Page 66 of Hunted to the Altar

I couldn’t feel the pain anymore.

Only absence.

Samuel’s voice cut through the chaos. It sounded frayed. Fractured.

“Is the baby?—?”

A pause.

“Nothing we could have done.” Some soothed.

Whispers surrounded me as I heard another unfamiliar voice say, “This was destined to happen.”

A woman said. “There’s wasn’t anything you could do.”

A raise voice broke above the crescendo of sound. “Chromosomal Abnormality!”

“Just focus on her,” the doctor snapped. “If we don’t stabilize her now, we’ll lose them both.”

Them.

The word spun in my skull.

Me.

And the child.

Our fates, now blurred into one.

I felt myself being lifted. Onto a gurney. Rolled down halls. Through doorways. Voices echoing against ceilings. Lights blinding overhead.

Then darkness took me again.

The pain didn’t return all at once. It crept in. Crawling up my spine, a series of dull aches and tugs that bloomed into sharper edges.

I opened my eyes to fluorescent light.

Bleach.

Machines beeping in a low, rhythmic lull.

It smelled like death.

The hospital room was too clean. The sheets too white. The silence too loud.

I didn’t need to reach for my belly to know.

But I did anyway.

My hand drifted under the blanket, to the soft swell that had marked the last few weeks.

Flat.

My stomach was flat.

Empty.

The sob that came out of me was almost silent—like it had been waiting. It curled into my throat and cracked as it spilled out, my body too weak to even cry properly.