Chapter 4

Nora's POV

My eyes opened to a psychiatric hospital bed. My arms and legs were strapped to the bed. I tried to shift, but I couldn't move any of them. A wave of panic crashed over me.

"Why am I restrained?" I yelled.

Evan answered from behind the glass of the observation room. "You pulled a knife at the reunion, Nora. They're holding you for seventy-two hours. The doctor suggested electroshock treatment. It could help you right away."

Rage boiled up inside me.

"I'm not crazy! My body won't survive that!"

The moment I objected, Clara stepped up to my bed. She had on a white coat and was holding the electroshock remote.

"If I call you mentally ill, that's what you are. Evan and I have history. He trusts me." She leaned closer.  "The ER ran a test when they brought you in. You're pregnant. I told him the blood was just your period, and he believed that too."

A baby. A child neither Evan nor I had known about. I looked down at my stomach, tears gathering in my eyes.

"After I cure your depression, you can thank me." Clara said.

She pointed the remote at a large screen and turned it on. What I saw made my breath catch.

It was the video Mom had recorded the night she died. Clara must have found her old phone in the keepsakes she'd bagged up. I had never been able to watch it. On the screen, Mom lay in a bathtub full of water and said my name into the camera.

"Nora, don't let any man do to you what was done to me."

Then she lifted the blade.

"Mom, no!"

My chest hurt so much I couldn't stand it. I fought the restraints with everything I had, but they didn't give. I screamed for my mother and dissolved into tears.

Clara laughed. "Can't take it? That's only the first part of exposure therapy. There's more."

She lifted the remote and switched the machine back on.

The voltage climbed. My body went dead, inch by inch. I only had flashes of clarity—overhead lights swimming together, voices somewhere nearby. With the pain and Mom's face on the screen, all I could do was stare.

Evan's voice came from the next room, shaky with fear. "That's enough. Get her out of there."

"The doctor ordered twenty minutes," Clara said. "Just wait."

I heard Evan retreat in the other room. He didn't say another word. Clara told him to wait, and he did.

My lower belly cramped harder and harder. When I glanced down, I saw blood—more than there should be. The baby couldn't have survived.

"Evan, please, let me out. I'm pregnant!" Tears streamed down my face.

"Just a little longer. Once you're cured, everything can go back to normal," he said. "You wanted a baby, right? Do what I say, and we'll have one."

Just days ago, Evan had held me in bed and said he wanted us to have a baby.

"I hope our baby looks like you," he'd said. "Smart and beautiful."

The baby was lost. I let out a bitter laugh and shook my head. Through the glass, Evan and Clara were laughing together in the next room while I bled.

One wrist strap had worked loose while I thrashed. I pulled my hand free and grabbed the live cable beside the bed. A burning shock tore through me. For one second, it felt like peace.

…

Third-Person POV

Evan was coming back from the cafeteria with dinner when a young nurse rushed past him.

"The new admission, Ms. Reed—she tried to end her life! Get her family on the phone!"

His heart dropped. He followed the nurse, shoving through the crowd, and froze when he saw the blood on the floor.