Darkness. I’m in a pool of dark shadows and I know something isn’t right, but I don’t remember how I got here.
My hands feel heavy. My head is pounding and my thoughts are scrambling.
Why am I so thirsty?
I swallow, trying to quench the ache for water, and my throat feels dry and sore…like I was intubated. Surgical patients tell me these are the symptoms they experience when they wake up. Wait, does this mean what I think?
Why do I feel like a surgical patient?
This can’t be good.
My eyes remain shut, no matter how hard I try to flutter them open.
Where am I?
I must concentrate. I’m conscious; I know that much. I have to listen and focus on regaining myself.
That’s when I hear it.
The sound of beeping from a monitor fills my ears. I’ve spent way too much time in a hospital to know that’s where I lie and the beeping is coming from my vitals.
I’m enveloped in nothing but black and I try again to pry my eyes open, but fail miserably. I know I’m in my body, but still, it doesn’t feel like my own.
Frustration grows, and I try moving my head, but again…nothing.
I can do this. I can do this.
Is this sleep paralysis?
Oh, no. If this is sleep paralysis…
Panic courses through my throat, small whimpers being forced through my teeth. It’s like my spirit is banging against walls of a closed room with no door to escape. Fear rises in my chest, and my heart pounds as I grow frantic.
I’ve experienced sleep paralysis multiple nights, and it only started when Paul died…and it’s terrifying. Your mind is awake, but your body feels paralyzed.
Nope, I refuse to let my body stay in this state.
I try to regain consciousness and attempt to move again.
The muscles in my fingers twitch.
Success.
As my fingers twitch, I can feel them moving across something and I’m concentrating so hard, trying to block out the sleep that consumes me. Soft blankets underneath my fingertips.
I’m in a bed?
“Her heart rate is rising. She’s waking up.”
Danny.
I hear him. My brother’s best friend. My heart flutters at the sound of his husky, weary voice. I’m immediately drawn to him.
It’s my Danny.
I’m desperate to wake up immediately.
With each breath I draw in, pain greets me. Something in my lower abdomen is causing me discomfort, and I groan. My high-pitched groan reverberates through my chest, and I realize I’m that much closer to waking up.
Okay…why does my chest feel like it’s broken?
How is that even possible?
Cold hospital air burns through my nostrils as I weakly attempt another breath in through my nose and there it is again.
Pain.
Ouch.
What the hell is that? It shouldn’t feel like someone hit my chest with a sledgehammer, over and over again.
My chest feels incredibly sore with each breath I take.
What the hell happened to me?
The last thing I remember is-is…pain.
Shane’s attack. Nora. A knife plunged into me. My mother on the floor.
Shane’s dark brown eyes looked heavily dilated, staring at me with so much hatred, I could feel his own pain fill me like fire, scorching the light I had in my heart.
My baby.
And then I remember a frigid breath on my neck, whispering sickening words into my ear—the Grim Reaper.
And that gives me just enough fear to break free from the chains my mind has me in.
I gasp for air as I shoot up from the hospital bed. My hands go straight for the railing to support my weak energy. I sit up, breathing hard, and feel my blood pressure drop, making me more disoriented. I’m no longer trapped in my body. My eyes explode open, and I am in a hospital bed.
I was right. White is all I see.
White bed sheets, white lights, and two pale faces.
Danny and my mother stare back at me. Their pale reflections are the only thing I see before I’m dropping back down on the bed, weak, my head hitting the pillow, and I wince.
The jolt of my body has me dizzy and lightheaded, but it doesn’t stop me from trying to breathe harder.
Danny grabs my hand and holds it tight. His familiar texture on mine makes me feel safe, like he always does.
“You’re awake,” Danny says in a comforting voice, forcing a small desirable smile with relief washed all over him to see me conscious, but there’s something more behind his eyes, something terrible.
“Mija! Oh mija.” My mom swarms me and envelopes me in her arms. She pulls me into her chest and I’m confused.
I let her hug me, but I don’t feel comfortable enough to hold her back.
I feel like I’m going numb. I blink hastily, touching my chest where it hurts, then my stomach, with perplexed fingers.
Where is Shane?
Oh no, is he somewhere close by?
Wasn’t I at my mother’s house?
I move away from her, retreating my hand from Danny’s hold at the same time. An IV is stuck into my other arm. It moves as my hands go to palm my lower abdomen. I can feel the confusion and anger building up inside of me, and I’m tempted to scream.
“Where is he?!” I shout out manically, looking around the room and into the hallways, dreading to see his face come after me again.
“Ari, it’s okay. He’s not here, and neither is Nora. You’re safe.” Danny stands from his chair with purpose, getting closer to me. He tightens his grip over the railing of my bed.
“My baby.” I blink rapidly, looking around the room, then back to my stomach. “Is our baby okay?” I ask, my voice cracking.
I tilt my head upward, meeting Danny’s gaze with my trembling lips, and eyes that beg for good news, and he clenches his jaw. He holds a cold stare, and I’m swallowing another dry bump in my throat. He looks guilty. After what feels like an eternity, his expression morphs from guilty to stoic.
