If I wasn’t listening for his voice, I wouldn’t have heard the sickening crunching sound when Zayne’s body hit the ground.
I want to scream, but my midsection is doing all the screaming for me. My chin jerks upwards, working desperately to pull air into my lungs. I can’t see my husband, but I can hear commotion all around me. Everything is blurry for a moment. I hear a high-pitched ringing sound in my ears, brakes screeching, and drivers shouting. My eyes swing over to the people across the street who are frozen in horror.
They aren’t looking at me.
I have to see how bad it is. I use all my strength to drag myself across the pavement. My legs are numb and my arms feel like wet noodles, but I’m moving in the direction of everyone’s attention. I need to hear his voice. I have to know he’s okay; this while dark red blood saturates my own shirt and gushes between my legs. I force myself to my feet, holding my bloody, aching belly.
“Zayne!” I scream, begging for him to answer me.
More cars brake in a domino effect, the screech of their tires a repetitive sound that almost deafens me. It doesn’t take long for the street to pile up with parked vehicles and the sidewalk with bewildered pedestrians. Drivers farther down the line begin shouting abuse in an accusatory way, opening up their windows and waving angry hands; if they only knew how ignorant they were being.
I’m fucking dying here!
I limp around the damaged car between me and Zayne, holding the gash in my side, glaring at the woman whimpering on the curb who has removed her earbuds long enough to realize what she’s done. An elderly gentleman is tending to her, but the blonde’s body remains fully intact. In that moment, she looks up at me. I will never forget her selfish face as I search for my reason for living.
I squeeze my eyes shut as I stagger around the car, my eyes instantly flashing to the bloody mess on the pavement. I see it with my own two eyes. Vomit pools in my throat as the image of my husband’s lifeless body pinned beneath the tire of the car is permanently etched into my brain.
“Noooooo!” I howl at the suddenly dark, cloudy sky.
I crash to my knees, landing in a puddle of my own blood, where I succumb to my nervous breakdown. Starved of sanity, I skip a breath and pass out in front of the injured driver who murdered my husband and unborn child.
19: Life or Death
Loud clapping sounds jolt me out of a warm safe place in my mind. I wake to a police officer snapping his fingers in front of my face. “She’s awake,” he shouts as two paramedics lift me up and strap me onto a board.
No matter what they do to slow the bleeding of my mid-section, it doesn’t help. All I see is one bandage after another absorbing what’s left of my blood.
One man looks to the other. “We’re leaving—now.”
I despise the way the uniformed man looks at me. I see the pity behind his eyes. I want to claw those eyes out.
I know. My baby’s not going to make it, and, yes, I saw how my husband’s life ended, too. If I thought life had ever been cruel to me before, I was wrong.
I slip away for a few minutes, but everything slowly reappears when my eyes blink open. I’m indoors now. Florescent lights blind me from above while emergency professionals continue work on me like I’m not even there.
Hello! I can hear you, assholes.
I start to wonder what it’d be like to not be here as I drift in and out of consciousness. It feels as though I’ve ejected my uterus, but I hear the voices reminding me that there will be an emergency delivery in the very near future.
“This woman is pregnant!” a nurse shouts.
“The baby! It’s in distress,” another announces. “She has to deliver this thing now.”
It.
Thing.
Don’t they understand that this thing is my own flesh and blood? Another stab of pain strikes my midsection, and it feels like I’m being split in two. I bend forward, moaning through the pain, wrestling against the restraints.
“My baby!” rips from my throat.
One of the paramedics finally acknowledges that they’re working on a human being. “How long has she been having contractions?”
Just as the pain becomes too much to handle, I feel my arm being pricked, and a cold fluid runs into my veins. My eyes flutter shut, and I must fade out for a while. When I reopen my eyes, I’m in a pale yellow room, lying on a delivery table, with my lower half bare and my legs split apart. I roll my head to see whether I’m alone and, as I try to close my legs to loosen the pressure there, a nurse pries my legs even farther apart.
