Obstetrix(14)

Honestly, it kind of had.

Joy would reach term in eight weeks. If I was still here at the end of March, I would in fact need to perform a C-section on her, for her sake as well as mine, and hope for the best.

I thought about the man’s comment about Sarah not having a grave. Did he mean that they’d murder one of their own members for shirking their work? Or was Sarah an abductee, like me, originally, with a raging case of Stockholm syndrome? I’d read an article years ago (because it came across my social media) about how Stockholm syndrome was kind of a myth, that the original Stockholm kidnapping victims had distrusted the police for good and valid reasons, and this seemed so inexplicable we’d made up a whole syndrome for it. On the other hand, Patty Hearst had been persuaded to commit actual crimes on behalf of her kidnappers. I couldn’t remember what her captors had done to her, and my mind started circling through various horrifying possibilities if these people decided to try to brainwash me.

I sat up and turned my light back on. This was not going to get me to sleep. At home, I dealt with anxiety-induced insomnia, the kind where my brain took me on a tour of past traumas or spun up images of future ones, by reading. Especially rereading. Especially The Onyx Dagger.

I didn’t have my book, or any other book, but I had reread the opening page so many times I could almost see it in my head. After a minute I turned my light back out, lay down, and summoned it up as best I could.

The cold wind brought the smell of snow, and Deirdre, red-faced from the cold, paused in the stable yard, breathing in a deep breath of it. “My lady,” the page said. “Your father said to send you in, directly.”

“Oh, I know,” she said, giving him a quick smile. “I promise I won’t delay much.”



I couldn’t remember the exact words that came after the opening but I remembered the scene: the traveler that comes thundering into the stable yard, hurrying past the princess into her father’s audience chambers. Being sent off for dinner with her ladies. The decision to slip down and eavesdrop …

Wrapped in the familiarity of the story, I dropped into sleep.

… only to dream that I was in the Ward County jail, trying to call my dad. But the phone had no numbers on the keypad, and when in the dream I thought, It’s okay, phones always put their numbers in the same layout, the keys suddenly multiplied so I was trying to dial his number on a five-by-five unmarked grid. “Hurry up,” someone was saying behind me. “Hurry up! You’re almost out of time—”

I woke with a gasp. It was still night.

I used my little lavatory and then put on my shoes and coat and stepped outside. I’d been wondering how closely I was watched, especially at night, and “I had a nightmare and wanted to take a little walk to clear my head” was a perfectly reasonable explanation for going out, if anyone asked. I let the door shut behind me to keep the warm air inside, and went for a walk up and down the row of houses.

Motion-sensor lights snapped on as I walked, but otherwise the compound was quiet and dark. There was one little hut down at the very end that had its light on, and as I walked a lap, a man came out of it; he met me back in front of my hut. I didn’t recognize him, but I was relieved it wasn’t Calum.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I had a nightmare,” I said. “I wanted to go for a walk to get it out of my head.”

“Okay,” he said, and made a “carry on, then” sort of gesture as he sat down on my doorstep to watch me.

I did another lap. “Are you my minder?” I asked when I circled back.

“Not yours specifically. If a little kid went wandering in the night, that wouldn’t be good. And if someone wakes up and needs help overnight, they can just call the night watchman.”

“Is there a way I can call for you?”

He pointed at a little button like a doorbell just inside my door. “Use that.”

I did another lap, but I was getting very cold. “What’s your name?” I asked when I got back to my hut.

“I’m Brother Ethan.”

My blood turned cold as I realized he was the person who’d killed the other doctor. “Oh,” I said. “I heard about you.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Sleep well, Doc. It’s four a.m.; you’ve got a while before the breakfast bell rings.”

I didn’t fall back to sleep, despite the words sleep when they let you sleep echoing through my thoughts like an accusation. The guard was the other doctor’s murderer; he watched over the community at night, and the motion-sensor lights told him anytime someone was moving around.

I started thinking of possible ways to solve the problem of the lights. There might be power outages; I could bolt during a power outage. Of course, running around without a flashlight was a good way to get lost or injured, and running around with a flashlight was a good way to get found before I’d made it to safety.

I’d caught my father smoking on the sly when I was nine because a light, even a tiny light, is so easy to see at night. We had a park at the end of the street and he’d gone out for a walk. I wanted his help with a homework assignment and had gone out looking for him. He’d put the cigarette out by the time I caught up with him, but it was too late; I’d seen it.

I was so mad, because he’d pretended to quit months earlier, after I’d delivered a lecture on how I didn’t want him to die of cancer. He told me it was hard to quit, and I didn’t believe him, because all he had to do was not light a cigarette, how could that possibly be hard? Hard was things like memorizing the multiplication tables, a task I had completely failed at, to the exasperation of my teacher and both my parents.