Chapter 31
Lucia
Footsteps fall, growing closer.
I pull my knees into my chest.
Apprehension and fear swarm.
I close my mouth and breathe through my nose.
Glance at the pitcher. It’s within reach.
The footsteps grow louder. Heavy. Dragging?
Should I have broken the pitcher?
Metal rattles.
A quiver slices through me.
The door creaks open.
A tall man in a black wool sweater, brown cargo pants and brown boots pauses in the doorway.
He takes stock of me on the bed. It’s the strap around his shoulder and the intimidating gun hanging on his back that I can’t look away from. He uses an arm to hold the door open, giving me a view of a holstered handgun on his waist. He keeps his eyes trained on me as he announces to someone, “You can come on in.”
An elderly man with a shock of white hair pushes a cart into the room. Kind eyes, featherlight blue, look upon me. His hand trembles slightly as he holds up a plug and says to the man holding the door, “Can you plug this in somewhere? It’s an extension cord, so should reach.”
The two men stare at each other. The man with the gun crosses his arms below his chest.
“Very well then,” the white-haired man says. He releases a defeated sigh as he holds the plug up, shuffling along the walls. His eyebrows rise and he shuffles toward the bedside table.
“Why am I here?”
The white-haired man pauses, the plug suspended in the air, and asks, “What have you been told?”
“Nothing. I want to leave. You’re the first person I’ve seen. I have no memory of how I got here. I think I was drugged.”
The man at the door is impassive, and it occurs to me he probably doesn’t understand English.
“Where am I?”
The older man purses his lips and moves to the wall. His knees creak as he bends to the floor. The table shakes. The pitcher wobbles but remains upright as the table slides along the floor.
When the white-haired man stands, no longer holding the plug, he wipes his hands across the front of his trousers, then lifts a white lab coat off the cart and slips it on over his dress shirt.
“Can I leave? Who are you? Why am I here?”
“I’m doctor…” His voice trails and he wipes his palms again, this time on the white coat. “I know little more than you do, sweetheart. But, based on what I know, I don’t believe you can leave. On the bright side, I don’t believe they’ll hurt you.”
He glances back at the man at the door.
“Who are they? Who has me here?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Please.”
I reach for him, but he steps back, shaking his head. The man at the door lifts his handgun and aims it in my direction. He shakes his head back and forth, telling me no.
“I don’t believe you’ll be here long.” The doctor’s tone is calm and unafflicted as he fiddles with objects on his cart. His calm exacerbates the rise of panic.
“Now, it’s my understanding you’ve come in the way of a child.” He lifts his head, peering at me over the contraption that rests on the top of the cart.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re pregnant, are you not?” He lifts a plastic piece and squeezes clear gel from a tube onto it. “What I’m going to do today won’t hurt a bit. We’re going to confirm you do indeed have a wee one in you.”
“Tristan did this. Tristan hired you?”
What the hell? If he has the nerve to show up here, I’ll kill him first. What a neanderthal.
“Here now, what I’m going to need for you to do is remove your clothes from the waist down. This bed isn’t ideal, but you’ll lie across it and spread your legs.”
“Absolutely not.”
The older man glances back at the man at the door. I don’t see what he communicates, or how for that matter, but the door slowly swings shut as the armed man leaves it, approaching me. He holsters his gun and pulls out a knife.
“You’re going to want to do what I say.” Those light blue eyes no longer look quite so kind. The light blue evokes a chill and his lips have flatlined.
“What are you going to do to me?”
“Oh, nothing much. You see this?” He holds the gelled plastic piece. “I’m going to place it between your legs and get a sonogram. Later on in the pregnancy, I won’t need to be so intrusive. We can simply scan from your belly. But we’re estimating you’re early on and I’ll need to do it this way. My goal is to confirm there’s a baby. It might still be too early. You took a pregnancy test?”
He says it like he knows I did. Damn, Tristan. He saw the pregnancy stick.
“An over the counter. Just yesterday. Could it be wrong?”
“Any other symptoms?”
“My breasts are sore. Nausea.”
“Test is most likely accurate. When was the date of your last period?”
“Six weeks ago.”
“We’ll probably see something then.” He brightens like this is good news, and that a man standing to his right wielding a shiny blade is inconsequential.
My cheeks heat as both men stare at me, waiting. He can’t really expect me to remove my clothes, can he? There’s nothing to even confirm this man is a medical professional. Anyone can put on a white lab coat.
