Chapter 6: The Aftermath and the Call
The blade didn't pause this time.
Layla moved with a precision that surprised her—a surgeon's steadiness, a butcher's economy. The knife was small but the flesh offered no resistance. One quick, sawing motion, the serrated edge chewing through skin and sinew and something spongier beneath. Yusuf's eyes flew open. His mouth formed a perfect O of shock, but no sound came out, just a thin whistle of air escaping his lungs.
Blood didn't spurt. It welled, a dark, thick flood that sheeted down his thighs and pooled in the crease of the sheets. He looked down at himself, at the severed thing lying on the mattress like a discarded piece of meat, then back at her face. His expression wasn't anger. It wasn't even pain, not yet. It was confusion. A child's bewilderment at a world that had suddenly, inexplicably, turned cruel.
"Layla?" His voice was small. The voice of the man who'd knelt before her with the cream, his eyes swimming with tears. The voice of the man who'd sworn to cherish her.
She didn't answer. She watched the blood spread, a Rorschach blot of ruined intimacy, and felt nothing. Less than nothing. A void where her heart used to be.
Then the screaming started.
It was a raw, animal sound, tearing from somewhere deep in his chest. He clutched at himself, his hands slick and useless, trying to stem the impossible flow. The sheets were soaked crimson now. The mattress squelched beneath him.
"Oh god, oh god, oh god—" He was babbling, a prayer and a curse tangled together. His eyes rolled wild in his head. "What did you do? What did you fucking do?"
Layla stood. Her nightgown was splattered, a constellation of dark droplets across the white cotton. She walked to the bathroom, her feet leaving faint red prints on the tile, and retrieved a towel. Not for him. For her hands. She wiped them clean with methodical, unhurried motions, watching the water in the sink run pink and then clear.
Behind her, Yusuf was still screaming. Words now, a torrent of them. "Help me! Please, Layla, please, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, please call someone, please—"
She dried her hands. She walked back to the bedroom.
He was trying to get up, to crawl toward the door, but his body wouldn't cooperate. The blood loss was already taking its toll. His skin had gone waxy, pale as candlewax, and a fine tremor ran through his limbs. He'd managed to knock the lamp off the nightstand. It lay on the floor, still glowing, casting bizarre shadows across the carnage.
She stood in the doorway and watched him struggle. A cockroach on its back, legs waving at nothing.
"You're going to bleed out," she said, her voice flat. "If I don't call someone."
Hope flared in his eyes. A desperate, pathetic hope. "Yes. Yes, please. I won't tell anyone. I swear. I won't press charges. Just—"
"I'm not going to call an ambulance."
The hope died. Something else took its place. Realization, cold and terrible. He stopped trying to crawl. He lay back against the ruined sheets, his chest heaving, and stared at her.
"Why?" he whispered.
She tilted her head. Considered the question. "Because you hurt me."
"I said I was sorry. I said—"
"You said a lot of things." She stepped closer, her bare feet silent in the pooled blood. "You said you'd never hurt me again. You said you loved me. You said my name."
He blinked, uncomprehending. "What?"
"Tonight. In your sleep. You said her name."
The confusion on his face was genuine. He didn't know. He didn't even know he'd done it. That, somehow, made it worse.
"Mariam," Layla said, and watched his expression shift. Not recognition.Not guilt. Just more confusion, muddied by the grey fog of blood loss.
"I don't—who?"
"Don't lie to me."
"I'm not lying." His voice cracked. Tears ran down his cheeks, mixing with the sweat and the blood spatter. "I don't know anyone named Mariam. I swear to god, Layla. I swear on my mother's life."
She wanted to believe him. Some small, broken part of her, the part that had stood at the altar and said yes, that part still reached for the possibility of his innocence. But the memory of his sleeping lips, the casual intimacy of that whispered name, burned brighter than any vow.
"You're dying," she said. "You don't have time for lies."
"Then why would I lie?" His breath was coming in short, labored gasps now. "If I'm dying, what's the point? I don't know her. I don't know anyone named Mariam. Maybe—" He coughed, a wet, gurgling sound. "Maybe it was a dream. A nightmare. I don't fucking know. I don't know."
She watched the blood continue to pool, spreading beneath him like a dark halo. The mattress was ruined. The whole room was ruined. She'd have to burn the sheets, the mattress. Maybe the whole bed. Maybe the whole apartment.