“Welcome back,” she says with a husky tone, and an irritating blend of sweetness and surprise. “My name is Linda. I’m here to help you. Anything you need, just say it.”
“What’s going on?” I moan, hoping they’ve already extracted my poor baby. Talking takes more effort than I expected, causing pain to sear my middle. “Ahh!” I cry out.
“You’re about to deliver this baby. We were hoping you’d come to in time to meet your little guy. Give me a push,” Linda grunts, like a football player.
“What? I don’t fucking think so!” I’m afraid I might push out my spleen. My middle is wrapped in clean bandages, but I can just imagine the horror show hiding beneath them.
I become lightheaded from thinking too hard and have to press my eyes shut to get through the next contraction. A monitor starts to beep erratically. I wonder if I’m having a heart attack.
“Shit!” Linda shouts. “Go get the doc! Code pink. Code pink!”
A young girl takes off running, panicking doubly as much as the larger nurse.
Gasping from the pain ripping at my crotch, my voice croaks, “Code pink?” I have no idea what the hell that means, but by the urgency of the nurses rushing in the door, I know it isn’t good.
A tall, middle-aged woman, who I presume is the doctor, casually appears at my bedside. The nurse quickly exchanges places with her and grabs onto my hand. Words are exchanged but it’s not any language I can seem to understand. I wait for Linda to explain to me what code pink means, but instead she looks away to monitor one of the machines while she turns down the alarm. I hear her take a deep breath before looking back to me.
“On this next contraction, I need you to push. The baby’s come too far to turn back now. Push like your life depends on it.”
Is there a chance my baby’s life does? There’s no way he survived that hit. Is there?
Linda looks me right in the eyes with a solemn expression on her face. “This is it, Clarisse. In three-two-one, push!” she shouts, forcing me to clench my teeth and scream with all that I have to deliver my baby boy.
“Ah. Ah. Ah,” the doctor warns, playing with my bloodied bandage.
“No more pushing!” Linda shouts, like she’s my lifelong coach.
“I have to push,” I cry. It hurts so much. My stomach heaves and contracts uncomfortably, urging my baby forward.
“No you don’t,” Linda informs me. “You’re not contracting.”
“I think my body knows when I have to push, and I have to push!” I shout, giving it another shot. But nothing new happens, and no matter how hard I try, nothing changes.
The doctor takes a long tool from the young nurse. My eyes burst out of their sockets.
“Relax. They’re just forceps. This will all be over in a minute.”
The second she flips my baby, I feel his head ripping me open. His body follows with another agonizing push. I feel the very second my baby boy is pulled free from my body, and I notice how the room falls silent.
Dead silent.
The nurses work together, urgently caring for my baby boy. Why won’t they show me his face? Why isn’t anyone talking? “Why isn’t he crying?” So many questions and no answers.
The only sound is the quick movements of the emergency personnel as they cut the umbilical cord and pass my baby off to a machine. They’re trying to revive him. Who are they kidding? He’s already dead.
I settle back on the bed
as my eyelids absorb the tears that are building for a storm. I hear a commotion. My eyes shoot across the room. A storm of nurses rush toward the door with my baby boy. I see him. His skin… it’s pale and bluish, with patches of blood smeared across his little baby body. His head is covered in a swirl of dark hair like his father’s.
“My baby,” I cry, reaching out to him.
I suck in an emotional breath. Tears drip from the corners of my eyes. My breaths become quick and labored. I roll my head back, my sight becoming blurry again. There’s no way I’m going to survive this. “That’s our baby.”
Zayne’s baby boy.
My voice is scratchy and slurred when I speak. “Where are they taking my baby?”
The large nurse stands before me and connects with my watery gaze. “I’m sorry, Clarisse. They’ve just taken him to the room next door. Our machine wasn’t charging properly. I promise that you can see him in a minute.”
