Coda (Songs of Submission #9)(44)

“Say it’s from hitting me,” I begged. “Please say it’s from—”

“I don’t know what it’s from. Just stay still.”

I couldn’t. I had no control over my body. I yanked and pulled, trying to slip free, but my husband knew knots like he knew ice cubes and sore bottoms. If he’d set up the knot to keep me from slipping out, I wasn’t slipping out.

“Jonathan,” I said without anything else to say. Him, I just wanted him. I wanted to say his name to gather strength. He got up, and I had a full view of his beautiful, bloodied cock. “Don’t leave me.”

“I’m not.” He walked away.

“Don’t leave me here!”

But he did. He walked away, and I didn’t know why I felt so bereft. Some need to run away, coupled with the inability to even lower my arms, made me panic. I could feel something dripping down my leg. And he wasn’t there. He was going to the f*cking kitchen.

Then I heard knives clack and his footsteps coming back toward me. I calmed. Barely. He came back a bread knife and leaned over my hands.

“Stay still,” he said. “Please. I don’t want to cut you.” He put the knife to the scarf.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” His concentration stayed on my bound wrists.

“I don’t want to lose it.”

“Me neither.”

“It’s from spanking me. That’s all. You hurt me worse than I thought. Let’s not do that again, okay?”

“Sure.” He laid his hands on my wrists, pressing them apart and making the fabric between them taut. He sliced the scarf open with a snap.

I got my arms under me and started to get up, but Jonathan pushed me down. I resisted. He pushed harder.

“Hold on. Gravity,” he said.

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“I know, I know.”

He put his arms under my shoulders and my knees and carried me to the couch. I was sore where he’d hit me. That was the reason for the blood, but he seemed worried, and I wanted to respect that. I didn’t want to be dismissive or call him silly, but his knotted brow and the taut line of his jaw made me want to stroke away his fear.

He leaned over me and caressed my cheeks. “Can you wait here while I get dressed and get you some clothes?”

“Why?”

He got up and plucked his clothes off the floor. “We’re going to the hospital.”

I got my elbows under me to sit up, and with only one arm in his shirt, he rushed to push me down.

“It’s nothing, Jonathan. I’m sure of it.” I said it to calm him, but I wasn’t sure if I believed it out of anything but necessity.

“Then humor me. Lie back.”

I did, and when he saw I’d obeyed, he trotted upstairs. I looked down at his name inside my thighs. I was drawn on like a cinderblock wall in gangland. Jonathan’s dominion over me was written in black Sharpie, his territory marked in permanent ink.

Was I losing the baby? And so what if I was? What was the big deal? I didn’t even want to have children right now. I wanted nothing to do with it. Jonathan was going to die after a tortuous wait for a second heart before the kid was in high school. What kind of selfish bitch creates a child to go through that?

All I had to do was go back to the me of a few days ago. Nothing had changed.

Except everything. Having carried that baby knowingly for two days, I’d had a cellular alchemy. The shape of my brain and my heart had shifted, grown. I wasn’t the same person. I wanted that baby. I wanted it so badly, and I didn’t even know it.

I wanted this to be nothing, an embarrassing symptom of rough sex play, but the twitch in my abdomen, the tightness told me otherwise.

Jonathan came down the stairs dressed, with a dress over his arm.

“Do you think they can save it?” I asked, my voice breaking on “save.”

“I don’t know.” He sat on the edge of the couch. “Arms up.”

I raised my arms, and he put the long, modest dress over me. He snapped out a pair of simple cotton underwear and slipped them over my ankles then drew them up my legs and over me.

“I was supposed to get rid of all that underwear,” I said.

“Sometimes you need it.” He stood beside the couch.

I heard the crunch of tires on pebbles outside. “Is it Lil?”

“Yes. I texted her.” He put his arms under me and picked me up, carrying me toward the door. “I don’t think I can drive.”

“Thank God for her.” I looped my arms around his neck, and he carried me out.

“Sir,” Lil said as she opened the back door. “Mrs. Drazen, I hope you’re all right.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing.” I didn’t know why I said that. As the minutes passed, I started to think that was some whitewash of hope on a steaming pile of tragedy.

Jonathan held me tight and somehow got me in the car without putting me down. I shifted down and put my head on his lap.

Lil looked into the back. “Sequoia?”

“Yes.”

“No!” I said, rigid. I looked up at Jonathan. “No. Anywhere but there. Please. I can’t.”

“It’s the best obstetrics unit in the world, Monica.”