Page 39 of Toxic

The numbness and haze continues for so long that I start to believe I’m dead. What else can explain the complete peace and sense of calm? Then something jars my body, bringing the crippling pain back to the forefront, and I wish I were dead all over again.It’s only a minute’s worth of eternal pain before a tiny pinch on my arm has my minddrifting. . .

Then sleep comes. Blissful, uninterrupted endlesssleep.

It’s the murmured conversation that pulls me out of the drugged stupor with a snap. Immediately, I think of Danny and the band of thugs. I have to protect myself from what they plan to do to me next. I surge up, teeth bared in a snarl and find hands pressing me intothebed.

I fight them, and inhuman sounds come from my throat until I hear a voice I don’trecognize.

“Mrs. Emerson, I need you tocalmdown.”

“Give her a sedative,” comes a familiarvoice.

Maybe I amdreaming.

“She’s already had too much,” the first voicereplies.

Neither of them sounds like the men who’d beaten and tortured me, and it piques my curiosity enough that I open my eyes, if only to prepare myself for my next version of hell. The sight that greets me is enough to choke off my screaming, and I shrink back into theblankets.

A doctor—or at least, I think he’s a doctor based off the stethoscope wrapped around his neck—stands by my bedside, looking both concerned and intimidated. He straightens and sends a questioning look to another person standing in thecorner.

Gracin.

He pushes himself off the chair he’s been sitting on, comes to the foot of the hospital bed, and rests his hands on thefootboard.

“Good morning, Tessa,”hesays.

I nearly laugh. Good morning? Good morning? Likehe’s a relative, and I have the flu or something. I close my eyes and relax into the softness at my back, trying to remember what happened or where Imaybe.

The memories of what they did to me are too much to process, so I tuck that back in the recesses of my mind and focus on the end. It’s tinged with the fogginess of recollection, lingering effects of the sedative, and marred by pain. First, my mind latches on toGracin.

He’d shown up at the end in a suit. Called me a cunt and then cut me down. I open my eyes to confirm the image that comes to mind. He’s straightened and crossed his arms over his chest. I recognize the shirt as the one he wore when he was at the warehouse, but he’s shed his jacket and unbuttoned the top button and rolled up thesleeves.

The doctor clears his throat next to me, and I look upathim.

“Mrs. Emerson. I’m—” He looks at Gracin for confirmation, and Gracin nods. “I’m Doctor Haversham. I’ve been treating you for the past two days. You’ve suffered several second- and third-degree burns on your legs. Multiple bruises, contusions, and aconcussion.”

He pauses, this time asking me for silent permission for something. He wants to tell me about the one thing I have been trying so very hard to not thinkabout.

I can hear my own body’s response to the knowledge on the monitors beside me. My heart rate accelerates off the charts, and the doctor’s pained expression flits from me to Gracin andthenback.

“Tell me,” I say, my voiceguttural.

“You miscarried the baby,” he replies, soundingreluctant.

From the corner of my eye, I see Gracin’s hands fall to his sides, but the vision blurs with unshedtears.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor says, but there’s nopoint.

I knew long before Gracin even showed up that my body no longer carriedalife.

“Baby?”Gracinasks.

Idon’t answer Gracin,because what is there to say? He doesn’t deserve the courtesy, and I’m too tired to say or do all the things I want to, so I close my eyes and pretend to be asleep until he leaves mealone.

It takes me a few hours to figure out that I’m not in an actual hospital. No, I’m in a bedroom in someone’s house. Gracin’s house. The doctor and a woman I assume is a nurse check in on me for the next few hours. Most of the time, it’s quiet, and when night falls, I let the tears come. They fall in streams down my cheeks. I shake so hard I feel paralyzed, but I let the emotions come. I thought I’d cried all I could in the warehouse, but I waswrong.

It seems to go on forever, until I spend all the energy I have left, leaving me to stare at the wall feeling empty. More empty than I used to after Vic fucked me into submission and ignored me like I was less than a person. That tiny life was the only positive thing that came from the last three years of my life, and nowit’sgone.

“Baby?” comes his voice from the darkness. I hear it, but I’m so tired, so thoroughly used up that I can’t summon the energytomove.