“Tell me!” I shout at them for answers, fisting my hand and I pummel the bed impatiently. I look at him and then at my worried mother, who holds her hand in front of her mouth like she wants to speak but can’t.
Then she shakes her head frantically, her bangs moving back and forth across her creased forehead.
“Mija. You lost too much blood. You’ve been asleep for days. Te moristes….” My mother cuts in, telling me that I died. Her voice shakes like she can’t believe her own words. She can’t look at me, so she looks down at her feet. She’s an absolute worried mess. Her hair is tied up in a messy ponytail as she holds her cardigan close to her body, trying to comfort herself. I know my mother and she does this when she’s anxious.
A bandage is plastered across her forehead. The same spot where I saw her bleed when I found her passed out on the floor. She looks stressed and frantic. She can’t look me in the eye, and I know this is bad.
I died?
“What?” I cry out. My eyes search for Danny’s and my mom’s, demanding them to answer my question about my baby. I look down at my stomach, but I can’t see anything. I’m in a hospital gown. I palm my stomach and something feels fresh with pain.
“You died, mija. And…and…” she cries, not letting herself finish.
I tremble as the words roll out of her mouth. My eyes widen and I can feel my eyes water full throttle.
Danny looks like he hasn’t slept in forever. His eyes are sad and his dark sandy blond hair I love so much is shaggy. He runs his palm through his beard, weary.
“But my baby?” I croak. A tear drops falls down my cheeks, passing my lips.
“Our baby didn’t make it.” Danny looks straight into my eyes and I think I’m about to faint.
No.
“What?” I glare at him with anger, and he meets my stare with his own softened blue eyes.
This is a bad dream. It has to be.
How could those words fall out of his mouth and he’s not breaking?
He’s lying.
“You’re lying! You’re fucking lying to me!” I rock my head violently, looking at my belly, clutching it as if that would help turn back time.
“You promised me you would never lie to me, Danny! How could you say that?” Tears fall out like a monsoon, and Danny frowns. As he leans in to touch my cheek, I push his hands away and they smack against him loudly.
“No! Don’t you dare touch me!” I bellow at him as I cry harder, tears pouring out of me as my eyebrows grasp together. “I won’t accept this!”
I rip the bed sheets, tearing them away from me so they’re no longer covering my waist, and I lift my hospital gown desperately.
“Mija, stop,” my mother begs from the corner of the room with a gasp.
I sob, hyperventilating, my entire dream of becoming a mother ripped away from me when I see a slash like a C-section scar. It’s red, swollen, and fresh.
No, no, no.
Shane took away my baby from me?
I’m not going to be a mother anymore?
I feel like I stop breathing for a second and I close my eyes, trying to figure out a way to make this feel like I’m hallucinating. I rub my belly with my hands over my scar, like I used to do when Danny was away on his deployment. My lonely nights weren’t so lonely because of our baby. It was my way of holding my future, even though it was still months away until I met her or him. I prayed and envisioned the way I would get to say hello for the first time, with my hands on their fingers with a precious blue or pink onesie, repeatedly on those lonely nights. I’ve witnessed many deliveries in the hospital. I had the privilege to watch newborns curl their tiny hands around their mother’s pinky or index fingers, whispering hello’s to their cooing newborn as they lay on their chest, bonding together.
“Please don’t tell me I don’t get to say hello to our baby, Danny. Please.”
I can’t look at him. I shut my eyes tight, rubbing my hand over my belly.
Silence envelops the room, and I’m spiraling.
I tip my head back, looking at the white blinding lights in the ceiling, causing me to inhale sharply. I squeeze my eyelids closed again, as if that will help relieve the despair I feel in my chest.
“Oh.” I cry out and I hyperventilate as I remember just how painful a sharp blade feels. My chest hurts, and I feel like the more breaths I suck in, the more I drown in my own sadness. And I can’t stop trying to breathe. I can’t stop gasping for air. I feel like I’m going to suffocate even though I’m not under water and my blood pressure rises to dangerous limits. Tears gush down my face, my throat stings, and a panic attack ensues, consuming my heart and soul.
Then Danny moves, lifting his legs and gets into bed with me. He’s stone-cold and emotionless while I’m a wreck. I push him away from me, my hands going for his shoulders first.
“No!” I reject him with disdain laced in my tone, but he refuses to let me push him away.
He lies on his side, and he pulls me into his chest, trying to comfort me.
Shane and Nora killed my baby, and they almost killed me.
I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the reality as Danny kisses the top of my head soothingly.
Something inside of me breaks. A crack in my soul and humanity. I thrash with possessed anger.
Danny wraps his arms around me protectively even as I scream and hit his chest with my fists.
“No! No! No! You’re lying!” I’m hysterical, and my voice lowers with crescendoing sobs.
I want to get away from everyone. I feel like I need to take out my anger on something and someone.
Danny tightens his grip on me harder and breathes into my hair. My mother sobs silently as she watches me fall apart into his arms.
The trauma from the attack is all too much, and I’m furious with everyone. My mother. Danny. I feel like he’s the one to blame for everything that has happened this year.
I can’t help it, and it might be wrong. It might even be selfish, but I blame him for everything.
