That thought scared her. She quickly moved her arms and legs to check and make sure she wasn’t missing anything vital. Everything seemed intact. Her toes and fingers responded to her command to wiggle. She let out a breath of relief and called out again.
This time a woman rushed in. She was dressed in the same bright white as the room; a nurses uniform. “Estas despierto?”
“Can you speak English?” Michelle croaked. Her throat was so dry it clicked when she swallowed.
The nurse looked foreign, maybe Spanish, with long dark hair pulled back and tied at her neck, and beautiful dark brown skin and eyes.
“Si, yes! I am your nurse, Dondi Marie. You can call me Dondi if you like.”
“Ah, what happened? I don’t remember coming here, or anything.”
Dondi frowned. “But you must remember?”
Michelle shook her head. “Was it a car accident?”
“Ah, well, sometimes the anesthetics, they make people forgetful. But you are fine. The operation was so successful. There was a nice harvest, considering the circumstances. And your handsome husband is so pleased.”
“My husband?” This situation was getting odder by the moment, Michelle thought. She certainly wasn’t married. Unless she had some kind of brain operation that wiped out memories. Or maybe she actually was married sometime in the past, but got hurt and forgot a whole chunk of time, like you sometimes hear about with amnesia victims.
“So’s your sister...very pleased, too,” Dondi said. “She’s in the room beside yours. Her operation was also a good success.”
Nope, no brain trauma, Michelle decided. She definitely didn’t have a sister. That was one sure fact. However, she was wearing a wedding ring. It was large, ornately beautiful, and didn’t look familiar.
“You said something about a harvest?” Michelle asked.
“Yes. It was a little out of the ordinary, because your husband proclaimed grandly that he wanted as many as possible. He wanted all of them. Considering how you were hurt before, that is understandable, for the best results.”
Michelle was getting an awful, frigid, sinking feeling. Her heart rate accelerated. She could hear her individual heart beeps on a monitor, going faster and faster. She felt like her insides had been hollowed out and was aware of a little uncomfortable pain in her abdomen. Pain killers were probably numbing most of the discomfort.
She decided she would get more information if she acted like she knew what was going on. She made an effort to smile, “Ah, so you think my husband is handsome?”
Dondi rolled her eyes. “Such a beautiful man. Grand and tall. So perfect for you.”
Michelle was now thoroughly alarmed. She thought she knew who was behind the operation and probably what happened. Trying to put aside the devastation and loss for the moment, she formulated her next sentence carefully. “Most people think it’s his eyes that are fascinating.”
“Oh my yes, si, so dark you almost can’t look away from them,” Dondi said. She took a glass from the night stand beside Michelle and poured water into it from a pitcher. She handed the glass to Michelle.
Michelle’s boyfriend, Rod, had blue eyes. Omar had eyes so dark they looked like the shiny black obsidian, a jet black volcanic glass.
Michelle tried to blink away tears, but the nurse, Dondi, saw them. “Are you in pain?”
Michelle couldn’t speak. She took a sip of the water, tried not to cry, and nodded. It wasn’t physical pain. She didn’t even know if she wanted children yet, but she might in the future. Especially if she and Rod married. Then she knew she would love having babies. Now, on top of everything else Omar had stolen, he had taken away the slim chance she’d had of ever conceiving a child.
The harvest that Dondi referred to, Michelle knew, was an operation to remove the eggs she had in her one remaining ovary. Omar wanted them. So he had robbed her of the chance to become a mother, to have babies with the man she chose for her mate and partner, whether she was married or not. He had taken not only children from Michelle, but grandchildren and any future family she might have had of her own.
It was like murder. It was a loss so great she couldn’t even grasp the full future consequences.
Michelle might have chosen not to have children, but that was her choice to make. It was not a choice to be stolen away.
Omar had thought of everything. This was a foreign hospital. Everyone spoke Spanish. If she started screaming that she had been abducted and forced into a medical procedure she hadn’t agreed to, they would certainly contact her supposed husband, Omar. He’d probably say she was having delusions, or mentally incompetent, and maybe try to have her confined to a mental institution. Then he’d have total control of her. She’d simply disappear. Her life totally gone.
Michelle blinked fast to keep tears from falling. She would have to go along with everything expected of her in this hospital for a while and keep up the charade that she was Omar’s wife, until she felt better. Then she would find a way to escape.
Michelle put her hand on her stomach and mourned her loss.
This theft was immoral; it was wicked and depraved. It was sinful.
It was Omar defined—immoral, wicked, depraved, sinful.
Chapter 10
Heather thought they were lucky so far. They knew the city where Michelle had been taken, Guadalajara, Mexico.
She’d been on the phone with Michelle’s boyfriend, Rod, several times over the last few hours. He could get them there. He was laughing when he said he might be fired, but Heather was pretty sure he wasn’t kidding. Using the Heroshi corporate jet on personal business for what might turn out to be a wild-goose-chase would be just cause for job
