Page 353 - A Little Life: A Novel

person he wanted us to see, even though I knew better. I told myself that I
was letting him keep his dignity, while choosing to forget that for thousands
of nights, he sacrificed it. I would rebuke him and try to reason with him,

even though I knew those methods didn’t work, and even knowing that, I
didn’t try something else: something more radical, something that might
alienate me from him. I knew I was being a coward, because I never told
Julia about that bag, I never told her what I had learned about him that night
in Truro. Eventually she found out, and it was one of the very few times I’d
seen her so angry. “How could you let this keep happening?” she asked me.
“How could you let this go on for this long?” She never said she held me

directly responsible, but I knew she did, and how could she not? I did, too.
And now here I was in his apartment, where a few hours ago, while I was
lying awake, he was being beaten. I sat down on the sofa with my phone in
my hand to wait for Andy’s call, telling me that he was ready to be returned
to me, that he was ready to be released into my care. I opened the shade
across from me and sat back down and stared into the steely sky until each

cloud blurred into the next, until finally I could see nothing at all, only a
haze of gray as the day slowly slurred into night.

Andy called at six that evening, nine hours after I’d dropped him off, and
met me at the door. “He’s asleep in the examining room,” he said. And then:
“Broken left wrist, four broken ribs, thank Christ no broken bones in his
legs. No concussion, thank god. Fractured coccyx. Dislocated shoulder,
which I reset. Bruising all up and down his back and torso; he was kicked,
clearly. But no internal bleeding. His face looks worse than it is: his eyes

and nose are fine, no breaks, and I iced the bruising, which you have to do,
too—regularly.
“Lacerations on his legs. This is what I’m worried about. I’ve written you
a scrip for antibiotics; I’m going to start him on a low dosage as a
preventative measure, but if he mentions feeling hot, or chilled, you have to
let me know right away—the last thing he needs is an infection there. His

back is stripped—”
“What do you mean, ‘stripped’?” I asked him.
He looked impatient. “Flayed,” he said. “He was whipped, probably with
a belt, but he wouldn’t tell me. I bandaged them, but I’m giving you this
antibiotic ointment and you’re going to need to keep the wounds cleaned