Chapter 15 Svetlana
SVETLANA
When the groceries appear, I have no idea what’s going on.
I come back from the convenience store to find a paper bag stuffed full of fruit, bread, fancy cheese, juice, and ready-to-eat meals with pasta, veggies, protein, and pretty much anything else I could need.
There’s even ice cream. There’s no note, no indication of who left it, but my first instinct is gratitude so overwhelming it makes my throat tight.
I bring the bag inside quickly, glancing down the hallway to see if anyone's watching. The corridor is empty, dim, and silent in the late-afternoon light. I close the door and lock it, then set the bag on the small table and stare at its contents like they might disappear if I look away.
Real food. Not the convenience store crackers and pastries I've been surviving on. One of the oranges, when I peel it and bite into it, tastes so good I almost start to cry—not just because of how good it tastes, but also because it feels like proof that somewhere out in this world that’s started to feel so horrible to me, there are still decent people. Kind people.
Someone noticed me and cared enough to leave it.
And it keeps happening—not just the groceries but delivered meals from restaurants, even good coffee and creamer.
My hotel room is still a drab, miserable hovel, but the food and coffee and treats brighten it, and I start to feel more hopeful.
Like maybe, soon, I can make plans to leave this city and start over.
Then, of course, right as I start to feel like I can make some progress toward whatever my future is going to be, I get the flu for the first time in years.
It feels worse than I’ve ever had before, and I can’t exactly go to a doctor.
But before I can force myself to the nearest pharmacy and spend some of my remaining money on cold medicine—which feels like adding insult to injury, especially when the money is dwindling faster than I’d like—a bag of everything I could possibly need shows up in front of my door.
There’s cold medicine, pain relievers, vitamins, soup, and orange juice.
Again, no note. I’m grateful, but I’m also wary, because I haven’t seen anyone paying attention to me, and no one has tried to talk to me.
Who would do this? And why? I don’t think anyone stays here for very long, but all of this has been coming for at least a week now.
I take the medicine anyway, and try not to look a gift horse in the mouth. I’m exhausted and nauseous, my body aching from what must be sickness brought on by stress and poor nutrition. A physical manifestation of everything I've been through catching up with me all at once.
The nausea is worse the next morning. I barely make it to the bathroom before I'm retching into the toilet, my whole body convulsing with the force of it.
There's nothing in my stomach to bring up—I’ve barely eaten since yesterday morning—but that doesn't stop the heaving.
When it finally passes, I slump against the wall, sweating and shaking.
The flu. It has to be the flu. I've been run down, stressed, not eating enough, or sleeping enough. Of course I got sick.
I pull myself up to the sink and splash cold water on my face, avoiding my reflection in the mirror.
I don't want to see what I look like right now—pale and hollow-eyed and barely holding on.
I drag myself back to bed, and go back and forth for a couple of days, sleeping and puking and taking medicine and trying to force soup down in between.
The flu passes after a few days, likely helped by all of the kind gifts.
I don’t want to think about how long I would have been sick if I’d had to make it through all on my own, having to drag myself out of bed to go out and get more medicine and soup and anything else I needed.
But even after the flu is gone, the nausea doesn’t let up.
Someone leaves more solid meals for me outside my room, but at least one meal a day insists on coming back up, especially in the morning and later at night.
On the third day or so after the flu is gone, but I’m still throwing up, it hits me that I can’t recall the last time I had my period.
It’s been a few months, for sure. I had it when I was first sold to Iosef, a few months in a row like normal, and I was treated like shit every time.
Only Grigory would still fuck me while I was on it, so he kept me in his room, treating me even more roughly when I didn’t act grateful that he was willing to touch me.
After a few months, it stopped. I was terrified that I was pregnant at first, but when I had no other symptoms, I assumed it was stress and malnutrition.
I used to lose it when I was a ballerina, and I thought it was more of the same.
But what if…
The thought that one of those men might have gotten me pregnant makes me sick all over again, violently. And then I remember Kazimir, and the fear presses down on my chest until I think I could pass out from it.
