The Resurrectionist. Sierra Woods
are growing new life inside of them, but I do.
It’s what got me killed.
I hate thinking that I’m weak and vulnerable when I’ve worked very hard to be as tough as I can be. Certain things set me off, and seeing a happily pregnant woman on the arm of her police officer husband is what did it today. This is a joyous time for them, but for me, it does nothing except bring back haunting, hideous memories that still have the power to make me shudder.
After they passed with a happy smile and a wave, I closed the door to my office. Usually, I keep the door open unless I’m consulting, but now, I need some privacy to have my nervous breakdown. In an office that sits in the middle of the police station, there is no such thing as privacy. Or quiet.
One by one, I pulled the horizontal blinds and closed off the windows. Was I hiding? Yes. I’d hide until it’s safe for me to step out again. Until then, the memory of my life in the past overwhelms me in sloshes of emotions that build into pounding waves, and I allow it. Crawling onto the small couch against the wall, I tucked my feet beneath me and clutched a pillow to my middle. Closing my eyes, I let the memory, the horror of it, wash over me. I’ve learned that resisting only puts off the inevitable and gives more power to the pain. If I give it the time it needs now, then life will go on much more quickly.
I had been happily, blissfully, ignorantly, pregnant. My husband hadn’t been as thrilled about it as I had been, but I don’t think men can ever have the same connection to a baby as women do. Just the nature of how we’re put together.
Anyway, my husband, Blake, and I had been headed for divorce when we decided to give it one last go. He’d been carrying on with a woman for several months and had tired of her clingy, demanding ways, so he let her go and went back to his wife, who wasn’t so clingy and demanding. Maybe I should have been and things might have been different, but now, we’ll never know.
So, giving it the old college try at reconciliation, the husband and I had a nice dinner with requisite margaritas, enough that I became a little intoxicated. Okay, a lot intoxicated, but I wasn’t driving, so who cares? And we screwed our brains out all night long. We hadn’t done that since we were dating, so we indulged in an all night bang-a-thon.
And I got pregnant. My family was thrilled because I was finally fulfilling my reproductive obligations inherent to any large family that seemed to want to take over the earth, one generation at a time. The playboy-doctor-husband was not thrilled. Although he said he wanted children someday, to him, someday meant years into the future, when he had a more secure practice, blah, blah, blah. What he really meant was never. He wasn’t the fatherly type who could, or would, be there for his child.
In the old days, T&A’s meant tonsils and adenoids. Now it was tits and asses, making them bigger and smaller in that order. There was serious money to be made in elective plastic surgery, and he was going to make his killing now, then retire to an island in the Caribbean and work on skin cancer late in life. Or something equally brilliant.
As my pregnancy progressed and my belly grew, I was happy. Even though the spousal unit couldn’t be bothered to come to checkups and ultrasounds with me, I was content in knowing that I was growing a new life I could love and cherish. One that would love and cherish me, at least until the teenage years, and then it would be all over for a while.
Although my growing abdomen housed a new life, and that was good, it also threw my center of gravity off, and that was bad. I was in an awkward stage at the end of my third trimester when the doorbell rang and without thinking, I opened it. I’d been shopping for baby things and had taken a load into the house and was ready to return for another, so I was right there by the door. An unfamiliar woman stood there, and the smile fell from my face when I noticed the gun in her hand. She grabbed me by the shirt and dragged me out of the house toward my car with an open back door just a few feet away. I tried to struggle, knowing if I got into my car I was dead. It was the middle of the day and my neighbors all worked, so screaming wasn’t going to help. I had to save myself or die trying.
She clobbered me on the head with something that felt like an anvil, and I collapsed onto the backseat. She shoved my legs in, and away she went with me unconscious in the back. I finally roused, but had no idea where we were or for how long I’d been out. My legs were numb from being folded up in such an awkward position. I had to move, but if I did, she’d know I was awake. I eased my weight up slightly so my legs got some circulation, and they screamed in pain as the blood flow returned.
“Dammit, where is this place?” she grumbled aloud. I heard the shuffling of papers, so maybe she was looking at a map. There was no GPS in my car. If she didn’t know where we were, I wasn’t going to find my way out of there either. Panic as well as my position was making me dizzy.
She turned off the car and got out. As quickly as I could, I shifted to my back. Not a comfortable position when you have a watermelon in your belly, but when your life was on the line, you coped. She opened the back door and reached in. I kicked out with both feet as hard as I could, and she went flying.
I knew I had hurt her, or at least surprised the hell out of her, but I was certain we weren’t done yet. With any luck, she’d left the keys in the ignition, and I could get out of there. I scrambled out of the car as fast as any nine-months-pregnant woman could scramble, which wasn’t too sprightly.
“You’re a dead woman,” she yelled. “Fucking bitch.”
She was on her knees and clutched her front. Hopefully, I’d broken a few ribs. I didn’t know who she was or why she thought kidnapping me was going to improve her life.
“What do you want?” I tried to slide against the car toward the front door.
“You. Dead.”
The words didn’t make sense, but as a nurse, I knew that things many people thought didn’t make sense. She might have been an escaped psych patient who was on a mission from above or listening to the voices in her fillings. Or just off her medications. In any case, keeping her talking and away from me was my first step to survival. “I see, but why? Who are you?”
“You’re the only thing standing between me and Blake.”
Oh, shit. She was his mistress, who was supposed to be a former mistress. And she was freakin’ nuts. Good going, Blake. If I got out of this alive, I was going to put certain of his body parts in the blender.
“Are you out of your mind? What the hell are you doing?” Anger overcame fear for a moment.
“Blake went back to you.” The idea that Blake was married to me seemed to have escaped her. “If you hadn’t gotten pregnant, none of this would be happening.”
Oh, yeah. As if this was my fault. Another sign of pathological nuttiness. Blame everyone else for your personal failures.
“Now, just a damned minute. I have the right to sleep with my own husband. You are the one who doesn’t.” This was pissing me off. Now that I could see what was going on, I was damned mad and some of my fear wore off, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
“We were so good together,” she said with a wistful tone to her voice. “You should have seen us.” She spoke to me as if we were girlfriends sharing secrets. Definite lack of reality attachment.
“I would prefer not to.” I didn’t need anything else to make me nauseated.
“Bitch.” She reached for a large knife on the ground beside her and dove for me. I ducked, but that’s hard to do with a big, fat belly. The knife missed me, but the impact of her body against mine thumped me between her and the car. The air went out of my lungs, and I couldn’t breathe. A pregnant woman has a hard time breathing to begin with. When one is body-slammed by an insane woman, it’s all over.
We collapsed into a heap on the ground, and she clobbered me again. Back then, I didn’t know how to fight. Every woman ought to know how to defend herself, and this was one reason why.
When I woke up there was a knife sticking out of my stomach. I screamed, not certain if it was from pain or from the sight of the butcher knife