He does the only thing he can.
He punches her in the face.
Bone crunches under his knuckle. A flash of blood. She falls back, the knife nicking his throat before it clatters to ground. She moans, hands going to her face, and she’s sitting against the balcony railing, blood squirting between her fingers. Her eyes are dazed, but they’re still narrowed, like she can still hold on to the anger even after getting a fist to the face.
He snarls, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” He’s panting, the pain sharp as glass continues to dig underneath him into his back.
She says, “You broke my nose. I think you broke my nose. You hit me. You hit me.”
He’s sick to his stomach, because yeah, he did just hit her. He hit his wife. Sure, she was coming at him with a knife and pushed him through a sliding glass window. And sure, she probably meant to stab him (really? did she really?), but he hit her. He punched her. She’s bleeding because of him, quite profusely. He’s not his father, he’s not his father, and his mom whispers, Sure you aren’t, bucko. But you sure as shit didn’t get that temper from me.
And god, he’s so fucking angry.
At her. At himself. At the situation. That it’s gotten this far. That they’ve allowed themselves to become this. His fist went into her face, but it’s been coming to this for a long time. She deserved it. She earned it. She’d come after him first, and he was just protecting himself. It could have happened sooner, but he’s a good guy, and he didn’t let it. He didn’t want this. He never wanted any of this. It’s on her. This is all on her. It’s not—
“Oh my god,” he whispers, because he’s horrified. He justified it in his head like it was nothing. Like it made sense. Like it was okay. Like it was ever okay. He wonders if his father did the same every single time he raised a hand to his mother. And now Jenny is chanting, “You hit me, you hit me,” over and over, and her eyes are bright, and she’s bleeding.
He says, “Why did you do this?”
She says, “This is you. This is all on you. Like your dad. You’re just like your dad, aren’t you? Hitting a woman. Just like your dad. Just like your dad. Just like your—”
And he’s distracted by what she’s saying, distracted by how true it’s ringing in his ears, so he’s not prepared when she moves quicker than she has any right to. He’s still on his back, still dazed by everything that’s happened in the last… god, has it only been a minute?
So he’s not ready for her, not completely. She pushes herself off the railing and makes a grab for the knife. She’s got her fingers wrapped around the handle before he’s even registered she’s moving, and the balcony’s not that big. It was something they didn’t like, something they almost passed on the apartment over, but the Realtor said outdoor space in this part of DC was hard to come by, and anything more was going to be out of their price range. So they said yeah, sure, let’s do it, it’s small, but let’s do it. She was four months pregnant at the time, and he was… well, he wasn’t happy, per se, but he was getting there. He knew he could get there, and everything was going to be fine.
The balcony’s rather small. Which is why she’s kneeling over him, the knife above her head, in a matter of a second or two.
He reacts. It’s fight or flight. He does the only thing he can.
He kicks his foot out. Hits her right underneath her breasts with his expensive Italian loafer. Something cracks in her chest and her eyes go wide, and she just flies backward, much farther than he expects. Her back hits the railing and there’s another shriek of metal, of bolts ripping from their moorings. The knife falls to the floor of the balcony, and there’s a brief moment when their eyes meet, hers wide, his panicked, and then the railing gives way nine stories above the streets of Washington, DC. One moment she’s there, and then she’s gone.
He breathes and breathes and breathes until he’s—
—gasping for air inside the diner in Amorea. It’s bacon and coffee and cigarettes and it’s home, because he knows this place. He doesn’t know the people in that event, doesn’t know how they could be so angry, how they could let so much rage settle over their skin. Except he can understand a little bit, can’t he? Because there’s residual fury flooding through him and he can almost taste it at the back of his throat, bitter and sharp. He thinks, How could she, oh my god, she’s my wife, how could she do this to me, and I punched her, I punched her, I punched—
He gags, but nothing comes up but a thin string of bile.
His head is spinning and he’s trying to get himself under control, but that pressure behind his eye is as harsh as it’s ever been before. He thinks his eye will probably pop out of his skull if it gets any worse, a moist little plop, and it’ll fall to the floor of the diner.
Worse, much worse, is that feeling of slipping again, like it’s being pulled away from him, these things that he remembers that aren’t his to remember. It’s not as strong as it’s been before and he’s holding on to it, keeping the memories fresh in his head. He knows how it feels to have her (Jenny, he thinks, Jenny, Jenny, Jenny) on top of him, knife near his throat. He knows the terror that overwhelmed him when the man punched her in the face. The disbelief he felt when she disappeared over the edge of the balcony. He doesn’t know who these people are, but they’re mixed into everything, he’s sure of it.
(Or it’s just another event, another notch on the schizophrenic bedpost, and boy, is Doc just going to piss himself silly over this. Funny little brain, he’ll say. Funny little crazy brain.)
Mike shakes his head, trying to clear his thoughts, trying to focus on why he’s in the diner in the middle of the night to begin with. His wrist is itchy, but he ignores it. There’s enough light coming in through the window from the streetlamps that he can make out the photo clearly.
He thinks, Maybe I shouldn’t do this.
He takes the photo off the wall anyway.
He’s here. It has to be done.
The frame is the same one he’s always seen, which creates a weird duality in his mind, because he knows it broke, but he knows it didn’t.
It has four little clasps on the back, one for each side of the frame. He flips them and pulls the cardboard backing out. If he’s right,
there should be the lovely dark eyes of Nadine the African Queen staring back up at him, folded behind the rest.
And he’s right. He knows he’s right.