“I don’t understand. What’s wrong with my son?”
Linda knows I don’t actually want the answer—I’m in no shape to hear it—but she tells me anyway. “I’m supposed to wait for the doctor to tell you this, but I’m afraid your baby’s not going to make it.”
“What?” I shake my head from side to side. “No!”
“He wasn’t breathing.”
I grab on to the nurse’s turquoise scrubs and pull her violently toward me. “I just lost my husband. I need that child. He’s all I have left. Don’t you dare tell me he’s going to die.”
I let the lady go and watch her eyes bug out from her face while she tries to straighten herself.
“He was really active last night,” I explain. “I could feel him rolling around this morning. He was fine.”
The woman turns her eyes to the floor and clasps her hands together, as if in casual prayer. “That was before the accident.”
I see the way she keeps her distance from the bed now, and she’s lucky. I’m ready to snap. She busies herself around the room but makes no move to check on me again until the doctor returns to finish what she started.
“Doctor, I don’t need any more of these bullshit lies. I just lost my husband. My baby’s not breathing. Tell me what’s going on here!”
I can’t even shed my tears, as my stomach convulses again. Before she can speak, I fold forward in pain. It feels like another baby is about to grace us with its presence.
“What’s happening?” I cry.
Linda takes my hand and smiles somberly. “It’s your placenta. This shouldn’t hurt, but you need to be still.”
“Ready?” the doctor asks me, hovering at the end of my bed. “And push!” she urges.
I don’t want to push, I really don’t, but the force of the contraction makes me do it. Right when I start to wonder whether it’ll ever end, I deliver a bloody placenta.
The doctor rolls it around in her hands, examining it. Who the hell knows what she’s looking for? As if this day hasn’t been nightmarish enough, now I have to watch a woman molest my bloody insides.
“Why won’t you bring me to my baby?” I howl, rolling my head backwards.
The doctor drops my innards into an aluminum tray and returns between my legs, doing her best to touch up my battered body, while the nurse coos to me. “It won’t be long now. We’ll get you fixed right up.”
Everything from my tits down is numb—numb and yet throbbing, like one big blister set to explode.
With a disturbing feeling rolling through my exhausted body, I cry to myself. “My baby.”
It’s hard to find a breath after all that exhaling, but even more so when the young nurse appears in the doorway empty-handed. I wait for her to explain what’s happening, but she hesitates. She glances at the nurse next to me and shakes her head, announcing in a small voice, “I’m sorry.”
Linda tries to touch my hand, but with my last ounce of energy and my last shred of sanity, I swipe my arm away from her. I nearly smack her cheek in the process, just barely breezing by the curly hair sprouting from the oversized mole on her chin.
“You’re sorry? You’re sorry for what?” My voice rises and I snap completely.
The young nurse looks like she wants to scurry off.
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Linda says.
“You mean for my husband, right? The loss of my husband.” I grab at my side and my hand sinks into the soggy bandage. I glance toward the door and catch the undeniable shake of the nurse’s head.
“Why is she shaking her head?”
I already know the answer, but I refuse to accept it. If she were a little closer to the bed I might have wrung her neck. From across the room, I imagine squeezing the breath right out of her throat until the life drains from her eyes the way mine has.
The doctor stays at the foot of my bed. Another nurse finally enters the room to deliver her the official news. She holds a swaddled baby out to the doctor—my baby. He looks just like his father, too. Full lips, dark lashes, and a swatch of obsidian hair.
The doctor stands there in place with her downturned eyes closing. In her arms is a bluish baby swaddled in a white blanket. Saddened eyes touch mine from across the bed. She comes toward me quickly and holds the swaddled baby out to me. “He didn’t make it, Clarisse.”
20: Under the Influence
The last thing I remember is warmth washing over me like a tidal wave and a scream that echoes indefinitely in my ears. The room starts to spin. The searing pain in my side lessens after I feel a sharp prick in my thigh. The sound of the doctor’s mouth moving next to my ear blends into a blur of streaming color, right before the room is swallowed in darkness.
