I couldn’t get over the beeping. It just keeps beeping and beeping and fucking beeping over and over again.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
It was then that I realize where I was. A feeling all too familiar washes over me. It was the fear, which quickly turns to acceptance. I’d been there too many times before. I supposed now I could call the hospital my home away from home. I was definitely here enough to call it that.
I move my arms under my body and position myself so that I could sit higher up on the hospital bed, a position that I thought would give me more comfort, but instead, it just gives me agony. I feel as if my insides have been ripped out of me, and the pounding in my head wasn’t helping one bit.
“The monitor doesn’t lie. She lives.” I take a look at the doorway of my room and see Hal, the nicest nurse and the only one who wanted to be in a room with me. The rest feared that they’d be taken, beaten as badly as me, or perhaps, turned into a drug mule. The list could go on and on. Hal though, nope, he was my buddy.
“No one’s gonna ever knock me down. Don’t you know that by now?”
“You, my dear, got your ass knocked down, and you needed some help getting back up,” Hal chastises me. He enters the room and shuts the door slowly behind him. He takes a good look at me before he is right next to my bedside. He keeps himself busy by changing the bag of fluids that was hanging to my left.
“It was the worst this time, you know. You coded twice on us,” he whispers, looking down at me.
I shut my eyes tightly and try not to think of the horror I know I’d endured. I try to think of anything else; rainbows, puppies, those stupid little kitten happy birthday cards you see at the store. Not about what Rage said, not even about the look on his face as he did what he did to me.
He loved every second of it.
“My son died, didn’t he?’ I ask, praying to God that what I knew in my heart wasn’t true. I didn’t want it to be true. I wanted my son. I wanted some shred of happiness, not that place, not the fucking nightmare that I chose to live in.
“You and I know both know that boy is better off anywhere other than that club. If Rage didn’t do this now, he would’ve done it after he was born.” I listen to Hal, knowing that what he said was nothing but the truth. If Rage did this to me, I knew that it would have happened to our child as well. It would have only been a matter of time. Deep down, I knew that, but it didn’t do anything to console the hurt in my heart.
Rage is a monster, through and through. Some part deep inside me knew that when I first started dating him. I hoped I could change him. I thought we were like a fairytale. I was the sweet Army brat who just wanted to settle down. He was the man with the broken past. If only I had known then what I know now. Even back then, I knew about his demons, about his tendencies, and still I chose him. I tried my hardest, but in the end, I couldn’t change one part about him. Thinking back, I was a dumb girl. Hell, maybe I still am.
“I know,” I murmur, salty tears spilling slowly from the corner of my eyes. Just because I knew didn’t make it any easier. I wanted my child more than anything in the world. At least then I’d have something to live for, not just this – trapped life.
“You’ve been out for a couple days. A couple more and you should be able to get out of here. Rox, please tell me you’ll leave. That you’ll get the heck away from this town.”
“I’d never lie to you, Hal. You’re my friend, and you know I won’t just leave. You know why.” I offere him a small smile, hoping that it would tone down the emotion in the room. But it didn’t, it didn’t at all.
I wanted to smack myself. Here I was telling Hal, why, when why didn’t matter anymore.
I was as good as dead. I lost Rage’s child.
But did it even matter anymore? Why would I get out now? Maybe there was a part of me that deserved to die at this point. I had a choice before. It was a shit choice, but it was one. I could have left for my boy. I could have run to the ends of the Earth and bought him the chance to be born, just maybe. And then he would have been safe and alive, and I could have died. I could have put him somewhere he would have never been found by Rage. Rage might not have ever known.
Whatever was coming for me, I had to be strong, but on the inside, I was being ripped apart. I didn’t realize until this moment, with my womb empty, that the only reason I had to still be living and going and trying was my beautiful boy. I don't know what I thought would happen when I was really showing or when I had him. I could not see Rage being okay with it unless he saw his successor, and then, he would endure more abuse than I ever did to make him tough, to make him in Rage’s image, but I damn sure wanted to find out. Find out if I could be a good enough mother and get him the hell out and raise a better man than the one who donated his sperm to create him. Now, that was gone. I had nothing left. But I was still here.
***
Out of everyone that Rage would’ve sent to pick me up from the hospital three days later, I least expected it to be Tex. Truth be told, I hadn’t seen the man in a bit. We were both good at avoiding each other in the club. Or – scratch that. I was good at avoiding him whenever he was in the club.
There were some days I couldn’t avoid him and had to face him. Those days were the absolute hardest for me.
I didn’t know why I put myself through avoiding Tex. It was not like he was this horrible guy that I couldn’t stand to be near; he was the complete opposite. When I thought about it all, it hit me like a freight train.
I avoided Tex because I was ashamed of myself, or more importantly, for the decisions that I’d made which have brought me here today.
There was a time where I could have made the right decision. Tex would have been my right decision, and still, I chose Rage. I chose the wildcard. Look how well that worked out for me thus far. In the end, it didn’t matter. I made my choices, and now I had to live with them and the consequences that surrounded them.
“What time am I supposed to be back?” I ask Tex, who was leaning against the doorframe staring at me. He looked different than he did a few weeks ago. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but his entire demeanor seemed to have changed. He wasn’t tossing around jokes or smiling like he normally did when I saw him. Right now, he seemed quite furious, or maybe aggravated. Maybe he was annoyed he was given the prospect’s job of picking me up from the hospital and taking me home.
Kolt, our newest prospect, was normally the one that picked me up from the hospital. The fact that Tex was doing it made me a tad nervous. It raised all of my red flags. Alarm bells were ringing on a constant loop inside my head. All I could seem to think about was how Tex was probably delivering me to my fate. He was going to take me straight to Rage, and that would be the end of my life.
“Soon, so let’s break you outta here,” Tex mutters. He stride over to my bedside and gives me a good look over. “Are you alright?” I didn’t mistake the emotion in his voice as he asks me that question. Physically, I’d be fine. Emotionally, I’d be fucked.
“A-ok”
“Right.” He goes over to the cabinet where the duffel bag filled with clothes Kolt brought me the night before. Quinn made sure I had new clothes to change into when I was on my way home. It was something she always did for me.