After His Brainwash, I Fought for My Family

Five months after my husband was declared killed in the line of duty, my mother-in-law dragged me to the hospital. She'd already booked me an appointment for an induced abortion, her eyes puffy and red as she pleaded with me. "Selena, he's gone, but you still have your whole life ahead of you. Get this pregnancy terminated sooner rather than later, and I'll help you find a good man to settle down with again." My throat felt tight, all the words I wanted to say stuck behind a lump. I clutched the abortion form in my fist so tight my knuckles went white, too choked up to say a word. Then, out of nowhere, a tiny, wobbly, childish voice piped up right in my ear. "Mommy! Don't get rid of me! Daddy isn't dead at all!" It felt like I'd been hit by a freight train. The abortion form slipped right out of my hand and clattered to the linoleum floor with a soft thud. "Daddy's at the suburban rehab center! They're so close to brainwashing him into being some other woman's husband! In my past life, you believed Grandma and didn't go looking for Daddy. I never got to be born. When Daddy found out the truth later, he almost went crazy!" the voice added. I didn't hesitate for a second. I hauled my pregnant belly straight to the suburban rehab center, moving as fast as my legs could carry me. A nurse blocked me right outside the training room, and through the door window, I spotted a woman holding my husband's hand, her voice soft and syrupy sweet as she spoke to him. "Captain Walker, don't be nervous. You have to let go of what happened before if you want a fresh start." I lifted my foot and slammed it hard against the closed door. I kicked the door all the way open, then stormed straight inside, my pregnant belly leading the way. "Zack Walker! Let go of her hand right now!" The deafening crash made the two people holding hands inside jump apart like they'd been burned. My eyes burned with unshed tears as I stared daggers at the man in front of me. He was in a hospital gown, gaunt, so wasted away he barely looked like the man I knew. My heart ached so bad my whole body was shaking. But when I thought about how that woman, Veronica Cale, had just been holding his hand, rage boiled up so hot it burned through every last bit of my senses. I stepped closer to him one slow, heavy step at a time. My voice was shaking, but every word cut like a knife. "I've pushed through unbearable pressure searching for you for five whole months, cried every last tear I had left in my body. And here you are, hiding out and cozying up to some other woman?!" The second Zack saw me, he looked like he'd been hit by a freight train. He scrambled to yank his hand away from Veronica, but he knocked over the water glass on the table in his panic. It shattered into pieces all over the floor with a loud smash! He stared at me like he couldn't believe I was real, pure, dizzying joy at finding someone he'd thought was gone forever bursting in his eyes. Then his gaze locked hard on my huge, swollen pregnant belly. He propped himself up against the coffee table and stumbled to his feet, veins bulging on his forehead. He strained with every ounce of strength to force ragged, cracked words out of his ruined throat. "Wh... whose... is... the baby?" Those words were a cold knife, driving straight through my chest. I was carrying his own flesh and blood, and the first thing he asked when we finally reunited was who the baby belonged to. "Ahhhh! That makes baby so mad! Daddy's such a total i***t, that wicked woman messed up his brain!" My son's infuriated, childish little roar popped back into my head out of nowhere. "Don't cry, Mom. It's not Dad's fault. That Veronica is behind all this! Dad thinks he's been missing for almost two years. Veronica told him you took the huge compensation payout from the group and remarried ages ago. He thinks you're carrying another man's kid!" All that crushing grief curdled into seething, bone-deep rage in the blink of an eye. I fixed Veronica with an icy, piercing glare. Veronica had already caught on to the situation. She stepped forward smoothly, positioning herself between Zack and me, putting on a perfectly professional front. "Ma'am, you need to leave immediately. Captain Walker is suffering from severe PTSD, and his emotions are extremely volatile right now. Your screaming and causing a scene here is an extremely dangerous trigger for him." With that, she turned to steady Zack's arm, her voice so cloyingly sweet it made my skin crawl. "Breathe slowly, Captain Walker. Don't look at her. Your memories are still all messed up. This is all just a hallucination. Let me handle it." She carried on like she was his rightful wife shielding her own man, and it turned my stomach. "Dangerous trigger? Hallucination?" I let out a sharp, cold laugh, gritting my teeth through the faint, throbbing ache in my lower abdomen as I closed in on her step by step. "Open your damn eyes and look, Dr. Cale. I'm his legally wedded wife, we have a marriage license to prove it. The baby I'm carrying is Zack's own flesh and blood." A flicker of panic crossed Veronica's face, but she forced a calm, exasperated sigh to keep up her act. "Ma'am, the sanatorium has official records on file that Captain Walker's previous wife signed the search abandonment waiver long ago, took the compensation payout, and remarried. Don't throw a fit here trying to extort money, or I'll call security." "Ugh! That evil lady is lying!" My son's voice went off in my head like a firecracker, rapid-fire and furious. "Mom, kick her ass! That blue binder on the desk behind her says she's Daddy's fiancée! What a shameless witch! Her uncle's the vice president of the sanatorium, so she bribed the staff to sneak in and alter your marriage status in the system!" Armed with rock-solid intel, I didn't hesitate for a second: I darted around Veronica and snatched the deep blue file straight off her desk. "What do you think you're doing? Put that down, that's patient confidentiality!" Her face was drained of color. She lunged forward, hand outstretched to yank the file away from me. I flipped my wrist, lifted the file high, and brought it down hard across her face! Smack! Papers exploded everywhere, and the hard plastic cover of the binder scraped a bright, ugly red gash across her soft, delicate cheek. "I took money and remarried? I'm making trouble for no reason?" I jabbed a finger at the scattered forms littering the floor, my cold, furious voice ringing all the way down the hallway. "Dr. Cale, how about you explain this first? Why is your name down as the emergency contact on my husband's recovery file? And why, exactly, is the relationship line filled out with 'fiancée'?"