You Call it Misery, I'll Call it Love

I find myself sitting in a white room on a cold metal chair in front of a cold metal table. It’s just like you’d see on TV. The police officer is sitting in front of me, waiting for me to tell her absolutely everything about my dad. There’s just one thing. I’m not talking. I sit there with my arms wrapped around me, shivering, waiting for nothing. I know I have to talk soon. I just can’t. I feel this intense urge for a cigarette. It’s too bad that I left mine at my house. That’s the one thing I forgot to swipe before I climbed out the window for what will be the last time.

Darren

“What?” I ask. I’m blindsided by this news. Mary Kate’s in the hospital? What the hell happened? All of these questions swirl in my head. Nothing makes sense. Beaten? Abused? Raped? What the hell happened?

“It’s just horrible, Darren, just horrible!” Tess cries in front of me. I sigh in absolute shock. I feel nothing except for an intense desire to see her. I need her. Why the hell did this have to happen?

“Can I see her?” I ask.

“She’s being interrogated right now, then she’ll be put under observation for a few nights,” Tess tells me. “Did you know?”

“Yes,” I blurt out.

“What?” Tess screeches in my ears. “You knew and you didn’t tell anyone!”

“She didn’t want me to!” I say. “She’s really quiet about it. I knew something was up with her when I noticed her injured arm. She told me not to tell anyone! What else was I supposed to do?” I demand.

“Nothing,” Tess tells me. I stare at her. “No, honey, it’s fine. I understand that she wouldn’t want you to tell anyone. But, you needed to before it’s too late!”

“Well, it’s kind of too late now, don’t you think?” I ask.

“No shit! I’m just saying!” Tess tells me. “I’ll drive you up to the hospital in an hour. I need to make a few phone calls!”

“For what?” I ask.

“I’m going to try to see if I can get some type of custody over her,” she tells me.

“Well, she’d probably appreciate that,” I tell her.

“Yeah, well, her mother might have other ideas,” Tess sighs with anger. She walks off into her study and slams the door shut. I stand in our kitchen. I lean against a chair and feel myself shaking. I can’t control it any longer. I feel the chair shake and hit the ground with a loud bang. My hands are still shaking. I haven’t felt anything like this before in my life. I feel this intense desire to see her, to hear her voice and to just be with her to hold her hand. I know this feeling is something big, something that I haven’t felt before, something new. I think it is called love.

Mary Kate

I am still sitting in that same room. No one has talked. The police officer is just sitting across from me, waiting for me to spill the beans about my life and my relationship with my father. She shifts in her seat. I look up at her, startled. She looks at me and give me a sympathetic smile. I look down.

“Sweetie, you know you’re not alone. This is all over. He’s done doing whatever it is that has beaten you down so hard. I promise you that he will never hit you again. But, I also need to know what happened, so do you think you can talk?” she asks me.

“It wasn’t always like this!” I suddenly cry out. “He never used to hit her, but always me.”

“Who is she?”

“My sister, Jess. She’s the perfect one, the one that can do no harm.”

“Why did he not hit her?”

“She’s just perfect. Everything he could ever ask for.”

“Tell me more about Jess.”

“She’s married. She has a son. She’s always had it all, the grades, the relationships, the best friends. She’s has it all.”

“Where does that leave you?”

“Shadow. I am the shadow of my sister. My parents support her five hundred percent. They shun me because I haven’t lived up to my sister’s legacy. Sure, I’m smart, I’m pretty, but I don’t have the relationships, the marriage, the child or the friends or the money that my sister has. I have nothing in comparison to her. I’m a failure based on my parent’s standards.”

“Who hits you? Is it one of your parents?”

“My father. He treats me like absolute shit. He’s drunk all the time whenever my sister isn’t around. That’s when things are the worst. He beats and pounds on me for absolutely no reason,” I cry. I cross my arms out in front of me and burrow my head down into them. I start to sob uncontrollably.

“That’s all for now.”

Meanwhile.

Two white police cars drive down Mary Kate’s driveway. Her parents are sitting out on the porch playing with their grandson while their eldest daughter is in the kitchen, cooking dinner for them all.

“I hope Mary Kate gets home soon. She’ll be missing out on quite a dinner,” Jess says. There is no response from either of her parents.

The two police officers get out of their cars and start to approach the deck. Mary Kate’s father, Ron, looks up and stares them in the eye.

“Is there a Mr. Ron Atwood here?” one of the police officers asks politely.

“That would be me, why?” Ron asks.

“We’re here to serve you with an arrest warrant and a search warrant for the abuse of your daughter, Mary Kate,” the other police officer states. “So, we can do this the hard way, or the easy way,” he adds sternly. The other police officer presents both warrants and takes out his cuffs.