What if it’s his?
Either way, it would be a man I hate.
The nausea surges again, but this time it has nothing to do with whatever sickness is ravaging my body.
No. No, it can't be that. It's stress. Trauma does things to your cycle, I know that. But…
I told myself my breasts still hurt from all the beatings and abuse I suffered, that it was normal bruising. That I was exhausted because of the trauma, the stress, and the flu. I had so many excuses, but now…
Now I can barely think past the horrifying fear that something much worse has come of what I’ve already endured.
I don’t want to think that it’s possible, but of course it is. None of the men at the compound ever used protection. And Kazimir didn’t either. He apologized profusely for it, but that doesn’t change the fact that he came inside of me, too.
Oh God. Oh God.
The room spins, and I have to put my head between my knees to keep from passing out.
I have to know. I grab my jacket and some of what little money I have left—a few crumpled bills that won't last much longer—and I leave the room, barely remembering to lock the door behind me.
The drugstore is four blocks away. I walk fast, my head down, my hands shoved in my pockets.
The morning is cold and gray, threatening rain, and the streets are mostly empty.
Inside the store, the fluorescent lights are too bright, making my head pound. I find the aisle I need and stand there staring at the rows of pregnancy tests, my vision blurring.
There are so many options. Different brands, different prices, different promises of accuracy. I grab the cheapest one, then grab two more because, what if the first one is wrong? What if I need to be sure?
At the register, my hands shake so badly I can barely count out the bills.
The cashier—a tired-looking woman in her fifties—doesn't even glance at what I'm buying.
She just takes my money and hands me the bag and tells me to have a nice day in a voice that suggests she doesn't care one way or the other.
I walk back to the motel in a daze, the plastic bag clutched to my chest. Once I’m back in the room, I lock the door and go straight to the bathroom. My hands are shaking so badly it takes three tries to open the first test.
The instructions are simple. Pee on the stick, wait three minutes, look at the result. I follow the directions, set it on the edge of the sink, then back away like it might explode.
Three minutes. I can wait three minutes.
I sit on the edge of the bathtub and count seconds in my head, but I lose track around ninety. My mind keeps skipping, jumping to possibilities I can't bear to consider.
What if it's positive? What if I'm pregnant? What if the baby is from the compound? From one of those men who held me down and laughed while I cried? What if it's Kazimir's? The man who deserted me, and then saved me and fucked me and left me here alone?
I don't know which option is worse.
I sit there for much longer than the three minutes, unable to force myself to look at the test and see the verdict. When I finally manage to stand and stagger back to the sink, my heart plummets to my feet, and my knees nearly give out.
The two pink lines are unmistakable. Positive.
I stare at it for a long moment, my brain refusing to process what I'm seeing. Then I pick up the test and throw it in the trash, and immediately take out the second one.
False positive. It has to be a false positive. Those happen, don't they? I read about that somewhere. Tests can be wrong.
I take the second test. Wait for the three minutes. I force myself to count this time and look exactly at the three-minute mark.
Positive.
I throw it away and take another.
Positive.
I sink to the bathroom floor, my back against the tub, and I start to sob.
For the first time since I got out of that cell, I cry so uncontrollably that I don’t know how I’ll ever stop, until I’m soaked with tears and snot, choking and dry heaving, the kind of crying that I’ve been trying not to give in to.
It takes me over, like I knew it would if I ever allowed it, and I end up in a ball on the floor, curled around myself as if I can protect myself from the truth I’m going to have to face one way or another.
I'm pregnant.
There's a baby growing inside me right now, and I have no idea who the father is.
It could be any of them. Iosef. Grigory. Pyotr. Evan.
Or it could be Kazimir. The man who pulled me out of that hell and then pushed me up against a wall and reminded me that I could still be wanted desperately, that I could still feel pleasure, that I was more than the fuckdoll they made me into.
