Officer Jenkins stared at her with a look of intense skepticism.
“Then you explain to me why the infant hadn’t produced any wet diapers for nearly ten hours,” the officer demanded.
My mother blinked, her performance faltering for just a split second.
“She obviously wasn’t breastfeeding him properly because she was too lazy to try.”
I felt my knuckles turn white as I clenched my fists, wanting to scream.
Dr. Miller stepped forward, his voice calm but sharp.
“The baby has a severe, untreated case of diaper rash that has developed into a fungal infection, and there are clearly visible marks on his arms and legs consistent with being tied down.”
Karen let out a sharp, dismissive laugh.
“He is a newborn, his skin is sensitive and marks up for no reason, you’re reading way too much into this.”
“And what about the bruises on the mother’s wrists?” the officer asked, stepping closer to them.
Karen stopped chewing her gum, finally looking slightly uncomfortable.
My mother clutched her chest, her eyes wide.
“With the high fever she was having, she was tossing and turning in the bed, maybe she grabbed onto the bed frame, she’s always been accident prone.”
She lied with such a chilling, practiced calm that it made me want to retch right there on the floor.
This was the woman I had spent my entire life respecting, the woman I had defended every time Amy told me she felt belittled, and here she was, throwing my wife to the wolves to cover her own tracks.
The officer turned to me and asked for my account of what I saw when I walked into the apartment.
I told her everything, the open door, the freezing temperature, the trash, the suffocating atmosphere, and the sound of my son crying for his life.
My mother started sobbing louder, wailing like an actress on a stage.
“Ever since he married that girl, my son has been a completely different person, he doesn’t even recognize the woman who gave birth to him anymore.”
A week ago, those words would have cut me to the bone.
But that day, standing in that room, they meant absolutely nothing.
“Shut your mouth,” I said, my voice quiet but dangerous.
She looked at me as if I had just slapped her across the face.
“Mark, how can you say that to your own mother?”
“Don’t you ever call me that again,” I replied.
Her face shifted, the tears vanished for a fraction of a second, and a flash of pure, cold rage replaced them before she quickly put her mask back on.
The officer saw it, and I could tell by the way he took a note that he saw exactly what I saw.
At that moment, the doctor’s pager beeped, and he looked at me.
“Mr. Evans, your wife has regained consciousness.”
I didn’t even look at them, I just ran down the hall.
Amy was sitting up in bed, an IV drip hooked into her arm, her lips still badly swollen and cracked.
She looked so fragile that I felt like I was going to fall apart, so I walked over and took her hand in mine.
“I’m here, Amy,” I whispered.
Her eyes focused on mine, and she immediately started to cry.
“Sam?” she asked, her voice raspy.
“He’s alive and he’s safe, they’re treating him for the fever,” I promised her.
She squeezed my hand with the little strength she had.
“I tried, Mark, I swear to God I tried to stop them.”
“I know you did, I believe you.”
“No,” she said, her eyes wide with terror. “Listen to me, they wouldn’t let me use the phone, they wouldn’t let me call you.”
Officer Jenkins stepped into the room, looking at Amy with a soft, gentle expression.
“Amy, can you tell us what happened?”
She glanced toward the door, clearly terrified.
“Are they still right outside?”
“They can’t come anywhere near you,” I assured her.
She started to speak, telling us how they had rationed her food on the first day, claiming that eating too much would somehow lead to an infection in her stitches.
Then they moved on to the baby, insisting that her milk was contaminated because the baby cried, and when she tried to push back, they took her phone away.
“Your mother told me I was just trying to drive a wedge between you and your family, that I was a selfish woman who wanted to isolate you,” Amy sobbed.
I could hear the officer typing as Amy described being forced to feed the newborn water with a spoon because they refused to let her breastfeed.
“When I told them that babies don’t drink water, your mother slapped me so hard I saw stars,” she said, her voice shaking.
I stood up so fast the chair tipped over backward, but the doctor put a steadying hand on my shoulder.
“Yesterday I tried to pack a bag and leave, but Karen grabbed my wrists and held me down while your mother tied my hands with a shawl, telling me that if I made even a sound, she would tell the police I had suffered a mental breakdown and was unfit to be a mother.”
I could taste blood in my mouth from biting my tongue so hard to stop myself from exploding.
“They were giving me some kind of pills,” Amy continued, “I don’t know what they were, but every time I woke up, I’d hear Sam crying, and I was so weak I couldn’t move my arms to get to him.”
I leaned down and pressed my forehead against her hand, weeping.
“I left you alone with them, I’m so sorry.”
She shook her head, tears streaming down her face.
“No, Mark, you trusted them, that’s not the same thing.”
But I knew that to her, the result was the same.
The officer asked the question that had been haunting me.
“Why would they do this to you?”
Amy closed her eyes, letting out a heavy, painful breath.
“It was about the house,” she whispered.
I felt the room tilt sideways.
My mother had been hounding me for months, demanding that I turn over our savings to her as a down payment for a house she wanted to control, claiming it was for the good of the family.
Amy had stood her ground, saying that our son needed stability, and I had foolishly sided with my mother, telling Amy she was being unreasonable and dramatic.
That memory burned in my mind like acid.
“Your mother told me that if I died, you would finally come back to your real family,” Amy murmured, “and if the baby died too, there would be no one left in your life to keep us apart.”
Suddenly, a massive argument broke out in the hallway, with Karen shrieking that Amy was a liar and my mother shouting that her own son was suing her over a simple family disagreement.