Chapter 181 181

Chapter 181 181
I try to sit up, but a strong arm around my chest forces me back into the thin mattress. I claw at it, a scream rising in my throat. But it isn’t an arm; it’s a strap. I’m pinned to a bed.

“You’re okay, Belle.”

Nikolai’s voice is close and familiar, but there’s no comfort there. Not after the dream I just had.

I try to turn towards him, but my neck is locked in place. “You have a neck brace on,” he explains from just out of sight when I try to thrash against the restraint. “It’s a precaution. You kept throwing yourself around in your sleep, so they strapped you down so you wouldn’t get hurt.”

“Where are you?” My voice is little more than a rasp, but Nikolai hears me. He gets up out of the armchair he was sitting in and stands next to my bed where I can see him.

He isn’t shirtless or sweaty like he was in my dream, but his facial features are all exactly where they should be. I guess that’s a good thing, more or less.

“What happened?”

“You hurled yourself down a flight of stairs.” He looks down at the floor. His hands are shoved deep in his pockets, and I wonder if there’s room in there for me to hide. Because I want to be anywhere except for right here. “You could have killed yourself.”

“I thought it was a closet.”

His eyes snap to mine. “What?”

“I didn’t know there were stairs there.” The memory of falling through empty air rushes over me. I feel nauseous.

All at once, I jerk against the strap again. It cuts into my chest, and I can only whimper.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he growls. “Stop—”

“The baby.”

His lips press together. I want to pry them open. I want to make him talk.

“Nikolai,” I whisper, “is the baby okay?”

“You’ve been through the ringer tonight. You need to relax. The doctor wants you to rest.”

I reach around my side and unhook the strap from the side of the hospital bed. My body is sore as I sit up, but I feel okay. I’ll be covered in bruises, but I’ll survive.

Now, I want to know if my baby will.

I swing my leg over the side of the bed, but Nikolai grabs my ankle. “Belle, no.”

“Don’t touch me.” I try to kick his hand away, but he dodges and then moves up to press my shoulders back into the mattress.

“Lie down.”

Only a few hours ago, I would have grabbed his arms and pulled them around myself. I would have sunk into his touch and lost myself there.

Now, his hands on me are hollow comfort.

“I’m fine,” I snap, shoving him away. “If the doctor gets mad, I’ll tell them standing up was my idea.”

“I don’t give a fuck whose fault the doctor thinks it was.”

“Then why do you care?”

We stare at each other, our last conversation ringing in the silence between us. He doesn’t care. That has been well-established.

“No, I know,” I blurt, talking before he can. “It’s because I’m pregnant. That’s why you care. Isn’t it? The only reason. You just don’t want anything happening to the baby.”

He’s silent for a long time.

Then he says the only words that could break my heart any further.

“There is no baby anymore, Belle. The baby is gone.”

He says it so fast that I almost miss it. I pause, waiting for him to say something else. To somehow restate the sentence in a way that won’t cut me to the bone.

“Wh… what?” I finally splutter when he offers nothing else.

He sighs and shakes his head. “They said they didn’t hear anything. No heartbeat. The baby didn’t make it.”

I drop back onto the bed, the weight of my body too much to bear.

It’s over. Everything is over.

Even when Nikolai told me that he didn’t care about me, some small, pathetic part of me thought he would come around. If I gave him a child and we raised it together, he’d learn to love me. All the time we’d spend together, playing and making food and changing diapers… Deep bonds are formed in the trenches. I thought we’d go through the trenches of parenthood together. I thought that one day everything would work out.

But now, the baby is gone and we have nothing.

“I’ve lost everything,” I whisper.

I squeeze my eyes closed. I don’t want to cry anymore. Especially because I don’t think Nikolai will comfort me, and crying in front of someone who couldn’t care less would only make it all worse.

Suddenly, a shrill ring cuts through the room. I glance back at the machines around my bed, but they’re beeping along as usual.

“It’s mine.” Nikolai holds up his phone for a second. Without looking at me, he backs towards the door. “I have to take this.”

I nod weakly. “Okay.”

The second the door closes, I collapse on the bed. I can’t hold myself up another second. But I can’t cry, either.

My eyes burn, my throat is clogged, but the tears won’t come. The rug has been pulled out from under me in every way, and I don’t know how to respond. So I press my face into the stiff, over-bleached blankets and focus on inhaling and exhaling.

When Nikolai comes back, I don’t want to look as shredded to pieces as I feel. I have to be able to face reality: he doesn’t love me and our baby is gone.

Physical pain lances through me at those twin thoughts. It’s a snake eating its own tail, two sides of the same coin, one leading into the other, the other leading right back into the first. He doesn’t love me and our baby is gone. Our baby is gone and he doesn’t love me.

Slowly, I press up to sitting. Just as I get myself resituated in the bed, the blankets pulled up around my waist, the door opens.

I turn to the window. I don’t want to see him. Not yet.

Footsteps pad across the floor, but I focus on the window. The blinds are halfway open. I can see slashes of the sky and the buildings surrounding the hospital. The day looks bright and warm—a far cry from the chill creeping into my chest.

I feel a presence behind me, the magnetism of a body close to mine.

Then there’s a sharp pinch in my bicep.

I spin around and see the syringe in my arm first. The needle is long and thin, gleaming in the sunlight.

As I watch, a pale, delicate hand pushes the plunger down all the way.

“What—” Realization is already coming over me as I look up into the face of the last person I ever wanted to see again.

“Good to see you again, Belle,” says Xena.