3: 3
I grabbed the scalpel from the tray on the clinic table.
I dragged it hard and fast across my wrist, and the blood came at once.
Stan lunged over and wrenched the blade away.
I was crying, screaming that it was my fault, that if I hadn't opened that door Mom and my little brother would still be alive.
He suddenly caught my face in his hands, made me look at him.
He said that door, even if I hadn't opened it,
my father would have found some other way through it.
The tragedy would still have happened afterward.
It was never my fault.
The one to blame, start to finish, was that man and no one else.
The boy held me tight, terrified I'd do something reckless again.
"If you die, your mom won't be able to close her eyes up in heaven. The right thing is to live well, for her."
He held me until I stopped shaking, and then he said,
"I got into the high school in the city. I've already arranged for you to transfer in with me. We'll leave together, and we'll never come back."
Even as a kid, he was smarter than the other children in the village.
It took me many years to work it out. That wisdom of Stan's, far beyond his age,
maybe it came from the woman who'd been trafficked into those mountains, the one I set free in secret.
At eighteen he stood there with his Harborough University acceptance letter and put his arms around me, saying we'd never have to hide again, that he'd protect me forever.
He said it was a thought he'd carried since the day he first lifted me up and carried me to the clinic.
Fresh out of school, trying to get a foothold in the big city, we crammed into a ten-square-meter rental in the old downtown neighborhood.
He pulled back-to-back day and night shifts during his hospital residency, and I did admin work and picked up freelance copywriting on the side.
Every day we were so tired we fell asleep the moment we hit the bed.
His white coat always had hospital candy in the pocket, snuck out for me.
That tiny rental in the old neighborhood, we were dead broke, but we loved each other more truly than at any other time.
We held each other up for more than ten years. How good it would have been if we could have just gone on like that...
"Ms. Swanson, your medication is ready."
My blank face was reflected in the glass of the pharmacy window.
It wasn't until someone behind me lightly touched my arm that I snapped out of it and quickly reached for the medicine.
Today was the tenth day after the miscarriage, and I'd come back to the hospital for a follow-up because of complications from intrauterine adhesions.
Just as I turned around with the medicine in hand, Stan and Savannah came walking up, chatting and laughing together.
"Claire, why didn't you tell us ahead of time you were coming in to see a doctor?"
Seeing that I said nothing, Savannah's tone carried a hint of showing off.
"If Stan had known, he'd definitely have come with you. Look, I was on night shift last night, and when I got off this morning he insisted on waiting for me at the hospital entrance. He said it wasn't safe for a girl to walk down an empty road so early in the morning."
Stan's gaze moved off of Savannah and landed on my face, as bland as water, and he asked offhandedly,
"What are you doing here?"
Seeing that I ignored him, he turned to leave.
He snatched the medicine bag out of my hand, glanced over it twice, his tone full of impatience.
"The baby's been gone almost ten days now. Why are you still coming to the hospital making a fuss? If you'd been more careful back then, none of this would've happened."
Something went cold in me, and I couldn't be bothered to argue with him.
The truth was, if he had paid the slightest attention, he'd have known that all these days my face had been pale and I kept pressing my stomach.
It was the constant dragging pain from tissue that hadn't fully cleared out of my womb.
At night the pain kept me tossing and turning, unable to lie still.
It was nothing like the fuss he imagined.
Too bad he was busy working while squeezing in time to take Savannah out everywhere.
There was no spare attention left over for me.
Seeing that I still had no intention of dealing with him, his anger flared up.
"Stop right there! I'm not done talking. Where do you think you're going?"
"Where have you been these past few days?"
"A married woman not going home for days, what does that look like?"
His voice, too anxious, too high, made the people in line at the pharmacy turn to stare.
Just then my phone buzzed with the alert that my Uber had arrived. I met his eyes calmly.
"Get your emotions under control."
In recent years, whenever I broke down at him, Stan had always brushed me off with that exact line.
Like a pane of cold glass, seemingly weightless, yet able to instantly block back every surge of feeling I had.
I knew too well how much power that line held.
Sure enough, his face tightened, and after a few seconds of silence he looked at Savannah.
"Can you get a car home on your own? Let me drop off—"
I cut Stan off coldly.
"My car's already here."
