First Violence
Lena
The mobile clinic feels diseased with his watching. Every surface might hide a camera. Every conversation could be recorded. Three days since I left his office, and I still catch myself performing normalcy for invisible eyes—straightening my scrubs, moderating my expression, censoring my exhaustion. The betrayal sits under my skin like an infection, spreading with each heartbeat.
Maria's son wheezes on the exam table, his asthma exacerbated by stress because even children can feel when the world's about to burn. I listen to his lungs, trying not to think about how Zane probably knows exactly what medications I'm giving, what dosage, what Maria can't afford.
"Miss Lena?" Maria touches my arm gently, and I flinch—every touch feels monitored now. "You okay? You look pale."
"Estoy bien," I lie, the Spanish coming easier these days, like reverting to my mother tongue is a way to hide from his surveillance. But he probably has translation apps. Probably knows what I dream in both languages.
"You sure? You've been different lately. Más triste."
Sadder. Yes. That's one word for discovering you've been living in a glass cage, performing intimacy for an audience of one.
Before I can respond, I smell it.
Smoke—sharp and chemical, the kind that means accelerant and intention. My body knows before my brain processes: we're under attack.
"¡Vámonos! Everyone out!" Spanish first in panic, my grandmother's voice coming through my throat. I grab Maria's son, feeling his tiny heart hammering against my chest like a trapped bird. She grabs my medical bag, and we run.
The explosion happens in slow motion and all at once—the Molotov cocktail through my windshield, the whoosh of oxygen being devoured, the van I bought with my own money becoming a crematorium for my dreams. The force throws me forward, and time splits: I'm falling, I'm already on the ground, I'm still standing. My body curls around my belly, protecting the onlything that's truly mine, and I taste copper and carbon, blood and smoke.
Through the chaos, I see them: Iron Talons colors disappearing into darkness. My brother's justice. My brother's message written in fire: traitors burn.
"¡Mi hijo! ¡Mi hijo!" Maria's screaming cuts through the roar, primal maternal terror.
"He's okay! He's here!" I pass him to her, then double over as my uterus clenches—a fist around something too precious to release, too dangerous to keep. The cramp radiates from my core, speaking a language older than English or Spanish: danger, danger, danger.
St. Mary's emergency department receives me differently now. Not as a nurse, not even as a patient, but as evidence of a war crime. Dr. Morrison's face stays carefully neutral as she runs the ultrasound wand over my belly, but I can read the concern in how her jaw tightens.
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
Too fast. I know the normal ranges, know what this acceleration means. My baby's heart is writing its own SOS in beats per minute.
"Baby's showing significant stress," Morrison says, each word carefully chosen. "Heart rate's at 180, you're having regular contractions every twelve minutes, and your blood pressure..." She pauses. "Lena, your body is treating this pregnancy like a threat."
"I know." The medical knowledge makes it worse—understanding exactly how stress hormones cross the placental barrier, how my cortisol becomes the baby's cortisol, how my trauma writes itself into their developing nervous system.
Izzy bursts in, still in her restaurant uniform, smelling like sofrito and fear. "¡Ay, Dios mío! Lena, mi amor—" She sees the monitors, the baby's distressed rhythm. "The baby?"
"Aguantando," I tell her in Spanish. Hanging on. Barely.
Zane appears in the doorway—soot on his clothes, murder in his eyes, his presence sucking all the oxygen from the room. He looks at the monitor showing our baby's distress, and I watch his face cycle through expressions: rage, devastation, calculation. His thumb finds his wrist pulse again, that tell I now recognize.
"Don't." I know that look, know it promises blood for blood. "Whatever you're thinking—"
"They tried to kill you." His voice comes out too controlled, like pressure compressed past its breaking point. "You were inside. Our child was inside."
"We survived—"
"This time." He moves closer, and I smell smoke on him too—his losses mixing with mine in the recycled hospital air. "What about next time?"
Izzy steps between us, all five-foot-two of Puerto Rican fury, her body vibrating with protective rage. "You need to leave. Now. Before I call security."
"Izzy—" I start, but another contraction steals my words, my uterus practicing for an eviction that's too early, too dangerous.
"No, mija. This pendejo has done enough. Three months of stalking you like a psycho and now he wants to play concerned father?" She turns to Zane, switching to English for his benefit. "You want to help? Stop the war. Otherwise, vete pa'l carajo."
