35. Avery
AVERY
The monitor strapped across my stomach keeps losing the baby every time I shake, and the nurse has to press the round sensor into a new spot while I apologize as though I am doing this badly on purpose.
She tells me to stop apologizing, which would be useful advice if my teeth weren’t knocking together hard enough to make the word happen again.
The baby has moved three times since the ambulance left Bell & Rourke.
I felt every kick. I know that, but knowing it hasn’t stopped me from staring at the green line and waiting for the next rise.
“There,” the nurse says when the heartbeat fills the room again, fast and steady through the speaker.
She holds the sensor until the strap catches it, then tucks a folded towel beneath one edge.
“Your baby looks good. Dr. Evans wants a longer trace because of the impact and the stress, but the movement and heart rate are reassuring.”
June grips the rail at the other side of the bed and doesn’t tell me everything is fine.
She knows better. Fine women don’t have blood on their coat cuff from a woman they killed, and they don’t keep smelling jasmine in a hospital room that reeks of hand soap and plastic.
She brought my purse, my phone, and the grey sweater I left at June’s house months ago, then stood between me and every person who tried to ask a question before Dr. Evans examined me.
Police took everything I wore into that conference room, so she went back out for the green coat on the hook inside my back door.
“The police want to know when they can speak with you,” June says, watching my face instead of the door. “Nadia told them after Dr. Evans. I told them after you stop looking like you’re about to throw up.”
The nausea answers for me. I grab the basin from beside my leg and turn away from the monitor before the first heave hurts through my stomach.
June catches my hair with one hand and holds the basin with the other, swearing at Sasha between every useless gulp of air I manage.
Nothing comes up except water and the sour taste left by the ambulance. My body keeps trying anyway.
When it ends, I wipe my mouth and look at the heart-rate line again. “Tell them they can come in after Dr. Evans finishes. I don’t want to answer everything twice.”
“You don’t have to prove you’re cooperative while your hands are doing that.” June sets the basin on the rolling table, wraps the blanket around my fingers, and leaves her own hand on the bed rail. “A woman shot at you. She aimed at your baby. Let somebody wait ten damned minutes.”
“If I wait, I get to imagine the questions.” I pull my hands beneath the blanket and let them shake there where the shaking is mine alone to look at. “I’d rather hear them once and know which answers they need.”
Dr. Evans enters before June can argue, carrying a tablet she sets facedown near the sink.
She checks the monitor, the bruise beginning along my hip, my blood pressure, and every answer I gave the emergency department physician.
She asks after my sleep and my work hours and leaves the question of who is coming for me to raise, the way she has since the first appointment.
“No bleeding, no leaking fluid, and no regular tightening?” she asks while she presses careful fingers around the side that struck the doorframe.
“No.” I watch her face for the answer she won’t give until she has it. “The baby moved in the conference room, in the ambulance, and here.”
“I can see that.” She turns the screen enough for me to see the clean tracing instead of asking me to trust a reassuring voice.
“Your exam is normal. The baby is responding well, and I don’t see a reason to think you struck your abdomen.
I want monitoring for several more hours because you were struck and because of what your body just went through.
If the tracing keeps looking this good and you have no new symptoms, you can go home with June tonight. ”
I have spent months hating people who try to make a baby settle an adult argument, but the heartbeat makes me cry before I can stop it.
The tears run toward my ears while I lie there staring at a line that says Sasha missed.
She missed because I moved. She is dead because she fired at my child and gave me a clear line, and my child is alive because training taught me when not to shoot and when I had no other choice.
Relief comes with the knowledge that I will always remember what Sasha’s hand looked like closing around the grip while an officer told her not to move.
Dr. Evans waits until I wipe my face. “Do you want the detectives in here, or would another room be easier?”
“Here until the monitoring ends.” I glance at June, who already has my attorney’s number open on her phone. “Nadia stays if she can. June stays. Nobody speaks for me.”
