The Network by L. C. Shaw

Author:L. C. Shaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Five

THE INSTITUTE, DECEMBER 1975

MY BABY IS GROWING. I AM INFORMED AT MY WEEKLY EXAMS that all is going perfectly. The heartbeat is strong, and I’m gaining just the right amount of weight. How could I not, with my diet so carefully controlled? I am visibly pregnant now. The months are dwindling down to my delivery, and I’ve still found no way to even attempt an escape. Instead, I sit and rub my belly and talk to my baby. Despite the fact that this nightmare is something I could never have imagined, I feel a love for this child growing inside me. I allow myself to imagine a different life. One in which I have a loving husband eager for the child’s arrival. A life in which I will get to watch my child grow up. I glance down at my stomach and at the gray cotton shirt and black stretch pants Crosse has provided. A drab uniform of solid colors and practicality. Dreams of beautiful maternity clothes, a loving husband, and joyous expectation will all go unfulfilled.

It has been a week since he told me about going to my parents. I haven’t seen him since, have been left on my own to do nothing but worry. Even though I tried not to show it, when he first told me that my mother refused to turn over the coins, I was wounded. How could she not do anything in her power to save me? All because of a legend about some pieces of metal? Because that’s what it must be. Legend. An inanimate object has no power. Right? But now I wonder. Dunst is a renowned scientist. That’s what got him his entry into this country. And he believes in the power of the coins, that they healed him. I wish I could do some research, find out more about the coins and their history, but all I have to go on is what they tell me. And if my mother and father, who I know with certainty do love me, wouldn’t give them up, then maybe, just maybe, they do contain the power he claims. It’s hard enough to sacrifice your own life for your faith—but the life of your child? The only way that is possible is to have an unshakable belief that to betray your faith would have monumental repercussions and that the stakes are truly of eternal significance. Now that I am to become a mother, I already feel an overpowering love for my baby. I would lay down my life for this child without a second thought.

So are my parents fools? Is their faith misplaced? I am beginning to think I am the fool. When did I give up on my faith? I search my memory and try to remember what it was that turned me away. Did something happen to shatter my belief? Some terrible trauma that made me realize there was no God? I can think of nothing. The reality is, I just drifted away.

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