My sister called back about an hour ago.
She asked for her mother-in-law's phone number.
She said she thought she might be ready to come home after another day there.
When I asked about the hit, she said that her husband was slapping their son repeatedly and claiming that the boy enjoyed being hit.
He then did not slap but rather punched my sister with his fist quite hard on the right side of her head.
She said she had never seen him so angry.
He said something about how he never respected our father and that his ashes are like kitty litter. She claimed he said that many times before.
She said she was really scared and felt like she did in a previous incident where she thought there was something biologically wrong with her like a heart attack, which I believe was a panic attack.
She said she thought she saw her mother-in-law when they went to get gas. (I didn't really understand how that fit in with anything else she said. I don't think her mother-in-law flew in from Michigan until after she was in the hospital, but that is based on her husband's timeline.)
She then said that a friend their previous church was visiting (doing something with the internet router) and saw the punch happen. They are not connected on any social media and she does not know how to contact her without the phone which her husband had.
She said she finally realizes that her husband is not the kind of man she wants as the father of her children and that she would be better off without him.
She had to use the restroom and cut the call short before I remembered to ask for her patient ID code I would need in order to call her, but she did say she would call again tomorrow.
I just passed this on to my half-brothers. One of them is a lawyer. He does real estate law but does have friends who specialize in family law.
I tried calling the hospital and asking for any updates, inquiring about visitation schedules, and expressing my concerns about abuse, but each time I got through to a person she tried to transfer me to someone else and ended up sending me back to the main menu, until the last time when they sent me to someone's voicemail.
I called my sister's mother-in-law and left a message, not mentioning any abuse but asking how the kids were doing and if she could shed any light on what led up to the most recent incident.
She called back this evening.
She said she was visiting from December 26th to January 2nd and that my sister seemed fine at first but a little off later in that visit. My sister had admitted she had stopped taking her meds "because they made her weepy" but could not remember how far back. She then was proscribed 2 new meds that might have been too strong.
She said her son said she was getting worse over the next week so she booked a flight back and has been there since Sunday. She had to take an Uber to their house because my sister had driven off with their vehicle. The police found her at a gas station and took her to a regular hospital before she was transferred to where she is now.
She said when we had snow last weekend and the kids wanted to play in it my sister went outside barefoot and in only a thin nightgown to make snow angels.
I asked the mother-in-law for the phone number of the friend whom my sister said witnessed the slaps and punch. (I did not mention those to her, only said I'd like to hear what someone else who saw her in the week leading up to her hospitalization thought.) She said she had tried to call her herself but only got a generic voicemail message so she wasn't certain she had the right number, but gave it to me anyway.
The first three times I tried calling from our landline it sounded like someone picked up and hung up without saying anything. On my cell phone it did not ring but immediately said "call ended." When I tried one last time on our landline though I got through and was able to talk to her.
She said she that my sister's husband paid her to babysit the kids on Thursday while he went to work. She was there watching the kids for 10 hours but left almost as soon as he came home around 6pm Thursday and was not there any other day recently.
She denied ever witnessing him being physically abusive to either my sister or nephew. She said she has never witnessed him being verbally abusive either, although she had heard about that before. She never heard it from an independent witness though, only from someone who heard about it from my sister.
She did not rule out the possibility of him being abusive in private and said he does not seem like the easiest person to get along with, but she insisted the children are happy and doing well.
She did say she can see how he would be harder on the boy, as men are often tougher on sons while mothers tend to be extra protective of them, and noted that my nephew cries much more than both of his sisters combined.
