Like A Lamb To The Slaughter

I begged the nurse with red-rimmed eyes to help me.

The nurse, herself a mother, hesitated as she saw me clutching the lifeless fetus and crying my heart out, but she eventually agreed. She was about to leave while holding the freezer box when she bumped into Jake Bertrand.

The stench from the freezer box made Jake cover his nose. He frowned and lowered his hand only after the nurse’s figure faded into the distance.

However, nothing seemed to dampen Jake's good mood at that moment. He was like a general returning triumphantly from battle. His voice was cheerful, and it almost seemed like he was talking to himself.

“Luna’s experiment was a great success. Her dream has finally been realized.”

From the moment he entered, his eyes were fixated on the dazzling night sky outside the window, not sparing me a single glance. When he noticed my prolonged silence, he gave me a calm, appraising look and furrowed his brows.

“Joy Friedman, Luna begged you for this small favor when she returned home. Since you’ve been idle after getting pregnant, why not come here, make some friends, and help her out? There's no need to look so glum, is there?”

Let me think.

The old man who barged into my room to harass me…

The middle-aged woman who grabbed me by the neck, accusing me of stealing her money…

The woman who kicked me to the ground, claiming the child in my womb belonged to her...

These were the "friends" Jake spoke of.

Luna Harper fed me handfuls of drugs, and the child I gave birth to turned out to be deformed. The doctor who delivered the baby said that if I had come for prenatal checkups earlier, this might not have happened, but how could I expect such freedom when I didn’t even have control over my own life?

Seeing me, with my eyes reddened and head bowed, Jake leaned in, about to question me.

“Joy…”

Nevertheless, he had barely uttered my name when his attention shifted to his lit-up phone. Moonlight streamed through the window, illuminating his face with an expression of pure happiness.

In the twenty-odd minutes he spent in the room, he didn’t even notice my now-flat stomach.

Exhausted after giving birth, I was about to fall asleep when Luna’s junior delivered my medication for the day. Thinking of the deformed baby I had given birth to, I angrily threw the medicine to the ground.

Startled, the man by the window strode to my bedside in a few steps and unhesitatingly shoved the pills into my mouth. His cold voice poured into my ears. “This is part of Luna’s experiment. If you don’t take it, how is she supposed to write her report?”

With tears streaming down, I turned my head away, only for him to grab my jaw tightly and force the pills down my throat.

Jake seemed like he wanted to say something more, but after glancing at his vibrating phone, he turned and left the ward, not even bothering to take his jacket. I could more or less guess the reason for his departure.

I opened my social media app and was greeted by a picture of Luna, her nose stuffed with tissues, looking both silly and adorable.

“Watched fireworks all night and ended up catching a cold. By the way, taking one extra cold medicine pill won’t kill me, right?”

The comments were filled with Jake’s eager concern. “Caught a cold? Why didn’t you say so earlier? You’re such a little scatterbrain. You need a checkup at the hospital to be sure. Wait for me.”