Chapter 2 - The Night I Could Not Feel Anything
The last night began like the others and then changed in a way I felt before I understood. Victor forced me down beside the workbench while Elaine stood near the open side door with that same expressionless patience she used when checking casserole dishes in her own kitchen. My head spun from weakness and smoke. The burns on my abdomen and ribs had become one continuous field of pain, and every breath felt shallow and wrong. Victor crouched in front of me with the cigarette glowing between his fingers, talking about a woman named Tasha as if I should admire his honesty. “She doesn’t make my life harder,” he said. “She knows when to get out of the way.” Elaine answered him without taking her eyes off me. “Then stop talking and finish what you started.”
At some point the pain turned hot and deep, then strangely distant, like my body had stepped back from itself. I remember the red tip of the cigarette, the rattle of my own breath, and the sound of Elaine telling him not to stop. I remember trying to keep one hand under my belly even when my arm no longer seemed to belong to me. Then the garage ceiling blurred. Victor’s voice stretched into something low and distorted, and the concrete floor felt very far away. The last thing I saw clearly was him heating something long and metal near the workbench while Elaine whispered that they had already gone too far to turn back.
When I opened my eyes again, the light was white and steady instead of yellow and flickering. A hospital monitor pulsed beside me. My mouth was dry, my limbs felt impossibly heavy, and I could not understand at first why everything smelled so clean. A doctor stood at the foot of the bed wearing the careful expression people reserve for truths that need to be delivered without crushing someone completely. “Your injuries are extremely serious,” he said. “The baby is still alive, but the pregnancy is in critical danger.” I turned my face into the pillow and cried without making a sound. I had survived whatever Victor and Elaine meant to finish, but survival felt incomplete while my child was still caught inside the danger that had nearly killed us both.