He was shivering violently now. Shock setting in. His eyes were losing focus, drifting toward some middle distance she couldn't see.
"Layla." His voice was barely a whisper. "Please. I don't want to die."
She closed her eyes. Behind her lids, she saw the honeymoon suite. The golden lamplight. The silk sheets. The way he'd looked at her, that first night, like she was the answer to every question he'd ever asked. She saw the hospital. The doctor's hands. The cold speculum. She saw the cream, the shame, the slow surrender of her body to his relentless need.
She saw the balcony. The bathtub. The door. His mouth on her skin, his filthy words in her ear, the way he'd taken everything she gave and demanded more.
She opened her eyes.
"Neither did I," she said.
Then she walked out of the room and closed the door behind her.
---
In the kitchen, she found the bedsheet she'd torn earlier for the tourniquet. She'd discarded it on the counter, a shapeless tangle of white fabric. She retrieved it now, carrying it back down the hall. She could hear him still, the wet, labored breathing, the occasional moan. He was still alive. Still fighting.
She should let him die. It would be easier. Cleaner. Self-defense, the courts would say, if it ever got that far. A wife who'd been attacked in her own home, who'd fought back against a man twice her size. She'd read enough stories to know the narrative would play.
But something stopped her. Not mercy. Not love. Something colder than either. A need to witness. To make him see, in his last moments, exactly what he'd made.
She pushed open the door.
He was still conscious, barely. His eyes tracked her movement, dull and unfocused. The blood had stopped flowing quite so freely now—his heart was failing, the pressure dropping—but the wound was still seeping, a slow, steady drain.
She knelt beside the bed. Not close enough for him to touch her. Just close enough to be heard.
"You're going to die like this," she said. "In your own blood. In your own bed. And no one will know what you did to me."
He tried to speak. His lips moved, but only a rasp came out.
"But I'll know." She leaned closer. "I'll know every time I close my eyes. I'll know where you're buried. I'll know that you died screaming, just like I did. On our wedding night. When you tore me apart and called it love."
A tear slid down his cheek. It left a clean track through the blood.
"I'm going to leave now," she said. "I'm going to call my mother. She'll come. She'll help me clean this up. And then I'm going to tell the police that you attacked me. That I defended myself. And they'll believe me, Yusuf. Because I'm a woman. Because women don't lie about these things. Because there's no one left to contradict me."
His eyes were closing. His breathing was shallow now, a thin, reedy sound.
"But you're not going to die tonight," she said. "That would be too easy. You're going to live. You're going to live without that piece of you. You're going to look at your body in the mirror and remember what you did to mine. You're going to think about me every time you piss. Every time you touch yourself. Every time you close your eyes."
She stood.
"If you tell anyone the truth, I'll tell them about the wedding night. About the bleeding.About the hospital. About every bruise you left on my body. And they'll believe me. Because you're a man. Because you're Muslim. Because every stereotype they already hold will work against you."
She gathered the sheet from the counter. Torn strips, already prepared.
"I learned that from you," she said. "How to use what they think of you against you."
She dragged him off the bed. He was heavier than she expected, dead weight now, barely conscious. She managed it—adrenaline and hatred, a potent combination—and wrapped the torn sheet around his grotesque wound. Tight. Tighter. A tourniquet, the textbook kind she'd learned in a first-aid class during her teaching certification.
He moaned. His eyelids fluttered.
"Don't die," she whispered. "Not yet. You don't get to leave that easily."
She laid him on the floor, in the recovery position. She checked his pulse—weak, thready, but there. He'd live. If help arrived soon enough. He'd live.
She sat on the edge of the ruined bed and picked up her phone.
Her hands were steady.
She scrolled to her mother's number and pressed call.
It rang three times before her mother picked up. She sounded groggy, confused. It was three in the morning.
"Mama," Layla said. Her voice was steady as stone. "I need you to come. I've done something. Something terrible. And I need you to help me clean it up."
"Layla? What happened? Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine. Just come. Please. I'll explain when you get here."
She hung up before her mother could ask more questions.
Then she dialed again. Not her mother this time.
"911, what's your emergency?"
"There's been a domestic disturbance," Layla said. Her voice was different now—higher, softer, trembling. An Oscar-worthy performance. "My husband... he came home drunk. He attacked me. I locked myself in the bathroom. There's blood everywhere. Please, I think he's hurt. I don't know what happened. I think I hurt him. Please come. Please help."
