Where Is Ethan?

Where Is Ethan?
Lucy’s POV

I don’t know how long Grandma spoke to me for. Time stretched and folded while her soft voice filled the quiet hospital room, each word sinking deeper into my bones. 

My heart gripped tighter with every sentence, fear coiling like cold wire around my ribs. She mentioned the OLD one. The one who slips between minutes. The one who wears familiar faces and never quite keeps the clock straight. The one who drains and claims and leaves hollow shells behind it.

So stuff like that exists? In real life? So you’re telling me this is some kind of possession type of situation? Like in the movies?

The thought landed with a strange, fragile hope. Thank God Ethan is not a bad person or a demon. Demons were pure evil, pure hunger. This… this meant there was still something left of my Ethan underneath all that. 

I could still save him. I could still have my happy ever after with him. 

All I had to do was trick him into going on a trip with me. Take him to some quiet monastery in the hills, the kind with stone walls and endless candles and nuns who knew the old prayers. They would heal him. Exorcise whatever was inside his body…this OLD one grandma spoke about. That couldn’t be hard… right?

Grandma’s final warning still echoed when her form began to thin like mist under fluorescent light. 

“Remove the thing inside you before it roots too deep, muffin. Time is already bleeding.And remember,I'll always be with you, my darling.” 

Then she was gone. Just the soft click of the door settling shut, as if she had never been there at all.

I slowly sat up minutes after she left. The heavy fog of the sedative was lifting, muscle by muscle. Feeling returned to my fingers first, then my arms, then the rest of me. My body still felt waterlogged, but it was mine again.

“Where is my bag?” I muttered, scanning the room.

I opened the narrow drawer beside the bed. There it was. I yanked it out and rummaged until my fingers closed around the familiar weight of the rosary. The same one Grandma had pressed into my hands the year she died. 

The wooden beads were worn smooth from years of her prayers. I remembered the nights she would slip into my room while I slept, rest a cool hand on my forehead, and whisper prayers. Then the soft sprinkle-sprinkle of holy water across the sheets and the sharp scent of her herbs and incense. 

In middle school my classmates had teased me endlessly for the constant smell of church and the rosary I refused to take off. 

Back then I had been embarrassed. Now, as I hooked the beads around my neck and clutched the small cross so hard the edges bit into my palm, I felt protected. 

Maybe it was Grandma’s years of quiet warfare that had kept whatever lived inside Ethan from claiming me completely or even killing me. Maybe those prayers were the only reason I still had a mind of my own.

“I will save him,” I promised the empty room. “I will.”

A short, sharp knock shattered the moment and my eyes went wide. What now? Another visitation from the beyond? Who is it this time?

The door opened and Dr. Harlan stepped in, followed by a nurse and two police officers…one woman, one man…both in dark uniforms that somehow made the already small room feel smaller. 

Panic crawled up my chest like cold fingers. Too many bodies…too many eyes watching me. It felt like they had all come to take something from me.

“Breathe, Lucy. Breathe,” the nurse said gently, hands firmly on my shoulders as she fitted an oxygen mask over my face and instantly, cool air flooded my lungs. I forced myself to match her slow counts until the worst of the shaking eased.

When the room stopped spinning, Dr. Harlan turned slightly toward the officers, voice low but not low enough.

“You have to tread carefully. Her mind is quite unstable. We don’t want her throwing another fit.”

I pulled the mask down an inch. “You know I’m here…right?”

All four of them offered thin, professional smiles that didn’t reach their eyes.

The female officer…tall, dark hair pulled back tightly…looked at the doctor. “What’s wrong with her, exactly?”

Dr. Harlan listed the words like items on a chart.
“Malnutrition. Severe exhaustion. Unstable mental state. Risk of self-harm. And…” He lowered his voice, but the hospital silence carried every syllable straight to me. “She’s pregnant.”

Every fiber inside me went cold as soon as the words left his mouth.

“Pregnant?” My voice rasped, thin and broken. “Doctor, did you say I’m pregnant?”

The moment he confirmed it, the room tilted…more like it started swirling.

Pregnant. Of course. What else did I expect after nights upon nights of him pulling me under, after weeks of the same hungry routine? 

Hold on… But if Ethan was possessed…was I carrying his child, or the child of whatever is inside him? How did that even work? 

Oh my God…was this what Grandma meant when she said to remove the thing inside me? Why did she have to leave that for last?!

The edges of my vision darkened as more thoughts crashed inside my head and monitors began beeping faster. 

Suddenly the room was full of motion…more nurses flooding in, voices overlapping, hands adjusting the drip line. Dr. Harlan’s voice cut through the chaos.

“Push the midazolam. Now.”

A cool rush slid into my vein and within minutes, the panic loosened its grip. I lay still, very conscious, but floating in a strange, unwilling calm. My body felt distant, like it belonged to someone else, even as my mind kept racing.

The male officer cleared his throat. “Doctor, can we speak with her now?”

Dr. Harlan exhaled. “I’d advise waiting. She’s still quite unstable.”

“It’s important,” the female officer said. “The case is severe.”

Case? What case?

The doctor finally nodded and signaled a nurse and she helped prop me against the pillows. Dr. Harlan told her to stand by outside the door in case of another episode. 

The female officer added that the nurse could wait in the hallway saying this was a classified conversation.

When the medical staff left, the female officer pulled a chair close to the bed and sat. The male officer remained at the foot of the bed, arms crossed.

“I’m Detective Reyes,” she said. “This is my partner, Detective Cole. We’re with the Special Crimes Unit.”

“Okay,” I whispered. “I’m Lucy.”

“I know, Lucy.” Her eyes were steady, almost kind. “Now. You’ll have to tell us everything you know. Where is officer Ethan?”

The question felt like the stupidest thing anyone had ever asked me.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked. “Isn’t he an officer like you guys? Shouldn’t you know where he is?”

Detective Cole’s mouth tightened. “If we knew, believe me, we would already have him behind bars instead of talking to you.”

Behind bars? What the hell?

Reyes leaned in slightly. “I’ll ask again, Lucy. Where is your baby daddy? Are you hiding him? Trying to still save your little family?”

I stared at them dumbfounded. Officers like this existed in real life? I thought that was only a movie thing.

“You do know that I just learned that I’m pregnant… right?” I said, voice flat.

The two of them exchanged a long look without saying anything.

Then Cole began pacing…left to right, right to left…making my still-fuzzy head swim. “Just answer these questions, Miss Lucy. Where were you on July 21st? What were you doing on Sunday, August 3rd? September 12th? October 9th?”

I don't even remember those dates but every answer was the same. “I was at home.”