I nod my head before remembering the woman on the phone can’t hear me. “Yes, and pretty far along from what I can tell.”
As my adrenaline begins to subside, something akin to fear begins to take hold. It’s like everything from before I came across this wreck is back with even more strength, and I haveto hold onto the hood of the car to stay standing, my legs threatening to buckle with the weight in my chest.
Exposure
I need to make sure she doesn’t have any injuries I can’t see.
I take a breath, bringing my mind back to the present.Sheneeds me right now.
I’m not too worried about the cuts and scrapes on her arms and chest—there’s one on her shoulder and across her collarbone that might need stitches and that bruising on her face is concerning.
“What’s her name?” I ask the operator as I reach down, muttering an apology for the invasion of privacy as I slowly lift up the pink satin, the sight of her swollen stomach like a sucker punch to the face.
“Rumi. Rumi Matthews.”
“Rumi,” I repeat, the name feeling familiar on my lips, as if I was used to saying it in another life.
Why the hell is she out driving this late?
She’s pregnant for fuck’s sake, and it’s the middle of the night.
Where’s her husband or boyfriend or whoever the fuck knocked her up.
He should be here making sure she’s okay, protecting her, driving this damn car.
She shouldn’t be out here right now.
She’s growing a fucking alifein her right now, bringing some fucker’s child into the world, and yet she’s out here.
Alone.
I pray to all the gods I don’t believe in that she makes it out of this, and that her baby is okay, and that the son of the bitch who isn’t here to protect her gets his ass beat.
She can’t lose this baby.
She won’t.
No one deserves to live with the weight of a loss like that.
She’ll feel guilty.
She’ll blame herself.
I would know.
“Ambulance should be arriving any minute,” the operator says, but it sounds like she’s underwater with the pounding beginning to grow in my ears.
Why the hell is she barefoot?
Pajamas, no shoes, and nothing but a car seat in the car—aside from the crash, what the hell happened to her tonight?
With no obvious evidence of internal injuries, I carefully bring Rumi’s nightgown back down. That sense of protectiveness over her is back with vengeance at how exposed she is, how fragile she looks, how scared she must have been.
The sudden urge to shield her from anything and everything surprises me, considering I don’t even know the girl’s last name, yet looking at her in this state—bloodied and hurt, pregnant and alone—makes a foreign possessiveness take hold.
I look down at my bloodied hands against the softness ofher. The contrast is jarring, yet it stirs something inside of me.
Suddenly, I hear the sound of distant sirens, and they bring me back to the last time I was in a situation like this, waiting for an ambulance.