She gave the address.
She hung up.
The lie tasted like copper. Like the smell of blood that hung in the air. But it wasn't entirely a lie. He had come home drunk. He had forced himself on her. She had defended herself. The only lie was in the timing. In the word "self-defense" instead of "murder" or "mutilation" or "revenge."
She looked at Yusuf's ruined body on the floor. His chest rose and fell in shallow, rapid breaths. The tourniquet was holding, for now. The paramedics would arrive in time. She'd made sure of that.
She felt nothing but a cold, vast satisfaction. A hunger finally fed. A debt finally paid.
Outside, the first sirens began to wail in the distance, growing louder.
She stood up. She smoothed her bloodstained nightgown. She pushed her hair back from her face.
When they arrived, they would find a battered wife. A woman who'd been defending herself against a monster. They would find a man with a self-inflicted wound, a casualty of his own drunken violence. They would find a story that fit neatly into the boxes they already carried in their heads.
Layla smiled. A thin, broken thing that no one would see.
The sirens grew louder.
She walked to the front door to wait.
The sirens became a physical pressure against her eardrums, a wailing crescendo that seemed to shake the walls of the apartment. Red and blue lights strobed through the living room windows, painting the bloodstained furniture in alternating flashes of violence and calm. She stood at the door with her hands clasped loosely in front of her, her nightgown clinging to her thighs with dried sweat and something darker.
The knock came hard, authoritative. Three sharp raps that brooked no delay.
She opened the door.
Two paramedics pushed past her without waiting for an invitation, their eyes already scanning the room, assessing. A police officer followed—young, female, her hand resting on her holster with practiced casualness. The officer's gaze swept over Layla, cataloging: the blood on her nightgown, the trembling hands, the tear tracks (from earlier, from the hospital, from before any of this) still visible on her cheeks.
"Ma'am, are you injured?" The officer's voice was clipped, professional.
"He's in the bedroom." Layla's voice cracked on the last word. She let it. "He's... I think he's dying. I didn't mean to—I just—he was hurting me and I grabbed something and I don't even know what happened, it all happened so fast—"
"Okay, okay. I need you to stay here with me. What's your name?"
"Layla. Layla Al-Farsi."
"Is the man in the bedroom your husband?"
"Yes. Yusuf. Yusuf Al-Farsi."
The officer nodded, her expression unreadable. From the bedroom, Layla could hear the paramedics' urgent voices, the crackle of their radios, the rustle of equipment bags being unzipped. No screaming. Yusuf had gone silent.
"Is he going to be okay?" Layla asked. She made her voice small. Frightened. The voice of a woman who'd just realized the enormity of what she'd done.
The officer didn't answer. She was looking at the blood on the floor, the trail of footprints leading to the bathroom and back, the overturned lamp. "Ma'am, I need you to sit down. Someone will be here to take your statement in a few minutes. Can I get you some water?"
"Yes. Please. Thank you."
She sat on the couch. The same couch where Yusuf had kissed her two nights ago, his hands in her hair, whispering promises against her mouth. The fabric was stiff with dried semen, though no one would know that. No one would think to look.
The officer returned with a glass of water. Layla drank it in three swallows, the cold liquid doing nothing to quench the fire in her throat. Or the fire anywhere else.
The paramedics emerged from the bedroom ten minutes later. Their faces were grim, professional masks firmly in place. One of them—a woman with short hair and tired eyes—approached Layla directly.
"We've stabilized him. He's lost a lot of blood, but he's conscious. We're transporting him to St. Mary's. Are you able to answer some questions about what happened?"
"I already told the operator."
"I know. I just need to confirm a few details for the report." The paramedic's voice was gentle, but her eyes were sharp. "The wound—it's a partial amputation. Of the penis. Do you know what weapon was used?"
Layla's stomach lurched. She let it show on her face. "A knife. From the kitchen. He—he was on top of me and I reached for the nightstand and there was a knife there, I don't know why, I don't know how it got there—"
"Okay.Okay. That's enough for now." The paramedic exchanged a glance with the police officer. "We're taking him in. You should come to the hospital. He's asking for you."
That stopped her cold. "He's asking for me?"
"Keeps saying your name. Over and over." The paramedic frowned. "Is there somewhere else you'd rather go? Someone we can call?"
"No." Layla stood. Her legs felt steadier than they should. "I'll come. He's my husband."