A man who I hate, because he let all of this happen to me, and never did anything to help until it was too late to keep me from enduring things I’ll never fully heal from.
I don't know which possibility makes me feel sicker.
If it's from the compound, then I'm carrying a constant reminder of the worst thing that ever happened to me, growing inside my body, taking from me even now.
If it's Kazimir's... what? What does that mean? That I'm tied to him forever? That there's a piece of him inside me that I can't escape?
What kind of father would he be? What kind of life could I give a child with him in it—a man who kills people for a living? A man who is also a reminder of those terrible things, because if he’d just stood up to Ilya…
I can't do this. I can't be pregnant. I can't have a baby.
I can barely take care of myself. I'm living in a motel room I can't afford, surviving on charity groceries from a stranger.
I have no job, no money, no support system.
I'm alone in a country that doesn't feel like home anymore, running from men who want to kill me or worse.
How am I supposed to bring a child into this?
The answer is simple: I can't.
I spend the night on the bathroom floor because I feel too sick to be away from the toilet for long, my arms wrapped around my knees, my mind spiraling through scenarios that all end in disaster.
I think about keeping the baby, about somehow finding a way to survive, to build a life, to be a mother.
But every time I try to imagine that future, all I see is failure.
I see myself unable to provide, unable to protect, unable to be anything other than what I am right now—broken and scared and barely holding on.
And the question of paternity haunts me. How would I ever look at this child without wondering? Without seeing the face of a rapist or the face of a man who abandoned me? How would I explain to a child where they came from? What would I say when they asked about their father?
I don't even know if I want children. I've never really thought about it beyond the fact that, if I’d married Ilya, I knew I was expected to have them. I would have had to give him heirs. I was told I would have children, but I never really considered if I wanted them.
But this is a pregnancy born from violence and trauma and/or a moment of weakness in a cabin in the woods. This is a child I didn't choose, didn't plan for, can't possibly care for.
I need to terminate the pregnancy. It's the only option that makes sense.
I can't bring a child into this situation. I can't be tied forever to either my rapists or to Kazimir, and I can’t sacrifice what's left of my life and my sanity. I need to survive first. And a baby would make that impossible.
Somehow, I manage to pry myself up off of the bathroom tile, wash my face and brush my teeth, and get dressed.
The older woman at the motel desk doesn’t even look up at me when I ask for the name of any clinics in the area, just rattles off a couple and goes back to watching the soap opera playing on the television behind the desk.
My stomach is in knots, but I quickly scribble down the names on a pad of sticky notes on the desk and head outside.
I don't let myself think too hard about it, or I’ll feel the weight of the decision pressing down on me.
I just focus on the practical steps. One foot in front of the other.
That's all I have to do. The morning is cool and damp, the sky heavy with clouds that threaten rain.
I walk with my head down, my hands shoved in my pockets, my mind carefully blank.
The clinic is in a low brick building on a quiet street. There's a small parking lot with a few cars scattered across the spaces… and a handful of people outside, yelling with signs in their hands. My stomach knots, but I keep walking. I've faced worse than judgmental strangers with signs.
I’m walking past one of the cars, a black sedan that I barely notice because I’m so fixated on the front door of the clinic and just getting there, when I feel a hand close around my upper arm, strong and unyielding.
Before I can scream, before I can even process what's happening, I'm being pulled backward, away from the clinic entrance. I try to fight, try to twist out of the grip, but I'm weak. Weeks of stress, trauma, and illness have left me with nothing to fight with.
"Let go!" I manage to gasp, but the hand only tightens.
I catch a glimpse of the man out of the corner of my eye as he pulls me back against his chest—tall, broad-shouldered, wearing dark clothes, his face partially obscured by a baseball cap pulled low.
And then he yanks open the back car door and pushes me inside—more gently than I would have expected. I lunge for the door handle as he closes it, but he’s already in the driver’s seat, clicking the locks shut the instant before he presses the gas pedal, and we lurch forward.
I’m caught. Trapped.
And I have no idea what I’m going to do.