Save Her

Natalie - Chapter 8-1

Natalie - Chapter 8

When the baby rolls gently to the side, it’s like she’s nuzzling, telling Natalie the only way she knows how that she loves her. Sometimes Natalie feels the tiniest of vibrations against the lower inner of her tummy, and she imagines the baby is wiggling her little fingers or toes, trying to tickle Natalie and make her smile. Sometimes Natalie tickles back, quickly stroking the area she thinks is her baby’s hand or foot, and hopes that the baby is smiling inside her, if that is even possible. Those are the gentle times she looks forward to. Other times the turning and bumping and jostling is rougher, and sometimes a lot rougher. It usually wakes her, and then she lays there in her hospital recliner bed in a half-in, half-out daze of starved exhaustion. And then the trays come in with the food, and she puts the food into her mouth in a daze and chews in a trance, and swallows, and drinks, and gets temporarily full. Her trips to the bathroom are frequent and necessary, and she does this just as unwittingly as everything else. She hasn’t had the energy nor the inclination to even flush anymore, which she only realizes the next time she goes. When she’s finished eating and relieving herself, she tries to stay awake but usually falls back asleep until she is awoken once again by her baby.

The only times she feels relatively lucid is during her morning talks with Agent Love. The usual routine is so predictable now. Natalie wakes in the morning, famished. Hunger versus sleep battles her eyes, but it’s always the hunger that wins. When she wants food, she stares at the camera just above the door because it’s the closest, which means it’s the most invasive. She stares at it and wills them through the lens to get her. That’s her cue to them. They’ve smartened and realized her wits are about her much longer when she’s a little hungry. They’ve learned not to bring her food on the tray in the morning when she first wakes because that just makes her sleepy, and then the conversations with Agent Love become less focused. So, they lure her to Agent Love with food. And she goes willingly. She loves her chats with Agent Love now. It’s her human connection. It’s the only time anybody ever says anything to her. She needs it as much as she needs the food, she thinks. She craves both so much.

Every morning is the same now. They escort her out of her room to the same interrogation room she always goes to, and she sits in the same chair behind the same table as the first day they took her to this horrible place. Within minutes of her sitting, they bring a glorious breakfast. A guard checks her heart rate when she eats and when she finishes. She talks to Agent Love until she tires. She goes back to her room and rests. When she wakes, she returns to Agent Love. Rest, eat, talk. Eat, rest, talk. Rest, talk, eat.

On this particular morning, she wakes up because she feels a knocking from the inside of her. It’s Baby. Baby kicking or punching. The knocking was so sudden, she finds herself still halfway in and out of her dream. She focuses and tries to pull the dream back. It’s difficult to do. She’s hungry. She needs to relax her mind and her body and remember what it was that she felt during her dream. Something is lingering there, in the space in the back of her mind. She was dreaming about something meaningful.

It seems like morning, and she hopes that it’s not too early in the morning that she won’t get to talk to Agent Love. That happens sometimes. Sometimes she's certain that enough hours and meals have gone by that it's finally time for breakfast with Love, but is very often mistaken. Sleep deprivation and her vivid dreams and memories toy so much with her throughout the day that she usually loses track of time by the third or fourth nap. Sometimes she only knows what time it is by the food the guards deliver. There’s more fruit in the late morning than vegetables, and then more vegetables than fruit as the day progresses. The protein is always bountiful.

She let her mind wander too far from the dream. She tries to recall it. Natalie lies there ignoring her little baby taps because she needs to ignore her baby. All baby wants is food, but Natalie is at the point where she needs so much more than that. She needs to sleep more than anything, but she also needs food, and she also needs conversation, and she also needs affection. She keeps her eyes closed and wishes Drayden were with her to hold her, if only for a second, or two seconds, or a minute, or ten minutes. She misses him, and it confuses her when she and her baby dream such detailed dreams of him. When she awakens, and he’s not there by her side, all she can do is wish to fall back into the dream, but it rarely comes back. Drayden is gone, disappeared into the mysterious realm of vivid dream recollection, and only the next sleep will bring him closer to her.

Many days have gone by since she considered an escape plan. Gone is the ability, gone is the want. The card given to her by Agent Love is still in her pillow, she is sure, though she hasn’t felt for it in a long time. Getting out of the confines of this cement bunker of a building became more impossible as each pregnant day progressed, and now, with her being too big and so tired, there is simply no way. Agent Love has left no clues about her aiding in her getaway, and Natalie is left to wonder if the card transfer had not been an actual mistake. Maybe Agent Love had not meant for Natalie to get the card? Maybe the incident when Agent Love hit her had been an actual act of aggression, and not a ruse to fool the cameras watching them?

