Chapter 7 - The Deposition
The deposition took place in a sterile, glass-walled conference room in downtown Manhattan.
It was the first time I had been in the same room as Mark in months. He sat across the long mahogany table, wearing a bespoke navy suit, looking every inch the successful, untouchable corporate partner. He smirked at me when I walked in, trying to intimidate me with his sheer presence.
I didn't flinch. I sat down next to Sarah, keeping my spine perfectly straight and my eyes locked onto his. I saw the slight falter in his smirk. He expected the broken, weeping woman he had left on the floor. He didn't know what to do with the cold, immovable stone I had become.
The first hour was standard. Mark’s lawyer aggressively questioned my mental state, trying to trip me up, trying to make me sound hysterical. I answered calmly, factually, never raising my voice.
Then, it was Sarah’s turn to question Mark.
“Mr. Vance,” Sarah began, casually flipping open a file. “You claim you believed your wife was simply experiencing normal postpartum bleeding on the morning of October 12th. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” Mark answered confidently. “She was acting dramatic, as she often did. I told her to take an aspirin.”
“You told her to take an aspirin for what resulted in a massive, life-threatening hemorrhage,” Sarah clarified, her tone dripping with quiet disbelief.
“I am not a doctor,” Mark snapped. “I didn't know.”
Sarah nodded slowly. “Let’s talk about what you did know. Did you know she couldn't stand up?”
“She was sitting on the floor. I didn't know she couldn't stand.”
“Did you notice the blood soaking into the rug?”
“I didn't look down,” Mark lied smoothly.
Sarah smiled. It was a terrifying smile. She reached into her bag and pulled out a large, blown-up photograph. It was a picture Elena had taken of the nursery before the police taped it off. The horrific, massive pool of blood was undeniable.
She slid the photo across the table. Mark’s lawyer tried to object, but Sarah talked right over him.
“You are testifying under oath, Mr. Vance, that you walked out of this room, past this amount of blood, and thought your wife simply needed an aspirin?”
Mark stared at the photo. The color drained from his face. The smugness vanished.
“I... it wasn't that bad when I left,” he stammered.
“Interesting,” Sarah said. “Because medical experts will testify that for an average-sized woman to lose that volume of blood, the bleeding had to be catastrophic and rapid. It would have been vividly apparent before you left.”
She didn't give him time to recover. She pulled out the iPad.
“Let’s move to Exhibit D. This is a video you posted at 2:15 PM that same day.”
She pressed play. Mark’s voice filled the quiet room.
“Shout-out to every guy dealing with high-maintenance wives. Sometimes you've gotta choose yourself. Happy birthday to me!”
“Mr. Vance,” Sarah said softly, as the video looped and Mark’s drunken laughter echoed off the glass walls. “At exactly 2:15 PM, while you were mocking your 'high-maintenance' wife on the internet, paramedics were violently shocking her heart to bring her back to life in the back of an ambulance. She was dying. Because you chose yourself.”
Mark opened his mouth, but no words came out. He looked at his lawyer, desperate for a lifeline, but his lawyer just stared at the table, realizing his client had lied to him about the severity of the evidence.
“You abandoned a helpless infant and a critically bleeding woman to go drink scotch,” Sarah summarized, her voice ringing with finality. “You displayed a depraved indifference to human life. And you think any court in this state will grant you unsupervised visitation with that child?”
For the first time in his life, Mark Vance had absolutely nothing to say.
May you like
The illusion of his superiority was shattered, entirely destroyed by the reality of his own monstrous actions. I watched him physically shrink in his chair, and in that moment, the final chains of my trauma broke.
He wasn't a god. He wasn't a master manipulator. He was just a pathetic, cowardly man who had finally been caught.
