AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Have you made a doctor’s appointment?”
“Not yet. I wanted to tell you first.”
“Good. Is there anything else?”
“I, uh, no.”
“Okay. I’m going back to work.” He turned on his heel, then paused and turned back. “Aleks?”
“Yes?”
“It had better be a boy.”
The anxiety I felt from that moment onward was nothing compared to the fear of what I knew Viktor would do if the baby turned out to be a girl. What I experienced in those six weeks was the most intense, debilitating anxiety I’d ever known in my life.
I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t even think straight. When I’d speak, my words and sentences were jumbled. My insides felt like they wanted to jump out of my body. Although I’d pray a hundred times a day that my baby was a boy, I somehow knew it was a girl. I don’t know how, but I did.
Every night, in my nightmares, I saw him killing our baby girl in a hundred different ways, and I was helpless to stop him.
I went crazy during that time.
I’d pack a bag and plot my escape, but then would be too scared to leave, so I’d tell myself to wait until the right time. Then I would stress so badly that Viktor would find my go-bag while I was working up the nerve to leave, that I would unpack it and put everything back. Over and over, I did this.
Then one morning, I wiped away blood. I’d miscarried.
I cried because I was a failure, because my body was unfit to carry a child.
I cried because I was relieved that my little girl wouldn’t have to go through what I did.
I cried for myself. For the child I’d never meet.
And finally, I cried in fear of my husband’s retaliation.
When Viktor came home that night, I was so exhausted from crying that there was no room for anxiety. In a nutshell, I was nothing. A shell of a human and nothing more.
I was in bed, curled into a ball under the covers, when he walked into the room.
“What’s going on? Are you sick?”
No, I’m dead.
He rushed to the side of the bed. “Aleks. Talk to me.”
“I miscarried,” I whispered from under the covers.
There was a long, heavy silence.
“Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“Then get up,” he said.
I closed my eyes, willing the ground to open up and swallow me whole.
“Get. Up.”
I rolled onto my back, blinking up at his scowling face.
