Released (Caged #3)(11)
“I’m…uh…I’m getting there,” I replied quietly.
With my heart starting to pound inside my chest, I labored to keep my breathing as normal as possible as I continued on.
“It was a Saturday about a week before Christmas,” I told her. “I still had about seven hundred dollars in cash, and I had been out shopping. I bought a bunch of shit for the baby and was going to stash it in Aimee’s room. Just walking up to the door, I had this weird feeling—like something was wrong. I don't know why, and maybe it's just in my head, but that's what I remember. Her mom was in the main room, and she didn't even look at me when I came in. She just gave me a little wave as I walked by.”
“The door to the bathroom was closed, and I figured Aimee was in there, so I went in her room and just hung out for a while. It wasn't long before that creepy feeling that something wasn't right came up again, so I went to the bathroom to check on her. “
My breath caught in my throat and drowned my words. I realized I was rocking back and forth on the floor in front of Tria and that she was no longer glaring but looking at me kind of quizzically instead.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You look kind of pale.”
“Just need to…keep going,” I said. My breaths were coming too fast, and I was starting to get a little dizzy.
Tria gave me a slight nod and sat back again.
“I called out to her, but she didn’t answer me. I was knocking then banging my fist on the door, but she still didn’t answer. Her mother was yelling at me to keep it down, but I just knew at that point something…something was wrong. Really wrong. So I busted the door open.”
I gasped as I tried to bring in more air to speak. My words came out staccato and breathy.
“The door pretty much flew off the hinges when I…when I kicked it. Aimee’s mom started yelling at me, but I don’t know what she said, because when I looked in the bathroom…”
My voice halted, and I couldn’t breathe right at all. My heart was pounding so fast in my chest that I was starting to get light-headed. My chest began to ache, and my throat felt like it was closing up on me. Baynor said I had post-traumatic stress or whatever—could that cause a heart attack?
I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to keep going.
“She…sh…she…she was on-on-on the floor,” I stammered, barely able to form the words. “Everything was covered in…in…in…in red…in blood. There was so much, so much blood…you couldn’t even see the floor. I...I…I took a step toward her, but I slipped…I fell…”
My throat closed up on me, and I couldn’t breathe at all. As I gasped for breath, I felt heated tears flowing out of my eyes and hands in my hair. Tria was kneeling on the floor in front of me with her arms around me.
“Calm down,” Tria’s soft voice commanded. “Liam, please—you are scaring me.”
I leaned against her, but the nausea in my stomach was overwhelming, and I had to shove her away long enough to get to the trash can so I could puke. When I was done, I wiped the back of my hand over my mouth and rocked back on my knees. Tria was yelling to Yolanda, saying I needed help. I didn’t know what I needed, but I couldn’t stop shaking, not even when Tria’s arms went back around me, and she held my head to her shoulder.
“Shh,” she said. “It’s okay, Liam. It’ll be okay. Just relax for now, okay?”
“N…n…no!”
I wanted to scream at myself. I had to do this—Dr. Baynor said I had to do this if I was going to have any chance at getting her back. Tria said as much as well. Yolanda wasn’t even going to let me in until I said I’d tell Tria everything. If I understood what was going on now, Yolanda was calling an ambulance.
I couldn’t stop now.
“I fell…I fell on…on…on this thing,” I sobbed. Tria tried to tell me to stop again, but I knew if I did I would never be able to finish, so I kept going. “I didn’t know what it was…it just looked like…looked like a chunk of meat lying on the floor. Like some piece of something the butcher would have thrown away after chopping up a cow or something. But when I looked closer…it was…it was him…it was our baby. I fell on him.”
“Oh my God,” I heard Tria utter, but I tried not to pay attention to her. I had to get through this, and the only way to do that was to just keep punching through the words. She pulled me against her, and I wrapped my arms around her back and tucked my head against her neck.
“Her mom was screaming behind me, and all I could do was sit in the middle of it. I couldn’t move, and…I…I couldn’t think. Her blood was all over me, and when I touched her, her arm was stiff. I didn’t want to look, but I kept looking back to…to him. Aimee’s mom was screaming…and she was crying and asking what I had done to her. I guess she must have called 911, because I couldn’t move. The ambulance came, and they eventually took me out of there when they came for...came for the…the bodies.”
I reached for the trash can again, but nothing came up. Tria was still holding me tightly, and I took a long breath and tried to blurt everything else out in one long sentence.
“They took me in an ambulance as well, and they said I was suffering from shock, and when I was in the ER, they told me Aimee had a miscarriage and hemorrhaged, and they said if she had called out to someone, her mom probably could have…could have gotten her to the hospital in time…but by the time I knocked down the door, she had been dead over an hour…She was dead before I ever got there, and there wasn’t anything they could do, and the…the…the baby…he was buried with her, and her mom wouldn’t let me inside the funeral home…so I just left. If they hadn’t said….if he hadn’t said those things to her, she would have called out for someone.”