Cold and hard as a spike of ice.
The Asian man looked from him, then to Minnie, his lips pressed together. He looked troubled, conflicted. But she had no time to worry about this, as another contraction delivered a hard punch into her gut, which made her body hunch over. She moaned, unable to stop the pained noise escaping her lips. She’d gotten good at controlling screams of pain over the months. It had become clear pretty quickly that, more often than not, crying and whimpering just led to more suffering.
“2 hours,” the Asian man said in a small, almost muffled voice.
Steve arched an eyebrow and stared at Minnie doubtfully, “don’t think you’ll be able to do much with her,” he said. Quickly, he gave a nasty chuckle and added. “But whatever floats your boat. 2 hours it is. I’ll be back then.”
The client saw him out. Hot tears of pain and fear began to dribble from the corners of Minnie’s eyes. Her entire body felt hot from the stress. Without thinking, she pushed herself up off of the couch and started to hobble across the room towards an opposite door, clutching her stomach. She needed to escape. Her attempts to run had always ended badly before; however, this was one occasion where failure was not an option.
For nine mostly awful months, her body and her baby had been neglected, tortured, abused, and plied with more alcohol than Minnie had ever drunk before in her life. This was not going to be the end.
Adrenaline raced through her veins, pushing her through the pain and the heavy fog of intoxication that was smothering her like a deadly veil. Heart pounding hard in her eardrums, she roughly pulled open the door and felt relieved to find a kitchen. Immediately, her eyes were drawn to the knife block on one of the surfaces, which she staggered over to, almost slipping over in amniotic fluid as she went.
The moment her sweating palm clutched onto the handle of the knife; her entire body seemed to collapse in on itself; fresh agony ripping through her with a vengeance. Gripping onto the kitchen counter, she looked down to see splashes of blood now landing in thick pools beneath her feet on the tiles. She screamed.
Suddenly, a big hand was covering her mouth, clamping tightly over her lips. Although she attempted to lash out, Minnie found herself frozen rigid with the pain. Crying, she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to breathe.
“Look- I’m not going to hurt you,” the Asian man’s voice whispered sharply in her ear. “You hear? I’m not going to hurt you.”
Minnie swallowed. Her chest still weighed down heavily, her heart sinking into her stomach. She didn’t believe him. How could she? It had been so long since a person hadn’t hurt her; it was almost a foreign concept. But, he was strong. Holding on to her firmly, he somehow coerced her body so that she was squatting down in the corner of the counters, her hands white as they tensed hard on the tops.
“What’s your name?” the man said, his voice barely audible over her distressed pants and moans. He gently lifted her dress.
“Minnie,” she murmured in a frightened whisper, her lower lip wobbling with terror as she saw him grimly inspecting her naked lower half. “Please don’t hurt my baby,” she blurted out before bursting into a fresh fit of uncontrollable tears. “Please…” she begged, as nine months’ worth of tightly compacted and buried agony gushed from her soul in a hot, ugly rush.
The Asian man shook his head and looked up at her. Her light eyes met with his deep brown ones. She saw tears welling up inside them.
“My name is Adil,” he said, “I…” he closed his mouth as if he had thought better of finishing the sentence. Instead, he sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I’m a doctor, okay? And I want to help you.”
Normally, her brain would have exploded with questions, then, if she wasn’t in such a state. Steve never took her to nice men. Not the kind who saved lives for a living. He took her to vile, heartless animals who wanted nothing more than to abuse her and feed off of her needless pain. Maybe they were rich but never kind. Never a doctor.
Another involuntary, rasping shriek came from her mouth as she felt weight descend into her pelvis. Her head fell back as she cried out, intense burning wracking her body.
“It’s a boy.”
Minnie caught a flash of tiny flesh but heard no baby crying as Adil worked quietly. He gathered up the slippery, glistening baby and quickly carried him away into the bathroom, out of her sight. She remained in a still, broken heap on the kitchen tiles, completely stunned; the stench of bloody fluid strong and stagnant in her nostrils.
In her bewildered daze, she wondered when the sudden, overpowering rush of love would come over her. In vain, she waited for the adrenaline to strike and jump-start her body into action. But she was wracked with exhaustion. She could not even muster up the energy to stand, her head so weak that she could barely even lift it.
For the first time, Minnie did not fight it. She let her heavy eyelids fall, and she let the blood pour out of her in buckets. Somewhere, deep in her heart, she could hear the pendulum swing as seconds, minutes passed.
Whilst her little baby was taken somewhere far from her, and she bled out there in that strange kitchen.
Chapter Forty-two
2019
Enthralled, Flo kept her small nose pressed up against the cold glass window of the RV. In her shiny pupils, the image of the unfurling twists and curls of orange fire lashing the trees were reflected, dancing and moving together, hypnotizing her. Even after the billowing black clouds of smoke had dissolved into the inky backdrop
