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“The fever has broken,” he confirms, looking down at me and then over at Viktor. “I think the worst of it is over. You’re going to make it, Mrs. Andreyva. It’ll be a long road until you’re fully healed, but you’ve survived the most dangerous part.”
He pulls back the blanket then, examining my wounds clinically, before covering me up again and motioning for Viktor to join him outside of the room. Before he goes, he pats my hand, giving me that reassuring look again. “You’ll heal,” he says, and then he and Viktor both stride out.
I take the moment alone to take stock of myself. It’s been the first time I’ve been aware enough to really look at the state I’m in, and as scared as I am, I also know that I need to do exactly that.
Slowly, I raise my hands, looking at my wrists where they were cuffed. There are deep lacerations all the way around, like two grotesque bracelets, bruised around the edges. My hands still hurt, probably from the lack of circulation, and I reach up to touch my throat where I can feel the bruises from where Stepan strangled me.
Taking a deep breath, I reach for the blanket, lifting it enough for me to look down the length of my naked body.
What I see makes me gasp and drop the blanket, horrified.
My body looks like a patchwork, a mass of cuts, some shallow and others bandaged, ostensibly because they were so deep. There’s hardly an inch of my skin that isn’t purple and yellow with healing bruises, and when I shift my weight in the bed, I feel the bone-deep ache of my injuries.
I’d always sympathized with Ana, felt a deep guilt for what my husband had done to her. But now, for the first time, Iunderstandher. I haven’t lost something so deeply important as the ability to dance and a career, but I know now what it feels like to have something taken from you.
To no longer feel at home in your own body.
I can feel myself starting to shake. I can’t look at myself again, and I press the blanket down tightly around me as if that could somehow erase it. A dozen different fears spring up at once, mingled with grief for something I’d never known was so important to me—my looks.
I’ve never been vain, but I’ve also always known I was beautiful. Even after the grief and pain of the last several months, when I’d lost too much weight, I’d still looked at myself in the mirror and felt that way. I’d been a little self-conscious, but not more than any other girl would have been.
Now, I feel horrified. I can’t imagine looking in the mirror, and when I think of how Viktor has seen me like this—what he’ll see every time he looks at me—I feel sick. Even if he had no part in this, what will happen to me? How could he want a wife who will inevitably be scarred, who won’t be the beautiful woman that he’d married?
Our marriage wasn’t one of love. It was one based on convenience and attraction and nothing else. Without the attraction, will the convenience be enough? And how will I give him the son he’s demanded if he doesn’t want to fuck me?
We could always go back to the fertility clinic,I think with a burst of grim humor. Then I reach down under the blanket, touching my stomach gingerly as a fresh wave of grief replaces it.
I remember all too clearly the doctor saying that there was no way a baby could have survived all that I’ve been through. I know that wasn’t a product of the fever. It’s too clear and vivid.
I don’t even know if I was. There’s no way I’ll ever know, but the possibility was there. And in this particular moment, whether it’s because of how torn apart I feel in every other way or simply because of the fact itself, I feel as if I’ll wonder for the rest of my life if that was true.
If I’d been pregnant and lost my baby.
I press my hand harder against the concave flat of my belly, ignoring the pain from the bruises and cuts there. I don’t know why I’m so sad about it. I didn’t even want a baby with Viktor. I didn’t want to bring a son or a daughter into the world he’s created for his family. But now, knowing that might have existed—
I feel as if my heart is breaking.
For myself. For the possibility of a baby that no longer exists. For Ana. For every woman who has ever endured the things that I’m lying here suffering through because of the machinations of men.
At that moment, I almost hate Viktor.
The door opens as if my thoughts summoned him, and he walks back into the room, alone this time. Carefully, Viktor sits down on the edge of the bed, his eyes roving over my face as if worried.
“What did the doctor say that he didn’t want me to hear?” The words come out raspy, my voice sounding strange from disuse. As strange as the way my body looks to me now.
“He wanted to discuss with me, that’s all.”
“Shouldn’t I know?”
Viktor hesitates. “He’s concerned about your healing. We’ll have to move soon, we can’t stay in one safe house for long. We’ve already stayed here longer than we should, but you couldn’t be moved in your condition. Now that the fever has broken, we can, although the doctor is hesitant.”
“Why?”
“Your wounds are still healing. He said light movement is good, but the strain of moving to a new location altogether might make things worse. I don’t know that we have much of a choice, though.”
“Was there anything else?”
Viktor lets out a breath. “He’s concerned that there might have been internal damage we can’t know about without taking you to a hospital. Damage that could cause issues later, including—” he hesitates. “Including your ability to conceive.”