The hospital was white and sterile and smelled of antiseptic. She sat in a plastic chair in a hallway that reeked of desperation and floor wax, watching doctors and nurses hurry past with clipboards and grim expressions. Her nightgown had been replaced with hospital-issue scrubs. Someone had given her a blanket. She didn't remember who.
The police officer sat beside her, still taking notes. "You said he came home drunk. Do you know how much he had to drink?"
"I don't know. I could smell it on him. He was... he was angry. About something. I don't know what."
"Had he been violent before? In the past two days of your marriage?"
A pause. A calculated one. "No. I mean—not like this. He was... demanding. On our wedding night. He hurt me. But I thought it was normal. I thought that's just how it was supposed to be."
The officer's pen stopped moving. "He hurt you on your wedding night?"
"I didn't report it. I didn't think anyone would believe me." Layla's voice dropped to a whisper. "It was our honeymoon. Who has a honeymoon and then calls the police?"
The officer's jaw tightened. She didn't say anything, but Layla saw the shift. The recalibration. The story was taking root, finding purchase in the fertile soil of preconception.
A doctor emerged from the surgical wing. His scrubs were stained with blood—Yusuf's blood—and his face was drawn. He approached Layla with the careful stride of someone delivering bad news.
"Mrs. Al-Farsi?"
"Yes?"
"I'm Dr. Chen. I operated on your husband." He glanced at the police officer, then back at Layla. "He's stable. We stopped the bleeding. But I need to ask you some questions about the, ah, severed tissue."
Layla's throat tightened. "Okay."
"Did you bring it with you? The amputated portion? Sometimes paramedics recover it and bring it in case reattachment is possible."
The hallway seemed to tilt. Layla gripped the arms of her chair. "No. I didn't... I didn't think..."
Dr. Chen's expression flickered. Disappointment. Or something close to it. "It's not uncommon. In cases like this, sometimes the victim or their partner thinks to preserve the tissue. I was hoping—"
"I didn't bring it." Layla forced herself to meet his eyes. "I didn't know I was supposed to."
The doctor nodded slowly. "The thing is—spontaneous reattachment is theoretically possible, if the tissue is viable and the wound is clean. But from what the paramedics described... the cut was not clean. It was jagged. Sawing. And the wound itself was contaminated."
"Contaminated?"
"Signs of dirt. Fiber. Fecal matter." Dr. Chen's voice was clinical, detached. "Whoever performed the amputation didn't take any precautions. Even if the tissue had been recovered, reattachment would be... challenging. The vascular damage is extensive. The nerve damage is worse."
Layla let the words wash over her. She kept her face still, her hands folded in her lap. The blanket had slipped from her shoulders, but she didn't reach for it.
"So even if I had brought it..."
"Even if you had brought it, I'm not sure we could have saved it."Dr. Chen paused. "The way the wound was inflicted—it was unusually brutal. Deliberate. I've seen self-inflicted injuries, accidents, domestic incidents. This was different."
The police officer's pen was moving again. Layla could feel the weight of her gaze.
"I was scared," Layla whispered. "I just grabbed whatever was there and I... I didn't know what I was doing. I just wanted him to stop."Dr. Chen nodded, but his eyes held hers a moment too long. "Of course. That's understandable."
He walked away. His footsteps echoed down the corridor.
The officer finished writing. She closed her notebook and looked at Layla with something that might have been sympathy or might have been scrutiny. "Mrs. Al-Farsi, I'm going to recommend you stay somewhere else tonight. A friend's house. A family member. We'll need you to come to the station tomorrow to give a formal statement."
"My mother. She's on her way."
"Good. That's good." The officer stood. "For what it's worth, I've seen a lot of cases like this. Women who fight back. It's not your fault. None of this is your fault."
Layla looked up at her. "Then why do I feel like I've done something terrible?"
The officer didn't answer. She didn't have an answer. She just squeezed Layla's shoulder once, briefly, and walked away.
Yusuf was in a recovery room on the third floor. They let her in after an hour of waiting, after the anesthesia had worn off and he was lucid enough to speak. He was propped up on pillows, his face grey with exhaustion and blood loss. An IV dripped clear fluid into his arm. The sheet was smooth over his lap, flat in a way that made Layla's stomach curl.
He turned his head when she entered. His eyes found hers, and for a long moment, he just stared. She couldn't read his expression. Pain, yes. Confusion. But something else, too. Something she hadn't expected.