“That bitch!” Ron shouts.

“What is this all about?” Jess asks frantically.

“Sir, you have the right to remain silent,” one police officer begins reading the Maranda rights to Ron while placing the cuffs over his wrists and locking them shut. The other police officer starts into the house to begin his search.

“Don’t you dare enter my house!” Mary Kate’s mother shouts. She is standing in the doorway, obviously not wanting her house to be intruded upon. “You have no right!”

“Ma’am, I have absolutely every right! The judge declared it to me! If you dare to stand in the way, you will be arrested too.”

“No you certainly do not!” Jess screams as she throws herself on the officer’s arm in an attempt to drag him away from her parents’ home. The police officer grabs her arm and throws her to the ground. He stands over her, twists both of her arms behind her body and cuffs her. She twists in her position and begins cursing at both of the officers.

“Stay down!” the officer shouts in her face. Jess begins to cry. “Call for back up!” he instructs the other officer. Ron is already loaded in the back of one of the officer’s cars and is driven away quickly. Jess is taken away and placed in the back of the other car. Her husband arrives quickly after seeing his wife being placed in the officer’s car.

“What the hell is going on?” Jess’s husband demands.

“Take your son and drive away!” they tell him. Luckily, he does as he is told and drives off safely. An officer looks back at Mary Kate’s mother, who is staring at both of them.

“I’m calling my lawyer!” she shouts.

“Ma’am, you’re going to have to do that down at the station. You’re an accessory to the fact of this abuse. You have done nothing to prevent it or stop it. Turn around, you’re under arrest too.”

“Fine, what the hell! This whole day has been turned to shit anyways! Because of you two! Do you have any idea what you’re doing? Filthy cops! Running around arresting the whole family in protection for my drug addicted daughter! Why don’t you go arrest her too! She’s a crack whore you know!”

The officer begins reading the rights again to Mary Kate’s mother and soon places her in the back of an arriving vehicle. Four more officers arrive on the scene and begin searching the house for anything that they can find that shows that the abuse has taken place in the house. They find a bloodied carpet, which they eventually cut up and take out of the house. Mary Kate’s bloodied sheets. They also find a carton of cigarettes, no crack cocaine, despite the mother’s allegations and plenty of photographs that show wholes in the wall from punching and other sorts of violence.

“That’s all for now, then,” the police officer says. “Let the department of family service’s come in and gather some of her clothes and other personal belongings,” he tells the other officers.
The house is left labeled a crime scene.

Darren

I’m driving in my mom’s car up to the hospital. Tess is driving. She suggests that we grab
something to eat and perhaps bring something for Mary Kate. I shrug and say I don’t care. The shock hasn’t worn off yet. I still can’t believe that any of this is really. That my Mary Kate has come clean and told the horror story of her living hell of a life. Hopefully, her bastard and pervert of a father will pay for this for the rest of his life, maybe her mom will too.

We stop at a subway and grab three footlong subs for the road. We then continue on up to the hospital to see if Mary Kate is still being interrogated. As we’re driving, two police cars pass by us, sirens blaring. An ugly, bald man is sitting in the back seat of one, looking incredibly pissed off and angry. In the other, a brunette, which looks just like Mary Kate, is crying. Maybe that is her parents. Maybe they have been arrested for this. God, I hope they are.

A minute later, Tess pulls into the hospital entrance and finds a parking spot quickly. She shuts the engine off and we both hop down and out of the car as quickly as we can. I’m carrying the bag of food and she’s carrying a bag of clean clothes that she put together for Mary Kate. We walk up to the entrance and find ourselves lost in the ER.

“Are you Tess?” someone asks. She looks like a nurse, being in scrubs and all. “Mary Kate’s up in her room now, I’ll show you.”

“Okay,” Tess says. We walk towards an elevator and take it up to the eighth floor. We get off and walk towards a nurses’ station. The sign above it says “Women’s ward.”

We take an immediate left once we get to the station and walk down a long hallway. I immediately know which room is Mary Kate’s because the last room on the right has an officer standing outside of it. I pay no attention to the beige colored walls. I just keep walking towards her room.

When we get there, I walk into the room and see her sitting on the bed, propped up in her pillows. She looks weak and tired. She looks at me and begins to cry. I run to her side and watch her lean forward and hit my torso with her head. She wraps her arms around me and sobs into me. I wrap my arms around her shoulders and kiss the top of her head repeatedly. I tell her everything will be all right.

Mary Kate
I don’t want him to be here. I don’t want him to see me this way. I’m a wreck, an absolute wreck. He doesn’t need to be here. I don’t need any sympathy. I don’t need anything, just peace with my family. But that’s something that I know I’ll never get, and I’m okay with that.