Delicate Condition by Danielle Valentine

Author:Danielle Valentine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks

18

We took Dex’s car to the hospital. I didn’t remember climbing inside or the treacherous drive over, the car’s tires sliding over all that snow and ice. There was only that swift kick to my ribs, that all-encompassing pain, and then, as if the two moments had happened one right after the other, the screech of automatic doors sliding open, a blast of recycled air, and the sharp, antiseptic smell of cleaning products layered over the scents of sweat and sickness and dozens of bodies too close together.

Dread inched up my throat like bile. That smell, it was attached to some animal deep instinct inside of me. I felt every fear impulse inside my body switch on. I was a rabbit suddenly attuned to the scent of a predator. I wanted to run.

“No.” I froze in the doorway, my knees locking. I couldn’t go into this building again, not after she’d gotten to me so easily last time. And this baby, this…whatever was happening inside of me, I couldn’t let that woman anywhere near her. Not again.

I felt Dex’s hand on my back, that gentle pressure trying to coax me forward. “Come on, Anna,” he said. The doors started to slide shut and he jerked an arm out, stopping them. “We need to see the doctor.”

The muscles in my shoulders knotted up. “Please, I don’t want to…”

“You’re hurt. We have to—”

“I can’t.”

Dex exhaled, hard. He must not have seen how scared I was because he said in a lower voice, “Anna, you have to go inside—we need someone to look at your ribs.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to steady myself. I felt very strange. Light-headed. My thoughts weren’t totally making sense. I knew there was a reason I was supposed to be here—it wasn’t just the pain in my ribs; it was something else. I needed to see the doctor to find out what was going on inside of my body. Being at the hospital, it was a good thing, like Dex said. Everything was going to be okay.

But, when I blinked, I saw the woman with the red lipstick smeared across her teeth and the dirty tile in the bathroom and the blood running down my legs. Even after I opened my eyes again, those images were still there, burned into the back of my brain like I’d been branded with them. My doctors never knew what was going on inside my body. And I hated this place. Actually hated it, in a way that felt more physical than emotional.

I heard phones ringing in the distance and the mechanical sound of someone speaking over an intercom, but everything faded in and out, like someone messing with a dial on a radio.

A nurse was suddenly standing in front of me. “…feeling okay…pale…”

I stared at her, trying to pull the rest of her question out of the fog of my head. I didn’t realize I was tilting backwards until I felt the hands pressed into my back, holding me up.

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