“My baby! Not my baby!” I yell and bawl against Danny’s arms. I’m using all my strength to fight against his hardened muscles until I finally surrender to him. I give in to my need to feel the pain instead of trying to fight away from it, and I’m crying into his chest, clutching onto him like it’s my last few minutes on this earth. I give up trying to push him away and let him hold me. My mouth is open as I wail my broken heart away.
This feels a little like déjà vu.
A mother losing her child. Something I thought would never happen to me.
I sound like my mother.
I sound like my mother when she lost my brother. When those two uniformed men showed up at our door.
All of my thoughts sink in and that’s when I feel an ugly emotion pulse through me.
I resent this military life with all my heart as I try to catch my breath.
I can’t control myself. This pain is more excruciating than a stab wound. I’m grieving uncontrollably, and I can feel a dull pain where I was attacked by Shane and Nora. My side, my back, and my lower abdomen feel sharpened with raw pain, stinging like needles.
“Baby, you’re going to rip open your stitches,” he tries to console me by holding me tighter, protectively creating a haven enclosed inside of his arms. “Focus on my voice.” He tells me as his deep voice softens, and it’s helping me relax slowly…bit by bit. More tears escape from my eyes as his strong, large hands snake through my hair. “I’m sorry, Ari. I’m so fucking sorry. Cry, hit me as hard as you can, scream at me, hate me. I can take it. What I can’t take is you opening your stitches and bleeding again.”
A nurse bursts through the door with syringes in his hand. His emotions are written all over his face, and he looks terrified or broken for me, or maybe both. He must be new because that’s one of the first things you learn in patient care. Control your face.
I don’t care if the whole hospital can hear my cries… I just lost my baby.
“We have a sedative for her,” he starts in a shaky voice, but Danny doesn’t let him finish as I continue to mourn and shed heavy tears in his chest.
“Get the fuck out. She doesn’t need it,” he snarls at him, ordering him to leave, downright explosive, before turning back and kissing my cheek as I hold on to him tighter. I stop thrashing, but I’m still breathing hard as I try to let the news sink in when I don’t want it to.
My mom goes full mama bear on the nurse and starts cursing at him in Spanish, demanding him to give us space and shooing him out of our room. She follows the nurse out and closes the door behind her, slamming it shut.
We sit on the hospital bed while I focus on slowing my breathing. The scent I love so much, Danny’s scent, slowly anchors my hysteria away, grounding me. We sit there, and my sniffling is the only thing we can hear for the next ten minutes, but he doesn’t stop holding me. After a few long moments, he lifts my chin to see him like he always does, and the familiarity of his version of love warms me.
I’m sure I look horrifying, snot running down my nose and reddened eyes, but I don’t care.
“The doctors said you lost too much blood. There was nothing they could do to save our baby,” his deep voice murmurs, and I can tell as each word leaves his mouth, it’s painful for him.
I rub my nose with my knuckles and blink.
“So, they cut me open? While I was asleep?” I whisper.
“Yes.” Devastation flickers across his eyes as he tightens his jaw.
That explains the dull pain I feel below my stomach.
“How long have I been out?” I ask, dreading the answer.
He brushes my hair out of my face, tucking it behind my ear. He does the same on the other side, watching me intensely.
“Three days.”
Oh my gosh.
“Shane? Nora?” I shiver when their names leave my mouth. Their manic faces reappear in my eyes, and I hold on to Danny tighter.
“Shane is dead. Nora’s in jail.”
“H-how? You killed him?”
He nods.
“He can’t hurt you anymore. They can’t hurt you anymore. As long as I’m around, no one will hurt you again, I promise you.”
I’m still staring at his chest, but I finally meet his blue eyes. Those beautiful light blue irises I could get lost in forever. Danny makes me feel safe always. My panic attack slowly fades away as he holds me in his arms, and I let all the events settle into my foggy brain. I thought I had died because I swear I saw my brother so vividly. His guitar playing our favorite song.
“I saw Paul,” I mumble.
“You saw Paul?” Danny asks.
The beeping on the monitor speeds up, along with the beat of my heart.
“I saw him. He was playing his guitar,” I breathe out as I search for any reaction from Danny…but nothing. He’s not giving me anything. But when I stare at his eyes longer, I have another flashback. A flashback of what I last saw before I went drowning in pure black shadows.
His eyes transformed to black. The Grim Reaper tattoo he had on his body spoke in a demonic voice that sent shivers down my spine.
I break away from his gaze, afraid of the hallucination. Afraid of Danny.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing…I just—’
Should I tell him what I saw?
Will he think I’m crazy?
“I just don’t know how I’m alive,” I confess. It’s the truth, not the entire truth.
“It doesn’t matter, baby. Look at me.”
I tilt my head upward, tears escaping me again, and I wonder when I’ll ever stop fucking crying.
He shakes his head, wiping them away with his hand. “You’re still here. You’re alive and you’re not going anywhere. I’ve got you, Ari.” I purse my lips and I watch his eyebrows pinch together as he declares himself to me. “I’ve got you for the rest of my life. I’m not going anywhere. I promise you.”
