Focusing back on Dr. Edgeway, I continued on. “I guess it was just two days ago when I met Sarah, and she asked me to take the ring and keep it for her. Since none of the other girls had been so attached to what they had, I felt I had to do as she asked. So I took it. And when Mendoza noticed it on my hand,I lied and told him I had wanted to pretend it was a present from him.” Revulsion rose in me at the memory of having to play those survival games. “After he beat me, he let me keep it.”
Dr. Edgeway cursed under his breath. “I’m sorry you endured that just to make Sarah feel better.”
Tears stung my eyes. Tears of anger. Tears of anguish. Tears of desperation. While I should have been touched by Dr. Edgeway apologizing for the physical pain I had endured, the blackened part of my soul wanted to lash out at him. How could he possibly think his sorrow could ever take away the degrading and deplorable things that I had gone through? Words only minimalized the suffering I had been through. But just as fast as the rage had risen up inside me, the more rational side of my mind reasoned that the man before me was a grief-stricken father trying his best to wade through the quicksand of grief he now found himself in. “I’m just sorry I never got the chance to return it to her.” My voice hitched as I in turn minimalized his suffering with mere words.
“So am I,” he replied. With an agonized sigh, he slipped the ring back in his pocket. “I suppose we better get to the task at hand before Rev wonders what is going on in here.”
“Okay,” I replied, as I wiped the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand.
He eyed the machines I was hooked up to and handled the IV bag. “While I should be grateful there was a hospital to bring you to in this God forsaken place, I’m not impressed with their level of care compared to back in the states,” he remarked.
When he reached for the sheet, I involuntarily gripped the edges tighter. Closing my eyes, I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. It’s to be expected after what you’ve been through, especially with a male doctor.”
After I released the fabric, Dr. Edgeway pulled the sheet down and then eased my gown up over my abdomen. “Theincision looks like it is healing well, no signs of infection.” When he lightly tapped my stomach, I flinched. “It’s not surprising that you’re sore. Besides the surgery, you had been worked over quite extensively.”
“What exactly did you have to do?”
Dr. Edgeway didn’t immediately respond. Instead, he put down my gown and pulled the sheet back up. Finally, after what felt like an eternity had passed, he cleared his throat. “The blunt force trauma you sustained caused your spleen to rupture. If Rev hadn’t found you when he did, you would have died from internal hemorrhaging in a matter of another hour.”
Bile rose in my throat as I painfully recalled my last hours in the compound. “I’m not too surprised that Mendoza left me to die…he wanted me dead.”
“It was pretty evident from your injuries that’s what he intended.”
“So you just had to take out my spleen?”
After glancing down at the tile floor, Dr. Edgeway shook his head. “The blunt force trauma also caused a miscarriage—” My gasp of horror forced his gaze to meet mine.
“I was…pregnant?”
“Yes. You were.”
I could barely wrap my mind around such a thought. Of course, I had long been denied my birth control pills while in captivity, and since I was owned by Mendoza, he didn’t bother with condoms. I guess nature had taken its course. But the thought of carrying that monster’s child made my stomach roll in revulsion. At least there were some small mercies, and I had lost the baby. As much as I loved and wanted children someday, I didn’t think I could have withstood raising a child of Mendoza’s.
“But I’m afraid that’s not the worst of it.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The miscarriage caused a tear in your uterine lining, which couldn’t be repaired. The only way to stop the bleeding was to perform an emergency hysterectomy.”
Although Dr. Edgeway appeared to continue speaking, I couldn’t make out anything else he said. Absently, my hand came to rest on my abdomen.My now barren abdomen.“I can’t have children,” I whispered in disbelief. At any moment, I hoped and prayed that I would wake up from the nightmare, even if it found me back at Mendoza’s compound.
“You can’t carry a child, but you can still have a child of your own.”
“What?” I questioned absently.
“Annabel, look at me,” Dr. Edgeway instructed. When I finally met his gaze, he said, “You still have your ovaries. With today’s modern fertility treatments, you can have your own child via a surrogate. It isn’t impossible, especially for someone from your background.”
I know he didn’t intend it, but it sounded like Dr. Edgeway thought that I should be grateful for the wealthy background I came from. Allegedly it would be my salvation—the only way I could ever have a child of my own flesh and blood. But at that moment, money, status, prestige didn’t mean shit. It sure as hell hadn’t saved me from Mendoza. And there was no way financial wealth could reassemble the fractured pieces of my life. There were some things that money simply could not buy.
“Annabel, you will heal and move on.”
“But I’ll never have life within me,” I challenged.
He shook his head slowly. “No. You won’t.”
I felt like I was being pummeled with new waves of grief and loss. After all I had endured, now I had survived, only to learn I could never carry a child?
