Nyla woke with her whole body sore and aching with indescribable pain. She flinches with every move. It took her minutes before she gathered the strength to sit up.
'Ahhh I slept on the floor…'
She touched her forehead.
'Great, I have a fever.'
She collected her thoughts. Tried to remember what happened last night.
"We're not married!..." It echoed in her mind.
Her heart ached. For the third... no fourth time, she is about to be abandoned again...
She breathed deeply and tried to stand up this time despite the shots of pain all over her body.
"Ugh!... Oh..." She gasped. She saw herself in the mirror. She thought a zombie apocalypse occurred. But, it was only her. Her hair was a mess, patches of blood on her face, her dress torn, her right eye a bit swollen and her lips cut. She limped... right... she fell initially last night before everything else.
'Where is Jacques? Could he still be mad? Will he talk to me properly about what was happening to him?'
She looked at the time.
It's her usual waking time. Her body clock still works the same. However, she cannot go to work looking like this.
She looked for Jacques all over the house. He's nowhere to be seen.
She searched for her cell phone, sat on the bed, and waited for her call to come through. She called the kindergarten center office asking for 3 days off. She's not looking great for a teacher. The students will get scared with all her cuts and bruises.
The phone was passed to the director.
"Nyla, make that one week or longer. Upon return, we should talk to my office. I don't know where Mr. Curt is right now but some serious-looking men showed up this morning looking for him. If you show up here, they might harass you too."
"Oh okay, director. I will go to the hospital too in a while..."
She mentioned the domestic violence from last night. The director was very understanding and told her to take care.
Suddenly she felt some warm sticky wetness from where she was sitting. She looked down and realized her undies were soaked in blood.
She hurriedly, though not physically possible, tried to change into new undies with a napkin, get a dress she can slip on easily, her purse, keys, and her cell phone.
As she struggled to get out of the door to get to her car, a passing neighbor noticed her predicament.
"Hey Nyla, what happened to you? Are you going to the hospital? Let me take you!" An older man in his 50s she knows as Mr. Eli, won't take no for an answer.
Well, he didn't even wait for an answer. He just assumed. And he assumed perfectly anyway. So he drove her to the hospital. By that time, she was already pale due to bleeding and was admitted to the emergency room.
When she woke up, she had an iv drip on her and a heart rate monitor which beeps at steady intervals. She's in an emergency hospital bed which is why curtains are drawn to make her sleep in peace.
The nurse passing by noticed her awake from the gap in the curtains.
The emergency doctor came by two minutes later.
"Hi, Ms. Burnes. I am Dr. Woods. How are you feeling?"
"I am sore all over doctor... my... my bleeding has it stopped?"
"For now, we have underpads in your bed. Have you tried sitting up?"
Nyla tried to sit up with the help of the whirring sound of the bed as they adjusted the height in the head area. Her eyes widened a bit.
"Did you feel a discharge when you moved?"
"Yes, doctor. A bit."
"Ms. Burnes, we took blood samples for lab tests. So far, your blood results are okay. However, we also did a pregnancy test and confirmed that you are pregnant which could be the reason for your bleeding."
Nyla gasped. She has no idea. She didn't feel any different in the past weeks.
"Let's get you an emergency ultrasound okay?"
Nyla didn't know how time went by. How she got back to the bed after the ultrasound. How she managed to get stitches on the side of her left forehead near the temple, on her palm near the thumb, and across her right ankle.
One thing that rings in her mind was this:
"You are experiencing spontaneous abortion and you are about 4 to 5 weeks pregnant. We need to do Dilatation and Curettage asap."
My baby's life ended before it even began...
She wept while waiting for the nurses to wheel her to the operating room.
'Am I really alone in all of this?'
She stayed 3 days in the hospital. Typically she could have gone out on the second day for the d&c procedure. But because she was a victim of domestic violence with cuts, bruises, and sutures, the doctor advised for 3 days at least. They had to convince her too to report to the police.
Mr. Eli and his sweet wife Elena helped her with the discharge process. They took her home.
As she thanked them profusely, she went and climbed the stairs to her apartment on the second floor. Thankfully just the second floor. It is still hard to walk, how much more to climb a flight of stairs.
Only to find 3 men in black suits waiting for her in front of her apartment...