How did I end up in the middle of nowhere bruised and bleeding, next to a wrecked car with an infant I don’t even know inside of it?
After I pick up the baby, she nuzzles her small head into the crook of my neck. Her cries soften to whimpers and I whisper soothingly into her ear, “Hush now. Hush now little one. We’ll find your mama.” When the infant’s cries cease all together and she’s sleeping, curled up against my chest.
It’s at that moment I start walking. It’s that moment that I start hoping, praying even.
Hoping that a car might happen down the abandoned road and find us. And praying that by the time someone does find us that I might remember what happened.
~ ~ ~
I feel like I’ve been walking for decades.
With every passing minute another ten years slips by.
There’s an intense, pulsating, cramping sensation in my lower abdomen, but I fight through it and push myself to keep walking. I keep telling myself that I can’t stop until I find some sign of life.
A house.
Maybe a gas station.
Someone or anyone who can help me and the child I’m carrying.
I cast my eyes downward to the infant still curled up into the crook of my neck. She’s been sleeping soundly for a while. This is good. I haven’t spent that much time around children and when I have in the past, I tend to panic when they’re fussy. I think of the child’s mother in that
moment and wonder where she could be or why she’d flee the scene of the accident. Then I recall moments I had with my own mother.
She left me once.
She never came back.
Perhaps mother’s abandoning their children isn’t as uncommon as I thought it was.
Suddenly a sharp, crippling pain rips through my pelvic area and snatches the air from my lungs. I let out a restrained scream and hunch over, hoping the agonizing pain will subside. It doesn’t though. The pain gets worse.
Now I’m hobbling down the road, taking deep breaths and I know with certainty that there is something wrong. Maybe they’re menstrual cramps. I shake my head. No. I’ve never had menstrual cramps that intense. Then I think I might have internal bleeding. While I’m trying to self-diagnose myself the infant wakes up and starts crying again. “Hush, please,” I force out with a grunt. The wailing on top of the cramping is making my temples throb and I now have a pounding headache.
I want to shriek.
I want curl over and plant my knees into the road.
I want to cry and tuck myself into a ball.
I want someone to comfort me and take the pain away.
All of a sudden it becomes too much.
I feel like I’m being stabbed in the gut over and over and over again. I can’t breathe. Now there’s warm fluid trickling down my inner thighs. My whole body convulses. I’m starting to lose my grip on the baby.
And before I realize what’s happening, I hit the ground, the child rolls out of my arms, and I pass out in the middle of the road in a pool of my own blood.
Chapter Thirteen
~After~
I’ve been scheming.
I’ve been plotting and planning.
My mind is full of chaos, devious thoughts, and conflicting emotions. I can feel a war between my head and my heart building, but I know that in this battle my head is going to win. My heart will become a casualty, chopped in half and left for dead on the battle field.