With her eyes still closed, she gathers the energy to lift her arms and feel around her belly. It’s humongous. Natalie has gotten to where it’s almost funny to look at herself. When Natalie looks at her stomach’s profile in the mirror, she merely rolls her eyes as if what she’s seeing is somehow sarcastic. Like the cruel people holding her in this prison are punking her with a circus mirror. One time she went to the mirror to make sure. She bent down to see if it would morph her face the same way it seemed to morph the size of her belly. It didn’t. Her face looked the same. As far as she could tell, the mirror was not playing any pranks.

She has that line that goes down the center of the belly, and it’s amazing to her that her skin has not stretched because her frame is quite small, and she never imagined she’d get so big so quickly. Natalie keeps her eyes closed because part of her brain is trying to convince her that sleep is still an option, despite the other part of her brain telling her she better get up and pee very soon, or else there’s going to be a problem. As she continues to feel around her belly with the tips of her fingers, she feels her baby give a good, strong punch as if to say, ‘Alright, already. Enough of this waiting around. Let’s get a move on!’ One eye is slightly coaxed open. Natalie groans. The fluorescent light is unpleasing to her.

“Baby, I’m so tired.”

The baby responds by doing absolutely nothing. It stops entirely, and Natalie waits. A minute goes by and still, nothing. That makes Natalie feel guilty. It’s not the baby’s fault for being hungry. It’s not the baby’s fault it’s cooped up in a small, tight space with nothing to do but squirm when awake. She opens the other eye slightly until they both adjust and she is awake.

“Thank you, Baby. That was very sweet.”

The baby does an enthusiastic roll inside of her. Natalie shifts her legs, lets them land to the floor, and she slowly makes her way to the bathroom. On the way there, the pressure on her bladder is so severe that she almost doesn’t make it.

A hunger noise ripples from her belly. She thinks about brushing her teeth while she restively waits for the guards. The mint toothpaste might temporarily satiate her tummy and quiet it down, and she hasn’t brushed them in days. In the end, she decides she'd rather try to lie back down and sleep, just in case the guards take a while to get to her. She’s really too tired to brush well, anyway. She would do it later when she has more energy. If she gets back in bed now, maybe she can get a quick five-minute snooze in. Or perhaps a full ten. She lays down, and the baby moves like it’s at a dance party.

“I know. They’ll be here soon,” Natalie says in a weak voice. She’s not sure how many months she’s been pregnant. Five months? Six? The days go by now in mushy memories. “Vegas, you’re growing so good. You’re growing impossibly quickly,” Natalie mumbles quietly. The baby is too big, she thinks as she waits for sleep to come. The baby must have Drayden’s powers because it has gotten so big so quickly, she thinks as she drifts into a memory of she and Drayden walking in the surf of Ipanema Beach at night. She feels the ocean wave barely roll into her feet and then draw back out into the darkness, the temperature of the water so perfectly neutral it almost feels like it had not wetted her at all. Drayden has his hand around her hip, and his fingertips are caressing her. She hears the next wave about to come, and she can tell that it will be another gentle one, much like the last one, and that it might not even reach them. She stops, and so does Drayden. She looks him in the eyes and unbuttons his shirt. He gives his cocky grin she loves so much and then he is raising her sundress off of her. There are people in the distance. She glances at them, but they’re too far, and it’s too dark. Drayden kisses her on the neck. Natalie unhitches the back of her bikini top and takes off her underwear as he removes his trunks. She turns from her lover and runs into the darkness of the water. He was behind her when she went in, but now he’s ahead of her already waist deep, waiting for her, using his powers again. Showoff. She laughs. The moon is deep and far away. The reflecting light of the shore’s nightlife is most of the view she has, but it’s enough to see his strength, and it’s enough to start her desire. His skin is warm as it always is. Kissing him makes her think about satisfying him, and how pleasurable that is for her.

The door to her room opens. She jolts awake. The dream had been so real! She should be soaked with ocean water, but she’s not. She glances down at herself and gets her bearings. She wonders how she moves when she dreams like this and hopes it is not too embarrassing. She had just kissed her man, and now he’s once again so far away, so gone from her, and she’s back in this dreary place where she will most likely be for the rest of her life. The elation she felt in her dream is instantly replaced with the bleakness of her actual situation. Despair hits her as hard as the fluorescents lights. The look on the guard’s face is impatience as if he’s too highly trained for such a task as escorting a prim and proper pregnant woman to and from a table.

“I’m coming,” Natalie droned. She takes a deep breath and when she exhales, she feels no better. “I’m coming,” she says as she gets out of bed, landing her feet to the ground, holding up her belly with both hands, zombie-walking her way through the door in the direction she knows all too well: right turn, left turn, straight, then another right.

Natalie walks the short walk to the interrogation room slower than usual. Her tummy feels heavier. She feels more weighted down. She wonders if it’s the despair of not being on a beach with Drayden, or maybe she slept less soundly and needs more? Her forearms tire from holding her belly. The strain on her back increases. She thinks she won’t be able to do this much longer, and thinks about asking for a wheelchair, but doesn’t want to. She’ll take it if offered, but she won’t ask for it.