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“Aimee went from accepting what was happening to panicking about the whole thing. After my parents reacted the way they did, she wouldn’t tell her mom at all. For the next couple of months, she hid the pregnancy while I tried to convince my parents to reconsider. We both thought that if my parents would help us, her mom wouldn’t freak out about it so much.”
Another deep breath.
“My father wouldn’t budge,” I said. “Mom wouldn’t go against him and just kept saying how disappointed she was that we hadn’t been careful. Eventually I had it out with Dad and told him we were going to have the baby, and he was going to have to live with that. We had a big fight, and as I was leaving, he told me not to come back, so I didn’t.”
My hands were starting to shake a little, and I knew if I had been anywhere else, I’d be heading straight for the nearest needle right now.
“Aimee was almost six months along,” I told Tria. “I was sleeping in my car near the school’s parking lot and spent my time going back and forth from Aimee’s trailer to school. I kept trying to get her to open up and tell her mom about the baby, but she wouldn’t. She was afraid she’d get kicked out, too, and wouldn’t have anywhere to live before the baby was born. I bought her a bunch of baggy clothes, and she even made me wear baggy shit, too, so she could claim it was just the latest style. Her mom wasn’t really all that observant anyway. I think she just liked that I was buying shit for her daughter.”
“Where is she now?”
“I’m…uh…I’m getting there,” I replied quietly.
With my heart starting to pound inside my chest, I labored to keep my breathing as normal as possible as I continued on.
“It was a Saturday about a week before Christmas,” I told her. “I still had about seven hundred dollars in cash, and I had been out shopping. I bought a bunch of shit for the baby and was going to stash it in Aimee’s room. Just walking up to the door, I had this weird feeling—like something was wrong. I don't know why, and maybe it's just in my head, but that's what I remember. Her mom was in the main room, and she didn't even look at me when I came in. She just gave me a little wave as I walked by.”
“The door to the bathroom was closed, and I figured Aimee was in there, so I went in her room and just hung out for a while. It wasn't long before that creepy feeling that something wasn't right came up again, so I went to the bathroom to check on her. “
My breath caught in my throat and drowned my words. I realized I was rocking back and forth on the floor in front of Tria and that she was no longer glaring but looking at me kind of quizzically instead.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You look kind of pale.”
“Just need to…keep going,” I said. My breaths were coming too fast, and I was starting to get a little dizzy.
Tria gave me a slight nod and sat back again.
“I called out to her, but she didn’t answer me. I was knocking then banging my fist on the door, but she still didn’t answer. Her mother was yelling at me to keep it down, but I just knew at that point something…something was wrong. Really wrong. So I busted the door open.”
I gasped as I tried to bring in more air to speak. My words came out staccato and breathy.
“The door pretty much flew off the hinges when I…when I kicked it. Aimee’s mom started yelling at me, but I don’t know what she said, because when I looked in the bathroom…”
My voice halted, and I couldn’t breathe right at all. My heart was pounding so fast in my chest that I was starting to get light-headed. My chest began to ache, and my throat felt like it was closing up on me. Baynor said I had post-traumatic stress or whatever—could that cause a heart attack?
I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to keep going.
“She…sh…she…she was on-on-on the floor,” I stammered, barely able to form the words. “Everything was covered in…in…in…in red…in blood. There was so much, so much blood…you couldn’t even see the floor. I...I…I took a step toward her, but I slipped…I fell…”
My throat closed up on me, and I couldn’t breathe at all. As I gasped for breath, I felt heated tears flowing out of my eyes and hands in my hair. Tria was kneeling on the floor in front of me with her arms around me.
“Calm down,” Tria’s soft voice commanded. “Liam, please—you are scaring me.”
I leaned against her, but the nausea in my stomach was overwhelming, and I had to shove her away long enough to get to the trash can so I could puke. When I was done, I wiped the back of my hand over my mouth and rocked back on my knees. Tria was yelling to Yolanda, saying I needed help. I didn’t know what I needed, but I couldn’t stop shaking, not even when Tria’s arms went back around me, and she held my head to her shoulder.
“Shh,” she said. “It’s okay, Liam. It’ll be okay. Just relax for now, okay?”
“N…n…no!”
I wanted to scream at myself. I had to do this—Dr. Baynor said I had to do this if I was going to have any chance at getting her back. Tria said as much as well. Yolanda wasn’t even going to let me in until I said I’d tell Tria everything. If I understood what was going on now, Yolanda was calling an ambulance.
I couldn’t stop now.
“I fell…I fell on…on…on this thing,” I sobbed. Tria tried to tell me to stop again, but I knew if I did I would never be able to finish, so I kept going. “I didn’t know what it was…it just looked like…looked like a chunk of meat lying on the floor. Like some piece of something the butcher would have thrown away after chopping up a cow or something. But when I looked closer…it was…it was him…it was our baby. I fell on him.”
“Oh my God,” I heard Tria utter, but I tried not to pay attention to her. I had to get through this, and the only way to do that was to just keep punching through the words. She pulled me against her, and I wrapped my arms around her back and tucked my head against her neck.
“Her mom was screaming behind me, and all I could do was sit in the middle of it. I couldn’t move, and…I…I couldn’t think. Her blood was all over me, and when I touched her, her arm was stiff. I didn’t want to look, but I kept looking back to…to him. Aimee’s mom was screaming…and she was crying and asking what I had done to her. I guess she must have called 911, because I couldn’t move. The ambulance came, and they eventually took me out of there when they came for...came for the…the bodies.”
