The two doctors who had rushed in immediately started preparing me while my ears filled with a high, steady ringing.
I kept staring at Dr. Marcus.
‘Police?’ I managed. ‘Why are you calling the police?’
He moved closer and placed his gloved hands firmly on my shoulders, forcing my fever-clouded attention back to his face.
‘Look at me, Jessi. Stay calm. We have you.’
That answer scared me more than anything Luca had said all week.
The room was moving around me now. More medical staff were working near the bed, and I realized they were preparing me for something urgent. Then the pre-operative sedatives began to take hold.
My arms felt impossibly heavy. The ceiling blurred at the edges.
But one thought kept fighting through the fog.
Why would an infected scrape make a doctor call the police?
And if Dr. Marcus had seen something that frightened him that quickly, what exactly did Luca put in that wound?
Before anyone could give me the answer, the sedative pulled me completely under.
When I woke, the first thing I noticed was the absence of pain in my ankle. The second was the plastic tubing taped to my arm and the monitor quietly tracking my heartbeat.
Dr. Marcus was standing beside the bed with a serious expression. A police officer waited just outside the curtain.
‘Your infection was spreading rapidly,’ he said. ‘You had a dangerous soft-tissue infection, and we had to operate immediately.’
I swallowed. ‘But why the police?’
He hesitated before answering.
‘Because the injury pattern didn’t make sense.’
He showed me a photograph taken before surgery. The black streaks were not random discoloration. They followed a narrow series of punctures around the original scrape.
‘This wasn’t caused by an ordinary fall or household accident,’ he said. ‘Something was introduced directly into the wound.’
My mind went straight to Luca.
He had told me the scrape was nothing. He had changed the bandage twice. He had insisted I stop worrying and wait another day.
Then I remembered something I had dismissed earlier in the week.
The night before my fever began, Luca had come into the bedroom carrying a small medical kit. He said he had found it in the garage and wanted to clean my heel properly.
I had been too tired to question him.
Now I asked Dr. Marcus what the laboratory had found.
‘We’re still waiting on the full analysis,’ he said. ‘But we found evidence that the wound had been deliberately contaminated with a substance capable of causing severe tissue damage and infection.’
My stomach tightened.
‘You think my husband did it?’
‘I’m not telling you what to think,’ he said. ‘I’m telling you what the evidence requires us to investigate.’
The officer stepped closer and asked whether Luca had access to my medications, medical supplies, or anything I might have used on the wound.
I answered every question.
Then the officer told me something that made my blood run cold.
Luca had called the hospital while I was still in surgery.
He had not asked whether I was alive.
He had asked whether the doctors had discovered what was in my ankle.
That single question changed everything.
For seven days, I had believed my husband was simply careless, selfish, and convinced that I was exaggerating my illness. Now I had to consider something much harder: he may have known exactly how dangerous my condition was becoming.
The police went to our house that evening.
They found the medical kit in the garage, exactly where Luca had said it was. Inside was a bottle that looked ordinary at first glance, along with used gauze and medical tape.
The laboratory later connected residue from the kit to the material recovered from my wound.
But there was another discovery.
Security footage showed Luca entering the bedroom alone shortly before my fever began. He stayed there for several minutes, then left carrying the same kit.
When confronted, he initially denied touching my injury.
Then investigators showed him the footage.
His story changed.
He said he had only been trying to help me.
But when they asked why he had repeatedly told me to wait until tomorrow despite my worsening fever, he had no explanation that survived the evidence.
I spent several more days in the hospital recovering from the infection and surgery. The doctors told me that leaving home when I did may have saved my life.
Luca was arrested while the investigation continued.
What hurt most was not the police investigation or even learning that the wound had been deliberately contaminated. It was remembering every time I had looked at him from that bed and asked for help, and every time he had answered with the same word.
Tomorrow.
He had used that word to delay me until I was too weak to make decisions for myself.
But on the seventh day, I had made one decision without him.
I left.
Months later, the scar on my ankle was still visible. I could walk normally again, although some mornings the joint remained stiff.
I kept the hospital discharge papers in a folder, not because I wanted to relive what happened, but because they reminded me of the moment I stopped waiting for permission to protect myself.
The strangest part was that Dr. Marcus had not recognized my husband’s name, or some hidden connection, when he ordered the police called.
He had simply looked at my ankle.
He saw what I had been unable to see from inside my own home: the difference between an unfortunate injury and evidence of something deliberately done.
And that was why the word ‘tomorrow’ never sounded harmless to me again.
