Chapter 65
NADIA
The lights are too bright. That’s the first thing I notice. It swells and contracts like lungs, like it’s mocking the way I can’t seem to catch my own breath.
I blink, and the room ripples.
Every sound scrapes against my skull - the hiss of the oxygen, the shuffle of feet in the hallway, the soft clink of metal trays. The air smells like antiseptic and ghosts.
I’m awake. Alive. And I hate it.
Something claws under my skin - a hot, crawling restlessness that feels like fire and insects all at once. The drugs are still in me. My veins hum. My body shakes. My fingers twitch against the sheets like they’re trying to crawl out of my own skin.
A nurse enters the room, her voice too soft, too careful. “How are we feeling today?”
I don’t answer. Because how do you say I’m fine when your bones are screaming?
She checks my vitals, scribbles a note on her clipboard, and leans in with a soft smile. “You’re doing much better today.”
“Where am I?” My voice sounds foreign, dry as sandpaper.
“You’re in the hospital,” she says, turning toward me with a slight frown. “You’ve been here a week. You don’t remember?”
I shake my head. How do I tell her the last thing I remember is a basement, cold metal, and the feeling that I was seconds from dying?
“You were in a car accident,” she says carefully. “The steering column punctured your abdomen.”
That catches me off guard. A car accident? No. I’d remember that.
She offers a polite, uneasy smile. “The doctor will be in soon. He’ll explain… everything.”
Everything. That word settles like lead in my gut.
When the doctor walks in - white coat, calm eyes - I already know it’s bad. Doctors never come in quiet unless they’re about to crush you.
“Ms Reed,” he says, gentle, professional, detached in the way people have to be when they’re about to ruin you. “We repaired the internal damage as best we could. You lost a lot of blood, and there was significant trauma to your lower abdomen.”
I nod, numb. “And?”
He hesitates. That half-second of silence is the blade before it drops.
“I’m a doctor. No need to dress it up - just give it to me like it is.”
“You survived,” he says finally. “But the injury to your uterine lining was extensive. We had to remove a portion to stop the bleeding.”
I stare at him. The words don’t land right away. They hang there, floating above me like smoke.
“I’m sorry,” he adds, too softly. “You won’t be able to carry children.”
The world goes silent. Utterly, violently silent. There is no air. No sound. No pulse. Just the hollow echo of that sentence.
You won’t be able to carry children.
Something breaks loose inside me. My hands fly to my stomach before I even realize I’m moving. It’s bandaged, swollen, alien. I dig my fingers into the sheets, shaking my head. “No. No, you’re wrong.”
“Nadia -”
“No!” I scream it this time, the sound scraping out of my throat raw and feral. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
The nurse steps forward, but I throw my arm out, knocking over a tray. Instruments scatter, clattering to the floor. “Don’t touch me!”
The doctor sighs. “You’re experiencing withdrawal symptoms and shock. We can adjust your medication -”
“Get out!” My voice splinters, breaks, rises again. “Get the fuck out!”
They do. Because the kind of grief in this room can’t be treated with morphine.
When they’re gone, the silence rushes back in - thick, suffocating. I curl forward, pressing my hands to my face. Hot tears spill through my fingers.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I did this to get free. To get away from the man who locked me in that house and fed me drugs, stealing my power. I thought if I bled on my own terms, it meant I still owned something of myself.
But now all I’ve done is ruin what was left. My body. My future.
I shake with sobs until my ribs ache. My mind won’t stop replaying it - the blade, the heat, the moment the pain became relief. I thought I was taking control back.
But it was never control — it was self-destruction dressed as survival. I’m still here, breathing, alive, but the part of me that could ever carry a life is gone.
The door creaks open.
I don’t have to look to know it’s him. Jude doesn’t make noise when he moves. The air just shifts, changes temperature, like it’s remembering it belongs to him.
“Nadia,” he says quietly.
I can’t look at him. I can’t let him see what’s left of me.
He steps closer. “What happened?”
I laugh - a dry, bitter sound that feels like it was born in hell. I shake my head. “I killed the part of me that could’ve ever been a mother.”
He stops moving. The words hit him the way they hit me - clean through.
“Don’t,” he whispers, voice breaking. “What did the doctor say?”
“I’ll never have children, Jude.” I finally look up, my face streaked with tears. “I destroyed myself trying to get away. And for what? I can’t undo what’s been done. I can’t fix what I broke.”
He takes another step forward, but I shake my head violently. “Don’t touch me. Don’t look at me like that. I can’t -”
He freezes. And then, softer: “You survived. That’s all that matters.”
“I didn’t survive,” I whisper. “I just lost slower.”
The silence after that is unbearable.
He stays at the foot of the bed, fists clenched, jaw tight, eyes burning.
He wants to fix it, I can tell. But this isn’t something he can fix for me. This is the kind of wound that never stops bleeding.
My hands tremble. I grab the sheets, pull them up over myself like armor. My body feels foreign. Violated. Hollow.
Jude finally says, “You didn’t do this to yourself, Nadia.”
“Yes,” I choke out, “I did. Don’t you get it? I thought I was ending his control. I thought I was saving myself. But I didn’t escape him. I became him. I hurt myself worse than he ever could.”
The tears come harder now - sharp, endless, cruel.
He doesn’t argue. He just stands there, swallowing hard, his throat working like he’s trying not to fall apart.
When he finally moves closer, he does it slow, like approaching a wounded animal. His voice is hoarse. “You think I don’t understand? Don’t you dare hate yourself.”
I turn away from him. I can’t bear it. The kindness. The ache in his voice. It feels worse than the pain.
The machine beside me keeps its rhythm - steady, unfeeling, relentless.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Each one reminds me I’m still here. Still breathing in a body I no longer recognize. And the cruelest part?
The world keeps moving. The sun will rise. The city will hum. And I’ll have to live in this skin, in this aftermath, pretending survival was worth the cost.
But right now, as Jude sinks into the chair beside me, his hand hovering just above mine, I can’t feel anything except the weight of everything I’ve lost.
And the unbearable truth that I did it to myself.