I invited Graham to come over last night. I wanted to put his heart back
in while he was sleeping so it would be easier, but also I wanted one more
night to sleep beside him the way he is before things changed. I’ve never
attempted anything of this scale before and I don’t know what putting his heart
back in while he’s cursed will do. It made my stomach twinge to think about it,
so I tried to let it go by turning on Hibiscus Hollow. Rosaline always gives me
motivation and I’d actually been telling myself this is something she would do
and not a Susan-thing. But I turned on my TV to find out the show had been
cancelled! It hurt as much as if an actual friend had left me; no explanation,
no formal goodbye, just termination. Instead, the channel thought I’d like to
see a bunch of people gathering around a large wall in Germany. The channel was
wrong. Now I didn’t care what Sidney did to the tower. I turned off my set and
waited for Graham to arrive.
Graham came a little later, and morning came no sooner than we had gone
to bed. I slid out of my sheets and grabbed the chest that sat on my dresser.
I’d hidden it in plain sight with my jewelry. Graham was sound asleep while I
stood over him. I opened the box and placed my hand over his throbbing heart.
It was warm but dry. I was used to the weight it had by now. It glowed brighter
in my hands the closer I brought it to his body.
There was nothing in my book on this. Maybe he would get his memory
back? Maybe he’d just find out he didn’t love me? My stomach ached again, as it
had been doing since last night. The important thing was that he loved his
child, but what if he tried to take my son away from me? What control would I
have then? My thoughts became more frantic as my stomach continued to cramp up.
It occurred to me that I hadn’t felt this kind of cramping since before I was
pregnant. But this was even more intense. Something trickled down my leg. I
looked down to see my blood falling on the carpet. My hands stopped taking
orders from my brain and dropped Graham’s heart on the floor. It landed with a
bounce and rolled under the bed. The bounce was enough to make Graham sit
upright and open his eyes.
He looked at my face, down at the blood and got out from under the
covers as fast as he could. It clicked with me then that something might be
wrong with the baby and that’s when I started to panic. I could feel my
consciousness sliding back and the other Regina taking over, which hasn’t
happened in a long time. Nothing has frightened me as much as when I thought
Jefferson was going to kill me until this. Graham was already dressed and
picking me up off the floor to take me to his car.
“Get my coat!” The last words came out of my mouth before she took over.
Regina cried all the way to the hospital as she continued to bleed
through her pajamas and coat. She knew what was going on. At least this way, I
couldn’t feel the physical pain. But as Graham helped Regina out of the car at
the hospital, she put her hands in her coat pockets and wrapped it around her
stomach. She felt something in one of the pockets and pulled it out. Seeing
Daniel’s coin brought me back, but it also brought back the pain. Still, as I
was placed on a stretcher and taken into a room, I could feel when Regina was
trying to come back out. I was frightened and had no control, and it made me
feel dizzy and light-headed. All I had to do was glance inside my pocket at
Daniel’s coin and it would go away, but seeing his steadfast smiling face
seemed opposite for this moment.
Dr. Whale rushed in, saw my blood-stained clothes and listened politely
to my symptoms. His straight line of a mouth and direct look into my eyes told
me what I already knew before he did.
“I’m sorry, Madam Mayor, but you’re having a miscarriage.”
“I’m still having it?”
Dr. Whale turned to the nurse who accompanied him.
“We need a room prepped for another D and C.” He turned back to me as
the nurse sped off. “Because of where you are in the pregnancy, we’re going to
do a procedure to make recovery easier and get the rest of it out.”
It being my baby.
Graham offered to go back to my house to get me some clean clothes to
change into before leaving, but I thought of his heart and didn’t want him to
accidentally find it. I didn’t have to worry about that though, because he got
an alert on his walkie from the television studio. People had broken in and
were rioting. Graham apologized to me, but being the only law enforcement in
town meant he had to be there.
Dr. Whale had a nurse come and prep me for a surgery that would have me
under mild anathesia and out of the hospital before the end of the day. I was
able to call Kathryn and ask her to pick me up after, as I didn’t know how long
Graham would be. Knowing I would be sedated meant that the other Regina could
surface. My only hope was that I’d be able to get into my coat again.
I was in a mist and all that was in it
was me and the other Regina. We stared at each other. She looked weaker than
me. She didn’t stand as straight as me and she smiled at me as though to
apologize for that. The mist began to lift and a ladder made of rope fell from
above us, which I took to mean I was coming out of sedation. It unfurled right
beside the other Regina and she turned to climb the ladder. I walked up to her.
“Before you go…”
Regina turned and I punched her in the face. She fell to the ground as I
took the ladder and climbed.
I woke up, as myself, to see Kathryn smiling and crying in the recovery
room. I had lost my baby, but I had beaten the shell of a human the curse had
tried to force on me. Kathryn helped me into some of her clothes she’d brought
for me. After signing some paperwork, the nurse put me in a wheel chair and we
made our way out.
Going through the rest of the hospital was like going through the scene
of a battle. It turned out I’d slept through the victims of the riot at the
television station coming in. People were leaning against the walls, bleeding
through bandages and waiting to see a doctor. Leroy was sitting on the floor
against a wall, unable to hold back his tears and swearing no one was supposed
to get hurt.
“Where’s Graham?” I couldn’t see him anywhere.
“He’s fine, I’m sure.” Kathryn placed a hand on my shoulder as we went
out the door.
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