I have no idea how much time passes, but I wake dressed with fresh bandages, there’s a clean hospital gown on my back, and I’m lying in a small bed propped up a good distance from the floor. Still, the room is quite dark, and without the heavy blinds cracked open, I can’t tell whether it’s morning, noon, or night. I don’t know how I got here, but I know one thing: I’m alone and scared.
Is this hell?
No. In the darkness, I can picture my smiling husband, the way he gazes into my eyes, wraps his arms around my pregnant body, and massages my baby bump. He tells me he loves me. No. This is not hell. This is life.
As soon as my eyes adjust to the darkness, I glance around the sterile, shadowed room, noticing how tightly I’m tucked into the bed. A phone starts buzzing next to me, and my eyes scatter around the room before landing on the white thing sitting on the machine at my bedside. I barely have to lean over to reach it, but I feel that strain everywhere. I lift the receiver and notice it has two buttons and no cord. I hold the phone close to my face, staring at the green button and press it.
I wait for someone to whip open my door now that I’ve awakened, but nothing changes. “Hello?” I answer, barely recognizing my own scratchy voice.
“Oh, good. You’re awake.” The woman starts rambling at ninety miles an hour, and it all goes in one ear and out the other. “I’m sorry,” is the last thing she says, and it’s the only thing I here.
“Who is this?” I ask, the air whooshing out of my mouth.
“Clarisse, it’s Brenda—your mother-in-law.”
Monster-in-law, to be exact. Zayne always finds a way to point that out whenever Brenda calls for something. She never much liked me, except for the drama I brought to her family. She loves drama more than her own flesh and blood. She barely cared when I would call to tell her about Zayne’s accomplishments.
Zayne. Everything comes back to me like a tsunami to the head. Sensations push and pull at my brain strings. The way Zayne holds me and cherishes our unborn child in my belly. The nighttime snuggles. The morning smiles. The lingering kisses. The speeding traffic. The ignorant jogger. The blood. The baby. Exhaustion swoops over me, ripping me from my reverie.
“I’ve been trying to reach you for days,” Brenda says. “I’m so sorry, but we had to. We didn’t know how long you would be out of commission for and we couldn’t wait any
longer. The rest of the family was up from Alabama. We were all in mourning. We needed that closure.”
I’m shaking my head, a horrific look covering my face, but she can’t see that. “You had to do what?” I whisper.
“Lay my son to rest—bury him. Zayne was buried this morning.”
Tears pierce my eyes, and the floor falls out from beneath me. I have to suck in a breath to keep the cry from erupting through the room like an earthquake.
“We waited and waited. Believe that we waited,” Brenda says. “But we didn’t know when you’d wake up. What do you know? You’re awake!” she says like it’s a good thing.
I’d rather be dead.
They couldn’t have waited twenty-four hours for me to recover from the loss of my baby? Brenda couldn’t mind her own fucking business, allow me to make the arrangements and attend my own husband’s funeral? What about what Zayne wanted? He never wanted to see the ground, locked away in a wooden box for all eternity. He was a free soul and wanted to be set loose in the mountains, and now I’m fucking furious. As the tears subside, I fear for the woman on the other end of the phone.
“We’re staying at your house,” she continues. “I didn’t figure you would mind, since you’re laid up and all.”
I don’t speak. With closed eyes, I choke back my tears of fury. Is this my punishment for all the ways I’ve wronged people over the years?
“The funeral was beautiful, in case you wondered,” Brenda says, filling my silence. “The casket was beautiful. So many colleagues and students came to pay their respects. It was a grand affair. Casey stood next to his casket in your place. She’s pretty shaken up about this. You really should have been there.”
Playing House: A Black Widow Novel (Dark Secrets Duet Book 1) Page 11
