Packed deep inside the cavernous wound was a thick, grayish-white paste. It was bubbling slightly, actively eating into my muscle tissue.
And holding the edges of my melted skin together were thick, crude, black stitches. They weren’t medical sutures. It was heavy, black nylon fishing line, violently pushed through my healthy skin and tied in rigid knots to keep the gray chemical paste trapped inside my leg.
I couldn’t breathe. The room started to spin in a sickening, chaotic tilt.
“You put something inside me,” I whispered, turning my head slowly to look at the corner of the room.
Helen was standing there. The pulsing red light caught the edge of her expensive pearl earrings, making them flash like tiny warning beacons.
She wasn’t looking at my leg. She was looking at Nurse Sarah. Her face was entirely devoid of emotion. It was a blank, terrifying mask of absolute calm.
“It is a traditional drawing salve,” Helen said. Her voice was perfectly steady, lacking even a single ounce of panic. “It is meant to break down the impurities in the blood. You are being hysterical, Maya.”
“That is industrial lye,” Sarah said, her voice dropping into a dangerous, low register.
Sarah let go of the cart. She slowly moved her body, shifting her weight so she was standing directly between Helen and the examination table. She was using her own body as a physical shield for me.
“You packed a pregnant woman’s open flesh with an alkaline corrosive,” Sarah continued, her voice shaking with disgust. “You sealed it with electrical tape to force the chemical burn deeper into her bloodstream. You are intentionally poisoning her.”
Helen simply adjusted the sleeve of her pristine white cashmere sweater.
“She is a weak vessel,” Helen stated coldly, as if she were discussing a slightly bruised piece of fruit at the grocery store.
“She has been complaining since the second trimester. She is not strong enough to raise Mark’s child. I am simply ensuring the infection forces her body into labor now, while I am here to take over. The baby is fully viable at thirty-four weeks. I checked.”
My heart stopped.
The words hit me like a physical blow to the chest. The heavy, narcotic fog in my brain suddenly cleared, replaced by a jagged, blinding spike of pure adrenaline.
The accident in the basement.
The lightbulb that had mysteriously burned out right before I walked down the stairs. The heavy, jagged piece of metal perfectly positioned at the bottom step.
She hadn’t just bandaged the wound. She had created it.
“You did this to me,” I sobbed, clutching my swollen belly with both hands, trying to protect the slow, erratic heartbeat echoing from the machine. “You pushed me.”
“I didn’t have to push you, Maya,” Helen sighed, a tiny, disappointed smile touching the corners of her mouth. “You are clumsy. You always have been. Mark knows how clumsy you are.”
Sarah didn’t waste another second talking to her.
The nurse spun around and grabbed a heavy, thick trauma pad from the open drawer behind her.
“Maya, listen to me,” Sarah said, her face suddenly inches from mine. “I cannot wash this out. If I apply water to raw lye, it will trigger an exothermic reaction. It will literally boil your muscle.”
I whimpered, squeezing my eyes shut as another massive contraction ripped through my lower back. The pain in my leg felt like a thousand hot needles driving directly into my bone.
“I am going to wrap it dry,” Sarah whispered rapidly, her eyes darting between my face and Helen in the corner. “I hit the active threat button. The doors are magnetically locked. Hospital security and local police are already on their way up to this floor.”
“She won’t make it to the hospital,” Helen said calmly from the shadows.
Sarah ignored her. She gently placed the thick, dry trauma pad over the bubbling gray paste in my leg.
Just the light pressure made me scream. It was a raw, animalistic sound that tore my throat. I threw my head back against the crinkling paper, my fingers digging into the metal rails of the table until my joints popped.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Sarah apologized quickly, her voice breaking slightly. She quickly wrapped a heavy compression bandage around my calf, tying it tight to stop the bleeding without adding moisture.
“Sarah, my baby,” I gasped, struggling to pull air into my burning lungs. “The heartbeat. It’s too slow.”
Sarah looked at the fetal monitor. The digital numbers were dropping in a terrifying, steady decline.
The poison in my blood was crossing the placenta. The alkaline chemicals were shutting down my body, and my baby was suffocating inside me.
“I know, honey, I know,” Sarah said, her voice strained. She reached over and grabbed a clear plastic oxygen mask from the wall unit.
She turned the dial, and a loud, aggressive hiss filled the room. She pressed the mask firmly over my nose and mouth, snapping the elastic band behind my head.
“Breathe deep, Maya. Push the oxygen to the baby,” Sarah ordered, her hands moving with frantic, practiced efficiency.
She grabbed an IV bag of saline from the hook above the counter. She ripped a sterile needle from its paper packaging with her teeth, not taking her eyes off Helen for more than a second.
“Give me your arm,” Sarah demanded.
I held out my right arm, shaking violently. The cold sweat was pouring into my eyes, stinging and blurring my vision.
“Do not put that in her,” Helen ordered.
For the first time, Helen’s voice lost its calm facade. A sharp, ugly edge of genuine anger cracked through her polite tone.
She stepped out of the corner, moving directly into the center of the pulsing red light.
