Unbelievable!

Chapter 5 — 

Alina

White ceiling tiles. The low beep of a monitor.

For a moment I didn't know where I was. Then the pain came back, dull and heavy, low in my stomach, and I remembered the staircase, and Larisa's hands, and the darkness that swallowed me whole.

The doctor's face told me before his words did.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Sokolova. You lost the baby."

Something inside me simply stopped. I didn't cry. I had no tears left to give it. I stared at the ceiling instead, counting the small dots in the plaster, because counting was easier than feeling anything at all.

"Who brought me here?" My voice came out flat.

"Your husband."

Something almost like hope flickered, small and stupid. "Is he here now?"

He hesitated, and that hesitation told me everything. "He left immediately after dropping you off."

"Did he say anything? Ask when I'd wake up?"

He hesitated again, longer this time, and I understood before he even opened his mouth that whatever came next would hurt more than the news he'd already given me.

"He said to give you your phone when you were able," he said carefully. "And Mrs. Sokolova, you don’t need to bother your head about anything right now. I’ll advice you just focus on resting and getting better."

I stared at the ceiling and said nothing. What was there to say? 

He handed my phone back, avoiding my eyes now, pity written plain across his face. He checked my vitals, confirmed I was stable, said… "You need another twenty-four hours of observation."

"I want to be discharged," I said.

"Not safe yet. Please, rest. Your body needs time."

"My body doesn't need anything anymore," I said quietly, and he didn't have an answer for that.

"Just rest please, you will be discharged first things tomorrow morning."

He left. I was alone with the monitor's steady beep and an ache with nothing left inside it to protect.

I opened my phone. One message from Boris.

'Come get your things from the guest room when you're able. Yelena's moved in. Your stuff's already been moved out of the main bedroom.'

No "I'm sorry." No "how are you feeling." Just logistics. Like I was a tenant behind on rent. Like the last three years, and the child I lost that same day, meant nothing at all.

I read it twice. A third time. Waiting for different words to appear. They never did.

I thought about typing something back. Something to make him feel even a fraction of what I felt. In the end I typed nothing. No message was small enough to hold what he took from me, and none was large enough either.

My heart was tearing, like someone was ripping it apart. I felt more emotional pain, than the stabbing pain in my lower abdomen. Yet, I chose to ignore it. 

"I lost my baby," I whispered to myself, my voice coming out steadier than I expected.

I scrolled through old contacts, university friends who filled my phone before the money disappeared and half of them disappeared right along with it. I hovered over one name, then another, then locked the screen and set it face-down on the blanket. I already knew how those calls would go. Polite sympathy. Careful distance. Concern that never once turned into an invitation to come stay somewhere safe.

I understood, fully and finally, that I had nowhere left to go. No home. No husband. No baby. No fortune to fall back on. Nothing.

I sat with that word for a long time. "Nothing." It should have terrified me more than it did. Instead it just felt heavy, the way a held breath feels right before you finally let it go.

I pulled the IV from my arm, and made my way to the rooftop. I always came here after bad news… every failed test, every failed round, every disappointment life handed me. The wind usually gave me something close to peace.

But tonight?

Tonight the wind just made me feel emptier. Like nothing inside me was holding me to the earth at all. I thought of my father, gone two years now, and wondered if he'd be ashamed of how small I'd let myself become. I thought of my mother, long buried, and wondered if anything waited for me on the other side worth walking toward.

I thought about the baby too, and something in my chest folded in on itself so completely I had to grip the railing to stay upright. There had been a heartbeat this morning. A real one. A future I'd already started building room by room, name by name. Now there was nothing where that future used to be. Just a hollow space shaped exactly like everything I'd lost in a single day.

The city stretched out below, lit up and indifferent, full of people who had somewhere to go home to tonight. I envied every single one of them.

I wondered, distantly, if anyone would even notice I was gone. Boris had a new family forming already. Larisa would call it a mercy. Yelena would call it convenient.

Even my own reflection in the glass office door this morning hadn't recognized the woman staring back. I didn't know which version of me was the real one anymore. Maybe neither. Maybe I'd stopped being anyone the moment I signed that paper.

"So this is it?" I asked myself. "This is how my life ends?" 

There was absolutely nothing else to live for. Where would I go? I had no one left in this lifetime. It would be easier to just join my parents, and my unborn baby, who I just lost. 

Life would continue better without me, and no one would remember that I ever existed. 

I stepped up onto the ledge. I didn't think about it. I simply stepped up. I placed one foot out, and pulled it back.

"I guess I should just go down once," I whispered. 

I shot my eyes tightly, gritting my teeth, my fist folding tightly. I inhaled deeply, hoping it would be the last in this lifetime. I lunged forward, ready to drop off the rooftop. 

A hand closed around my wrist and yanked me back so hard I stumbled into a broad chest like a wall. His scent filled my nose immediately. 

I turned, breath ragged, and froze.

"Dimitri Bratva Sokolov?" I managed to say, in utter disbelief.