Her fists clench and release repeatedly, like she’s remembering how to use her fingers. “I couldn’t move,” she whispers. “I tried to- I tried to fight, but-” Her breathing fractures again. “My body just… stopped.”
I see Alex shift in his seat, not closer but listening harder.
“I couldn’t scream,” she continues, her voice hollowing out. “I couldn’t even breathe right. I could feel everything, but I couldn’t-” She chokes on her words again. “I was just… stuck.”
My mind is spiraling. Shewasadministered a paralytic. Nadine was right; they’re using it to kill their victims. “Okay,”I say softly, grounding her again. “You’re not there anymore. You’re here with me.”
Her eyes snap back to mine, tears spilling over. “They put something in my throat.”
My pulse spikes. “What do you mean?” I ask, keeping my voice steady by sheer force.
“A tube,” she whispers. “They put a tube down my throat.”
Jesus.
“I could hear myself breathing,” her voice shakes as she unravels. “But it wasn’t me. I wasn’t doing it.”
Mechanical ventilation… while conscious. They stuck an endotracheal tube down her throat while she wasawake? My stomach twists hard.
“I couldn’t move,” she repeats. “I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t-” Her voice breaks completely this time.
I adjust the oxygen slightly, to accommodate for all the talking she’s doing. “Hey, stay with me. You’re safe now. Nothing is going to happen to you here.”
She shakes her head again, tears streaking through the dirt on her face and catching at the edge of the mask. “They waited, said I had to be calm enough first. That I had to learn.”
A knot forms in my chest.
“Then they left,” she murmurs. “And someone else came in, some guy in a suit.”
She pauses long enough for silence to fill the rig. Even the siren feels distant for a second. Her hands tremble, fiddling with the elastic band on the non-rebreather mask. I wait, expecting her to pull it off. But she doesn’t, finally letting her hands fall back to her lap.
“I couldn’t move,” she says again, like she needs me to understand that part most of all. “But I felt all of it. Heusedme… like I wasn’t even a person. Just a hole. It hurt. I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t…”
She doesn’t finish the sentence. She doesn’t have to.
The air in the rig feels too thick and heavy.
Behind her, Alex isn’t moving anymore. Instead, his expression is filled with anger and restraint, and he looks like he’s holding himself together by a thread.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, because it’s the only thing that doesn’t feel like a lie. Telling her it’ll be okay feels like a farce; I can’t say it to her right now but I’m just not sure. The only thing I know for sure right now is that I’m scared too. I thought, and the detectives did too, that this ring was killing their victims with a paralytic so that they could never talk. But it’s all so much more horrible than that.
Her eyes search mine. “They said it would be easier if I didn’t fight,” she whispers.
My throat tightens. “They lied,” I tell her quietly.
Her breathing stutters again. “I ran,” she suddenly says, like it’s extremely important that I know that she fought to do that. “I waited until they forgot about me. Until they thought I was-” Her voice shakes. “Until they thought I was broken.”
My chest aches. “You’re not broken” I tell her. “You got out.”
Her eyes close briefly. “I didn’t think I would,” she admits.
Her oxygen climbs, eighty-nine now. Still not good, but better so I adjust the mask again, check her pulse, her respirations, and grounding myself in the rhythm of the work so I don’t get pulled into my own thoughts and the fear.
And it’s terrifying without even going through what she has.
I reach for my tablet with one hand, documenting as I go. The voice recognition is picking up everything she says, surprisingly given how quietly she’s speaking because of the hypoxia.
Behind her, I hear a quiet shift. I glance up at Alex, still out of her sight. But his eyes are on mine. On her. On everything. There’s no distance in them now, no detachment. Just something raw and dangerous.
