Protection was sitting beside a hospital bed when every violent instinct in me demanded that I leave it.
It was preserving evidence instead of destroying a man.
It was allowing witnesses to speak, doctors to document, investigators to investigate and consequences to arrive without my hands forcing them.
It was becoming the person my frightened son thought I was when he whispered my name.
Months later, as I tucked him into bed, Jake caught my wrist before I could turn off the lamp.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“You came.”
I looked at him.
He was already half asleep.
Maybe he meant the hospital.
Maybe he meant soccer practice.
Maybe he meant every night since.
I leaned down and kissed his forehead, the same place I had kissed him when it was surrounded by bruises.
“I’ll keep coming,” I said.
And this time, there was nobody in the world who could convince him otherwise.