“You can remove your clothes, or he can. I have places I need to be. Decide.”
If it were only the older man, I’d fight. I’d claw my way out of this room. But the man at the foot of the bed has two guns and a knife. And he has the look of a man who might kill me with that knife and then use the blade to pick food from his teeth.
Thankfully, I’m wearing a dress. I bunch the dress around my hips and tug at my undergarment, which is a pair of warm black tights. I slide them off without getting off the bed, then maneuver myself into the position requested by the self-proclaimed doctor.
I shudder when his hand touches my knee and he spreads my thigh wider, opening my sex up to him. Shame heats my skin. The wheel on the cart squeaks as he drags it closer.
What kind of monster would do this to me?
My mother sent me to another country to avoid monsters, yet somehow they found me. I waffle between staring at the ceiling and the silent man. Given I am compliant, he sheathes his blade. The long, thin end of his assault rifle extends beyond his shoulder, a reminder he carries force.
A cold object prods at my entrance. I glance down and the man isn’t wearing gloves. My gynecologist always wore gloves. But from what I can tell, only the instrument is inside me. The coolness has warmed, and he’s moving it around within me while looking at a device on the cart. He hits the cart and I jump.
“Sorry,” he says, not sounding apologetic at all. “This thing isn’t working.” He pushes it higher and this time, I feel his fingers at my entrance. Bile rises and I swallow it down, shutting my eyes.
Do. Not. Vomit.
“Nothing. Either it’s broken or you’re too early.” The device slides out of my vagina. “Tried to tell him,” he grumbles, mostly to himself. “I’m going to leave you some pre-natal vitamins. You’ll need to take them each day.” He glances at the armed man. “Someone will ensure you take them.”
“I might not…I haven’t even decided what I’m going to do.” I scramble back against the headboard, pulling the dress down over my knees until it covers my toes.
“You’re here, in this room, and you believe you have a choice?” He wipes his hands off on the white coat, then removes it and folds it on the cart. He takes a cloth and cleans the device that he put inside me.
“But, you can tell Tristan I might not…this might not be an issue. He said he wanted to talk to me. Tell him I’m here. I’ll talk to him. If he feels this strongly, I won’t--”
“You don’t have a choice. You won’t be having a baby.”
“I won’t…but why am I here, then? Just give me a pill and I’ll take it and leave.”
Something crosses the old man’s face. Pity? Annoyance? “You’ll be out of here soon enough. But you will not be having this child.” He sighs and pats the bed near my leg. “I only tell you so you don’t hope.”
He blinks and nods to himself, seemingly satisfied with this bizarre explanation, and then shuffles away, pushing the cart.
The man with a gun steps to the door, opening it for the old man.
I’m so confused. What the hell, Tristan?
Or is this Tristan? Because this is not at all like him. We were going to talk. But who else would it be?
I go to the bathroom and clean my inner thighs of the sticky gunk he used on me. Bile rises once again and I kneel before the porcelain commode, but nothing comes up.
Weak and dizzy, I crawl to the wall and slowly rise. Leaning against the frame, focusing my line of sight on the tree line, I breathe deeply. I once read that if you put a finger in your ear and tug downward, the action eases anxiety. This isn’t anxiety, but I tug on my ear, hoping to alleviate the swell of emotions and nausea.
The man said I won’t be having a child, but why keep me here? If the plan is to kill me, then why test me to see if I’m pregnant?
A black SUV pulls up in the drive below. Frantically, I scan the window, searching for a way to open it, but it’s stationary.
The car door opens, and a man dressed in a suit exits.
I pound the glass with my palm, screaming as loud as possible. He doesn’t so much as glance upwards. He can’t hear me.
A woman steps outside of the house and moves to talk to the man.
In desperation, I glance around the room. The side table is small enough I can easily lift it. I set the pitcher and glass on the ground.
Those people could be in on this, but they might not be. If they do nothing, at least I’ll know exactly how dire my situation is.
I ram the table into the window. There’s a crack in the glass, and I stumble back. I lift the table higher and lunge forward, pushing harder. The glass breaks and shards tumble to the ground.
I drop the table and step up, screaming, “Help! Help me.”
The woman shields her eyes, looking up at me. The driver of the SUV opens the back door for the woman and she climbs inside.
She saw me. That man had to have heard me. And they didn’t help. They must all be working for Tristan. The doctor didn’t want me to harbor hope, and right now, I’m hoping to escape with my life.