CHAPTER FOUR :HUNTING MEMORIES
986 Words
Rhoda, you will abort this baby. I am not ready yet.” Daniel’s voice still echoes in my head, cold and firm, like a door slammed shut.“We are ready Daniel,” I had argued back then. “We’re financially stable. What else do you want?”But now, standing in the ruins of my memories, I realize that question never really had an answer, not an honest one.
After so many arguments I finally had the abortion done, everything between us began to change.Small things began to be big issues, little cracks in what I thought was a perfect life."I would set two plates for dinner, the steam from the food rising between us like a wall. I’d ask about his day, and he would grunt at his phone, his eyes never leaving the screen. When I reached for his hand, he would pull away to adjust his napkin, leaving my fingers grasping at empty air. The house didn't just feel quiet; it felt hollowed out." .
One day, he left.Just like that.No explanation, no warning Just a quiet disappearance, like smoke fading through my fingers.Months passed I walked through the silent rooms of our apartment, my footsteps echoing off the walls where his pictures used to hang."
And then the sickness began.
"My morning coffee started to taste like copper. I tried to stand up from the sofa, but my knees turned to water, forcing me to grip the armrest until my nails left marks in the leather.
Every breath felt like pulling air through a wet cloth, and the simple act of climbing the stairs left me trembling and grey-faced, my heart banging a panic, uneven beat against my ribs. Exhaustion that clung to me like a shadow. I could barely recognize myself anymore.
I decided to go to our family hospital, hoping for answers.
But instead of comfort, I found confusion.
“The doctor isn’t available,” one of the nurses told me, avoiding my eyes. “He traveled out of the country.”James had traveled? Wow he didn't inform me.
A cold knot tightened in my nerves, making it hard to swallow the dry lump in my throat.
Something wasn’t right.
I left that hospital with more questions than answers and went to another one, desperate for clarity.
I wish I hadn’t.
The doctor’s words hit me like thunder in a clear sky.
you don't have a womb.” he said
For a moment, the world stopped.
My ears rang. My vision blurred.
It felt like the ground beneath me had cracked open, swallowing everything I knew about myself.
“What do you mean?” I whispered, my voice in a shaking tone.
They explained it. The doctor’s lips moved, but the sound reached me as a high-pitched hum, like a downed power line. The white walls of the clinic began to tilt and stretch.
I looked down at my lap, but my hands seemed miles away, pale and trembling against my dark skirt. The air in the room suddenly turned ice-cold, frosting the inside of my lungs." There had been a procedure called Complications.A reaction.My body had suffered damage and my womb had been removed. Just like that.
A part of me no more.I felt like a tree stripped of its roots, left standing but no longer alive the pain hit me all at once.Not just physical, but deeper sharp and unbearable.My chest tightened, my breath caught, and the world turned violently around me. The floor soared upward like a wave.
I reached out to grab the edge of the desk, but my fingers slipped off the wood. The overhead lights began to spin, faster and faster, until they drained into a single, shining line of white. Then, the sound of the world simply cut out, and the darkness rushed in to swallow me whole. When I woke up, I was surrounded by doctors. Their voices were urgent, their hands moving quickly.
They had brought me back but I didn’t feel alive. I pressed a hand to my stomach, feeling a hollow ache that went deeper than skin and bone,a space where a future had been carved out.
Like something inside me had been taken and could never be returned.
After I recovered, I knew I could not stay still. I needed Daniel and his answers.
I began searching for him everywhere, calling, asking, moving from place to place like a restless soul.
Then I met Cassandra at her work place
She came into my life like a gentle breeze, soft and comforting, even in the hospital she would sit on the edge of my hospital bed, touching me with her warm, manicured fingers around my cold ones.
She would lean in close, the scent of her expensive perfume masking the smell of antiseptic, and whisper that everything happened for a reason.
She tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear with a smile so soft I never noticed the wickedness behind her eyes."
She held my hand, spoke kind words, and stayed by my side.Or at least, that’s what I believed Looking back now, I see it clearly. She wasn’t breezy.She was a storm in disguise Still, I trusted her I kept searching day after day.
Street after street.Hope slowly turned into desperation, but I refused to give up.Until the day I saw him at the mall Daniel is Alive Standing there as if nothing had happened as if he hadn’t disappeared as if he hadn’t destroyed my life.Something inside me broke.
All the pain, all the confusion, all the betrayal rose like fire, burning through every part of me.I don’t even remember moving.One moment I was standing there the next, everything had exploded.That was the day my life truly ended.
The day I believed I had killed him.
The day that led me to prison and now,I understandThat was exactly what they wanted to believe.
- Writer