“If you dilute her blood, you will slow down the labor,” Helen commanded, taking another step toward the examination table. “I need the child out of her right now. Before the police get here.”
Sarah didn’t hesitate. She shoved the heavy, rolling medical cart forcefully backward.
The metal wheels shrieked against the linoleum. The heavy cart slammed directly into Helen’s waist, forcing her to stumble backward with a sharp gasp of surprise.
“Stay exactly where you are,” Sarah roared, pulling a heavy pair of stainless steel medical shears from her scrub pocket.
She gripped the heavy metal handles like a weapon, pointing the sharp, curved blades directly at Helen’s chest.
“I will cut your throat if you take one more step toward my patient,” Sarah said.
There was no hesitation in the nurse’s voice. It was a cold, absolute promise. Sarah’s chest was heaving, but her hand holding the heavy shears did not shake.
Helen looked at the scissors. Then she looked up at Sarah’s face.
The older woman slowly straightened her posture, smoothing down the front of her cashmere sweater where the cart had hit her. A dark, terrifying smile spread across her perfect, wrinkled face.
“You are very brave, Nurse,” Helen mocked quietly. “But you are trapped in a locked room with a dying woman. I don’t have to touch her. The lye is already in her bloodstream. I just have to wait.”
Helen crossed her arms, leaning back against the locked wooden door.
I let out a muffled sob through the plastic oxygen mask. My entire body was vibrating with a deep, systemic shock.
The fever was cooking my brain. I felt like I was floating, disconnected from the freezing air of the clinic, anchored only by the blinding, mechanical pain pulsing in my left leg.
“Sarah,” I whispered, my breath fogging up the plastic mask. “Please don’t let her take my baby.”
“She’s not touching your baby, Maya,” Sarah promised, never taking her eyes off Helen.
Sarah reached over blindly with her left hand, feeling for my arm. She found my vein with a practiced touch and slid the IV needle into my skin.
She taped it down quickly, opening the valve to let the cold saline rush into my poisoned veins.
The cold fluid felt like ice water hitting a burning stove. I shivered violently, my teeth chattering together so hard I bit the inside of my cheek. The metallic taste of my own blood filled my mouth, mixing with the stale, recycled oxygen from the wall unit.
Suddenly, a loud, heavy pounding echoed from the hallway outside.
Someone was slamming their fists against the heavy wooden door of the examination room.
“Sarah! It’s Dr. Evans! Security is with me!” a muffled male voice shouted from the other side. “The magnetic lock is jammed! We’re trying to override the panel!”
Sarah let out a heavy, shuddering breath of relief.
“We are in here!” Sarah screamed over her shoulder. “Patient is coding! Suspected chemical poisoning! Bring a crash cart and a breach tool!”
Helen didn’t panic at the sound of the doctor. She didn’t look for a way to escape. She just stood by the door, staring at me with those cold, empty blue eyes.
Then, something inside me ruptured.
It wasn’t a contraction. It was a deep, physical tearing sensation low in my pelvis.
A sudden rush of warm, heavy fluid flooded out of me, soaking instantly through the thin paper gown and pooling onto the crinkling paper of the examination table.
My water had broken.
The thick fluid wasn’t clear. I could see the dark, frightening tint of meconium and blood mixing on the white paper. The baby was dying, and my body was violently trying to expel it to survive.
The fetal monitor started screaming.
It was a sharp, high-pitched, continuous alarm. The slow, erratic thumps had flatlined into a constant, terrifying tone. The numbers on the screen flashed red.
“No, no, no,” I sobbed, ripping the oxygen mask off my face. “Sarah! The baby!”
Sarah dropped the medical shears on the tray. She lunged toward my stomach, grabbing the ultrasound wand and pressing it desperately against my skin, searching for a heartbeat.
“Come on, little one. Come on, stay with me,” Sarah pleaded, her voice cracking with pure panic. She pushed the wand deep into my swollen flesh, her eyes darting frantically across the empty, flatlining screen.
The pounding on the door grew louder. I could hear the heavy, metallic scrape of a crowbar being wedged into the door frame outside.
“Stand back!” a deep voice yelled from the hallway.
Helen slowly stepped away from the door. She walked to the center of the room, standing right at the foot of my bed.
I looked at her, my vision blurring with tears and fever. My baby was dying inside me, and this woman was watching it happen with a faint, satisfied smile.
“Why?” I managed to whisper, the word scraping out of my raw throat. “Why are you doing this?”
Helen looked at me, her eyes completely dead.
“Because you are weak, Maya,” Helen answered softly, her voice carrying easily over the screeching alarm of the fetal monitor. “And Mark deserves a strong family.”
The heavy metal door frame groaned loudly under the pressure of the crowbar outside.
“Mark loves me,” I cried, clutching the side of the table, my whole body convulsing with a fresh, tearing contraction. “He’ll kill you for this.”
Helen’s smile widened slightly. It was a terrible, pitying look.
“Oh, Maya,” Helen whispered, leaning in closer, the red light casting deep shadows over her face.
“Why do you think Mark went to London?”
She paused, letting the silence hang in the air for one agonizing second beneath the screech of the medical alarm.
“He couldn’t be in the house when it happened.”
