"You really think one word is going to change anything?" Marcus hissed, his hands gripping the metal rails so tightly his knuckles turned white. He leaned in closer, invading the tiny, helpless perimeter of her hospital bed. The sharp, suffocating scent of his cheap pine cologne completely overwhelmed the smell of the rubbing alcohol. "You think because you managed to croak out a single syllable, you suddenly have power here?"
Roxy lay trapped beneath the heavy medical gauze, her vocal cords once again frozen, but this time by the sheer, paralyzing magnitude of her own trauma.
"You have nothing, Roxann," Marcus said, his voice a low, rhythmic cadence designed to entirely dismantle her psyche. "You have no one. Who are you going to call? Your friends? You haven't spoken to them in two years. They think you're a snob. They think you abandoned them."
