That mattered because my mind kept trying to race ahead.
How was I going to get out of the house?
Could I carry the baby safely with my shoulder hurting this badly?
What would happen when I opened the bathroom door?
Would my husband be standing directly outside it?
Would his mother block me?
Then I heard my husband ask a question that made every one of those thoughts stop.
He wanted to know where my keys were.
His mother answered instantly.
She had taken them while I was in the bathroom.
My hand tightened around the phone.
Until that moment, part of me had still been thinking about escape as a simple physical act.
Get the baby.
Get through the door.
Get outside.
Get into the car.
Leave.
But the keys were already gone.
My mother-in-law had removed them before I locked myself inside the bathroom.
That meant this was not just about what happened after I defended myself.
She had already taken away the easiest way for me to leave with my son.
Then I heard metal moving in the hall.
The familiar jingle of my own keys.
My mother-in-law handed them to my husband.
I could not see the exchange through the closed door, but I could hear it clearly.
The sound was small.
Its meaning was not.
My husband now had control of the car keys while I was injured, barefoot behind a bathroom door, holding a newborn and speaking quietly to a dispatcher.
Then the keys stopped making noise.
I could hear them shifting in his palm.
His voice softened again.
He told me to open the door.
He claimed his mother was leaving and said the two of us could talk.
But she was not leaving.
