Chapter 8 - The Paperwork of DevastationTwo days later, I sat in a private room at St. Jude’s Memorial Hospital.
Toby was fast asleep in a plastic bassinet beside my bed, healthy and unharmed. A nurse had just finished dressing the lacerations on my scalp and the deep bruises spreading across my upper arms and back.
Sitting across from me was Detective Rachel Vance from the Domestic Violence Unit, alongside my court-appointed legal advocate, Sarah Stern.
"Mark was arraigned yesterday morning," Detective Vance said, placing a thick folder on my tray table. "Because of the recorded 911 call—where he explicitly admitted to removing your SIM card to isolate you—the judge set his bail at $250,000. He is currently in county custody."
"What about Evelyn?" I asked, my voice dry and raspy.
Sarah Stern sighed, tapping her pen against her notepad. "Evelyn posted her $25,000 bond late last night. Her lawyers are already filing emergency petitions in family court. They are claiming you suffer from severe post-partum psychosis, that you inflicted those injuries on yourself, and that Mark was simply trying to protect the infant."
My blood ran cold. "She’s lying! The dispatcher heard them!"
"We know she’s lying," Sarah said gently, taking my hand. "But Evelyn is smart. She’s using Mark’s clean record and her background as a retired nurse to paint a narrative. She wants temporary emergency custody of Toby while Mark’s criminal trial plays out."
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I squeezed Sarah’s hand until my knuckles turned white. "Over my dead body."
"Then we go to war," Detective Vance said, opening her folder to reveal a yellowed, archived police report from twenty years ago. "Because while researching Evelyn’s background, we found something her lawyers tried very hard to seal."
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