The harder I tried to grasp what I recalled, what happened just before I passed out in the wintry cold, the faster the memories slipped out of my reach. Gone like figments of dreams. But I hadn’t dreamed it. Right?
Eventually, I came to, taking inventory of my body and the aches and pains it endured. No stinky odors reached my nose. That was the first clue I leaned on. Perhaps I was taken to a new location.
Oh, God.
What if Erik and Yusef found me?
Am I at my new husband’s house?
Fear lanced through me, waking me fully at that horror.
The dimly lit bedroom wasn’t at all what I expected. I expected more of the previous life I’d left behind, a meagerly decorated bedroom with a shitty mattress, or if not that, a thin cot on the floor.
Here, I was in a bed. Arealone. Without bugs creeping out from the seams. No stains still damp under my body from previous users. No springs poking into my back.
A fluffy pillow hosted my head that ached and throbbed.
Sheets—clean and damn-near new with how pure white they looked—covered me. The blanket draped over my still body was plush. Warm. Expensive.
What is this?
Where am I?
Panic cut through me, pushing me straight into a twisted defense mechanism of shock. That numbness returned, an ever-reliant mask to protect me from worse horrors.
What’s going on?
Where is this place?
Nothing stood out as a clue. I was alone in this bed. Under the dim light falling in through an enormous window that showed a distant view of the cityscape, I had more of a chance to realize I really might have been drugged. An IV bag was hung from a stand next to the bed. Scared and confused, I yanked the lead out from under my skin, wincing at the sting of extracting a needle so roughly.
Oh, God.
Fuck.
This was worse than what I ever could’ve imagined.
My husband must have me now. And he was drugging me to keep me docile.
Beeps sounded as soon as I flung off a strange plastic brace that was lightly pressing on my fingertip. Then these sticky pads. I wrenched them off my upper chest, appalled that someone had taken my clothes off.
Oh, fuck.
Fuck.
God.
What is going on?
A nurse entered the room, likely alerted to the beeping I’d caused from these medical things being removed. She startled, her eyes going wide at me sitting upright and fighting the sheets and covers to get up.
“Al—” The nurse hurried into the room, alarmed. “Miss Raisa.”
No.
That can’t be true.
Raisa?