“I’ll make that clear.” Dr. Evans picks up the tablet and pauses at the door. “Declan is in the family waiting area. He asked the desk whether you and the baby arrived. They confirmed only that you arrived, because you haven’t authorized anything else. He hasn’t tried again.”
I think of the conference-room door and how often I checked it after I told him to stay where I could see him.
He obeyed there. He is obeying now, sitting outside a hospital room while I cry over the heartbeat he isn’t permitted to hear.
Months ago, he would have found a nurse who knew the cut, called Cruz, or planted himself in the doorway until everyone mistook refusal to move for a right to stay.
The change matters, and I would rather it didn’t, but I record it in my head within two seconds.
“Don’t tell him anything yet,” I say, then look at the monitor when the baby kicks beneath the sensor. “I’ll tell you if that changes.”
The detectives enter with Nadia twenty minutes later.
Nadia has a bandage along her cheek and a tear in one knee of her trousers, but she carries herself like she is walking into court to ruin someone’s morning.
She takes the chair at the foot of the bed, places my phone in a clear evidence sleeve on the table, and tells me the complete local recording has already been copied under warrant while Bell & Rourke retains its protected original.
“The external system shows the elevator and camera failure,” Nadia says, opening her notebook.
“The local file begins before Ms. Voss enters the conference room.
It records her displaying the weapon, demanding the phone and parcel insert, admitting the operation and thefts, firing, and attempting to recover her firearm after your first shot.
The responding officers' body cameras capture that reach from the doorway.”
The older detective sits far enough from the bed that I can see both his hands. “We need your account in your words. Ms. Bell can stay, and you may stop at any point. Your attorney is joining by secure call.”
I tell them about the cart, the shampoo, Nadia behind the fire door, and the gun pointed at my stomach.
I explain why I didn’t draw when I first saw Sasha and why I moved into the conference room.
The questions are exact, and they leave my calm and my fear alone, and I answer until the room begins to smell like jasmine again.
I stop mid-sentence and ask June to open the bathroom door so I can see the hospital soap bolted beside the sink.
There is no shampoo here. Sasha cannot have followed me into this room, but my mind keeps dragging the bottle after us.
The detective waits while I drink water. “What happened immediately before you fired the first shot?”
“She aimed at the baby and fired.” My fingers press into the blanket, remembering the crack beside my head and the wall breaking behind me. “I moved left, drew from beneath my coat, and fired once when I had a clear line. She fell. Her gun landed near the chair.”
“And the second shot?”
“An officer told her not to move. She reached for the gun, closed her hand around it, and started lifting it toward me.” I look at Nadia’s bandaged cheek, because she would have been in that room if I hadn’t pushed the stair door closed. “I fired again.”
They play the recording after my statement.
Hearing Sasha alive is worse than watching her die.
Her voice comes through the detective’s tablet, pleased with every private thing she stole and furious when I refuse to call it love.
I hear myself make her admit the handler, the family schedules, the route sheet, and the satisfaction she took from leaving her things for me to find.
Then the recording catches the first shot, my chair striking the glass, the officers shouting, and the second shot that ended her reach.
June turns the sound down as soon as the detective permits it.
“She told you everything while holding a gun on you, and you kept her talking until police surrounded the building and she had nothing left to trade. Don’t ever tell me you only had one choice in that room.
You made a hundred choices before you fired. ”
I want the words to make me proud. Instead, I remember Sasha’s face when she understood I had taken every useful thing from her before she entered the building.
I wanted her stripped of the lie that she won Declan, stripped of the accounts and routes she stole, stripped of every way she could reach me again.
I got all of it, and she still made me kill her before she would stop.
“I don’t feel sorry for her,” I say, looking at the paused recording where Sasha stands beside the table with her gun raised. “I keep waiting to feel guilty because she’s dead, and I don’t. I’m relieved she can’t come near us again. I’m angry she made me learn what it feels like to shoot someone.”
Nadia closes her notebook. “Both things can be true without either one making the shooting wrong.”