and how she screamed at the mere touch of my fingers, I could only imagine the agony she’d endured for the past two days. “I’m ordering an X-ray,” I said.
    She bit her lip and nodded. Shamika knew as well as I did that the technician would need to move her arm to do the X-ray. It would cause her excruciating pain, but I had to know what I was dealing with before we could progress any further.
    “Did someone bring you to the clinic?” I asked.
    “My…husband.”
    “Is he in the waiting room now?” I asked. My anger was close to the surface and I struggled to hold it back. I wasn’t entirely sure who was the object of this fury. The young woman must’ve seen that she wasn’t fooling me with this tale of tripping on the stairs. She’d avoided eye contact when she referred to her husband, another telltale sign.The husband was some loser who used his wife as a punching bag to take out his own frustrations.
    “Yeah, Kenny’s waiting for me,” Shamika said, again without meeting my gaze.
    “I’ll see you in a few minutes,” I told her and left the room. I asked for a volunteer to escort Shamika to X-ray. Once she was out of earshot, I went to the waiting area. I asked to speak to Kenny.
    A skinny, wiry man stepped forward. “How’s Shamika?” he asked.
    I stood in the doorway and looked him in the eye. “I’ve ordered an X-ray, but I’m fairly sure the arm’s broken. It’ll need to be set.”
    He sighed. “How long is that going to take?”
    “I won’t know until I see the X-rays.” I glanced out at the crowded waiting room. “Shamika insists she fell down the stairs. I find that interesting because she’s fallen down the stairs three times in the past few months.”
    Her husband shrugged. “What can I tell you? The bitch is clumsy.”
    I might’ve let the matter go if he’d referred to Shamika as anything but a bitch. “Clumsy? Now listen up, Kenny. You and I both know this accident on the stairs is pretty much a lie. Don’t you realize how lucky you are to have a wife?” Whether they were legally husband and wife—I suspected they weren’t—was irrelevant.
    He looked up, and his eyes narrowed with challenge. He almost dared me to continue, and I was happy to defy his warning.
    “You have a good woman, and you treat her like this?” I said from between gritted teeth. “Do you enjoy hitting a woman?”
    He didn’t answer.
    I had the attention of everyone in the waiting area, which was what I wanted.
    “She deserved it. The bitch’s got a mouth on her.”
    “And I’ve got a temper,” I said and shocked myself by grabbing his collar and lifting him off the ground so that he stood on the tips of his toes. I knew I might be asked to leave the clinic for pulling this stunt, but at the moment I didn’t care. He had a wife and chose to mistreat her, while I would’ve given anything to have Hannah back.
    “You’re a little man,” I spat out. “You hit your wife again and I will personally see to it that you’re sorry. Do I make