"I told them it was an accident," he said. His voice was a rasp, barely audible. "I told them I fell. I told them I don't remember."
Layla closed the door behind her. She stood at the foot of the bed, her arms crossed over her chest.
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why did you lie? You could have told them the truth. You could have told them what I did."
He shifted in the bed, wincing. "What truth, Layla? That my wife cut off my cock on our two-day anniversary? That I was asleep when she did it? That I never touched her tonight, that I never raised a hand to her?" He laughed, a hollow, broken sound. "They'd never believe me."
"Because you're Muslim."
"Because I'm a man. Because I'm a drunk who forced himself on his bride. Because our marriage was arranged and everyone knows how those work." His eyes glistened. "I told them what they expected to hear. That you were defending yourself. That I must have hurt you, even if I don't remember."
Layla's breath caught. "You didn't have to do that."
"Yes, I did." He turned his face toward the window. The blinds were open, showing a slice of grey pre-dawn sky. "Because if I told them the truth, they'd put you in prison. And then what? What would be left of me? What would be left of us?" He turned back to her. "You took the only thing that mattered to me, Layla. And I still don't want to see you locked up."
She felt something crack inside her chest. Not guilt. Not yet. Just a fissure, a hairline fracture in the wall she'd built around herself. She moved closer, her hands gripping the rail at the foot of his bed.
"Why did you say her name?"
"What?"
"In your sleep. You said her name. Mariam."
His brow furrowed. "I don't know anyone named Mariam. I told you that."
"Then whose name was it?"
His eyes widened. Something flickered in them—recognition, maybe. Or fear. "Mariam was my mother's name. She died when I was twelve." His voice cracked. "Is that who you heard? Is that what this was about?"
The room went very still. The IV dripped. The monitor beeped. Layla's hands went cold on the rail.
"Your mother."
"She was the first person I ever lost. I dream about her sometimes. When I'm stressed.When I'm scared." He swallowed hard. "I was scared tonight, Layla. Of what I was becoming. Of what I was doing to you. I think I called for her in my sleep. I think I wanted her to help me."
Layla couldn't breathe. Her vision blurred. The wall she'd built, the one she'd fortified with rage and betrayal, began to crack in earnest.
"Oh," she said. Just that. Just one syllable, soft as a breath.
His hand moved on the blanket. Reached for her. She flinched, but he was only reaching for her hand, for her fingers, for the cold, dry skin of her knuckles.
"I don't blame you," he said. "For what you did. I blame myself. I hurt you on our wedding night. I hurt you in that hospital. I made you bleed and I made you cry and I never once stopped to ask if you were okay. I thought if I just pushed through, if I just did what I wanted, eventually you'd understand. Eventually you'd want it too."
The tears came. Not for Yusuf. Not for his pain. For herself. For the girl who'd walked down the aisle in white, her heart full of hope. For the woman who'd bled on silk sheets and smiled through it. For the wedding photographs, still sitting on the nightstand, that would now tell a different story.
"I wanted to kill you," Layla whispered. "When I cut you. I wanted you to die."
"I know."
"But you didn't."
"No."
"I'm glad you didn't."
He was quiet for a long time. Then: "Are you lying?"
"No." She looked at him. Really looked. At the pallor of his skin, the sunken hollows of his eyes, the way his chest rose and fell with shallow, pained breaths. "I don't know what comes next. I don't know if I can stay. I don't know if I can forgive you. But I'm glad you're alive."
He closed his eyes. A tear slid down his cheek, disappearing into the stubble at his jaw.
"Me too," he said.
They stayed like that for a while. The sun rose, turning the sky from grey to pink to gold. A nurse came in to check his vitals. A doctor came to discuss the surgery, the reconstructive possibilities, the long road ahead. Layla listened. She nodded. She asked the right questions.
And all the while, her mind was already working, already planning. The police statement. The meeting with her mother. The explanations she would have to give, the details she would have to omit. The marriage that was over, or maybe just beginning, depending on how you looked at it.
But for now, she held his hand. For now, she watched him sleep.
For now, she let herself feel it all. The horror. The relief. The guilt. The grief.
And beneath it, like a river running underground, the same cold, vast satisfaction that had flooded her when she'd picked up that knife.
She wasn't sorry. Not yet. Not entirely. But she was something else now. Something new. Something she hadn't been before.
She was a woman who knew what she was capable of.
And that knowledge would change everything.