Page 168 of Into the Dark

All I can think about as he talks to me in soft, hushed tones and dabs at my broken, battered skin is that they, comrades in health preservation, know I just caused the death of another human being.

When Reed returns with clothes, Graham and his colleague—whose name has escaped me—tell me they’ll ready the ambulance for me. Jake would want me to go with them. He’d never forgive me if I let something happen to the baby. There’s no pain below my neck at all and absolutely nothing to suggest there’s anything wrong with the baby, but he’d never forgive me for taking the chance.

Yet when I examine it, there’s something defiant in my resistance. Something screaming—silent, but at the top of its lungs—that if he wants me to go to the bloody hospital then he should bloody well be here to take me. It’s stupid. I know this. I’m being a selfish, idiotic fool.

Mark stares at me expectantly while Reed stands by the living room door holding a bundle of my clothes. It’s a well-chosen bundle too. It makes me wonder if they teach them these things, what broken, battered women would feel most restored in: an oversize mustard sweater and soft gray leggings in my case.

“I just need to use the bathroom, then we can go,” I say finally, much to Mark’s relief. He looks askance at Reed with a quiet command for her to go with me upstairs.

Out in the hallway, someone has swept up most of the broken front door, so it’s now a mound of wood and glass on the inner vestibule. As I take the stairs, my legs wobble once more, white spots flickering in the edges of my vision, and when I close them, a new, white-hot thud of remembrance from Kevin’s fist shoots across my cheek up to my temple.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

It feels like he’s hit me all over again, and I have to grip onto the banister to move myself up the stairs, Reed following behind me on quiet feet ready to catch me if I fall.

There are more strangers in my bedroom. Gloved officers pointing at the floor and bed and smashed lamp.

“I’ll be waiting right here when you get out,” Reed says gently as I go to close the bathroom door behind me. I nod, grateful she isn’t going to follow me inside and watch me throw up, which I’m now certain I’m going to do as soon as I reach the toilet bowl.

She smiles a reassuring smile at me as I close the door all the way and turn the lock. On unsteady legs, I cross to the toilet, trying not to think about what the thumping inside my head, the dizziness, and the endless sickness might mean.

I’ve had a fright, that’s all. Nothing is real.

More salad and bile empty themselves down the toilet, and only when I’m pretty sure I have nothing left do I stand up and walk to the sink to rinse my mouth out and splash water on my face. The thumping becomes ever more painful with every movement, and as I stare back at my reflection, I hope it’s because he’s broken my cheekbone and nothing internal. It did feel like nothing when he did it. But he hit me hard—I can feel and see that now. He wanted me to black out. He wanted me unconscious and unable to fight back.

The mirror. The person staring back from it looks confused and disgusted. Who are you? Murderer. Killer. The words are hissed in Kevin’s voice, close to my ear, as if he’s in here with me, right behind me. Then, with an awful, sickening thud to the chest, I get it. He’ll always be with me now, won’t he? Wherever I go, whoever I’m with, he’ll be there too. When Jake touches me, I’ll feel Kevin’s touch or his fingers closing around my throat. When I nurse my baby against my breast, I’ll feel Kevin’s vile words whispered into my ear or his fist pounding my face.

Always. Forever.

An awful, almost suffocating feeling of aloneness overtakes me, so shocking and unexpected it brings tears to my eyes and snatches the air from my lungs. I feel adrift, no hope at all of being pulled back to land. I’m not going to be able to live with this. I can barely bloody breathe with the knowledge of what I’ve done. How can I live and love and function with the knowledge I drained the life from another human being? How can I do the job I need to do when I took a life so bloody easily?

Jake’s voice then: Stop that. Fucking stop that. You did what you had to do.

Yes. That’s it.

I did what I had to do. He was going to kill Jake. He promised it. He was going to rip my heart out, and I couldn’t let that happen. I had no other choice. I made a decision. I did what I had to do. Him or me. Him or Jake. Him or my baby.

I had no other choice.

God, Jake, where are you? I need you. I need you because without you, I won’t survive this. This suffocating emptiness is because he isn’t here. Because if he were here with me, holding me and soothing me, then this wouldn’t feel so fatal. Nothing feels fatal when he’s with me. He’s the strength I don’t have. He always has been.

The dizziness that comes then is sudden and hot and like nothing I’ve ever felt before. It feels like if I black out then I might never wake up again. It occurs to me then he must have hit me too hard. One punch from a fist like his could be dangerous. Two, deadly. Blood leaking out from a cracked skull.

The commotion from downstairs is sudden and loud. Men shouting, threats bellowed, orders thrown, voices angered. Loud movement coming up the stairs, pounding like Kevin as he chased me down them in the dark. I tense and gaze at the door in time to see the handle turn.

“Is she in there? Why is the fucking door locked?” He’s shouting, angry and panicked.

I almost pass out from the relief.

He’s here.

“Alex! Alex, baby, it’s me—open the door.” Another twist of the handle, more forceful this time. Why can’t I move? The door handle moves back and forth noisily, but I just stare at it. “Alex, please open the door. Please, it’s me.” He sounds more desperate than I’ve ever heard him, and I want to go to him, but I can’t move a bloody inch. The room is spinning, and I feel paralyzed, my bones locked together in some kind of failsafe mode. They’ll shatter if forced to move, I’m certain of it.

Mark’s voice then. Booming and authoritative. I don’t really hear the words though. Reed is talking too, but there’s only one voice I can really hear.

I’m terrified. Petrified of seeing him. Of having him see me. Now. Knowing what I’ve done. I’m not his perfect something good anymore; I’m dirty and spoiled, and he’ll see that the instant he looks at me.

Murderer. Killer.