Charlie (Bloodletting Book 1)

by Joe Humphrey

  Yet, things worked out how they worked out, and she didn’t wish it harm. Not like she used to. She just wanted to go their separate ways. Send the baby off to live its life so she could live her own. It didn’t have to know anything about her. It never would know anything about how it came to be. Who or what its father was. The people at the adoption agency explained that to her — well, they explained to Rose, who relayed it to Charlie: the baby would be born, they would come and take it away and give it to a loving family in another town that she would never meet or know. That was it. Simple as can be. She would pass it off like a baton in a relay race, to some winner who would carry it to the finish line while she stepped off the track and caught her breath.

  It didn’t feel simple. It should have, but it didn’t. In some twisted way, she was jealous of the baby. The family she imagined it going to was something better than she’d ever had. The tone of the last few months with her mother was strained at best. For the most part, they kept out of each other's way, though that was becoming more difficult since she stopped going to school. She missed the father she'd never met. Her life had always been mostly solitary, but since the attack, she felt more alone than ever. There were so many reasons why she and her mother were unable to connect. The most obvious being Charlie’s resentment over being forced to carry the pregnancy. On Rose’s side, she was furious that Charlie managed to race into the same life she herself had been saddled with. Rose always had high hopes for her daughter, and with one stupid decision, Charlie threw it all away. If only she’d stayed at home. Made even the smallest attempt to toe the line, but no, she had to run away, foolishly expecting the world to take care of her the way Rose always had, and it put her in the hospital and put a baby in her belly. All of this had been explained to Charlie over the course of their many fights.

  The fact was that since that evening in the kitchen, when Rose held Charlie and they cried together, Charlie had been alone. Pregnant, scared, and utterly alone, with absolutely no concept of what the future looked like. She couldn’t go back to school. That part of her life was over. Hell, her life in that town was over. People looked at her on the street like a diseased animal in need of putting down.

  Keys jangled in the lock at the front door. Charlie could barely muster up the energy to turn and acknowledge her mother when she came in. It was early. Her mother wasn’t meant to be off work until at least four, and it wasn’t even noon yet.

  Rose looked at her daughter for a long moment. Charlie stood there half-naked, that damned blanket over her shoulders like some kind of vagrant, food crumbs scattered across her disgusting stomach. Rose had to physically fight the tide of anger that rose inside her; had to push it down and harden her face.

  “You should put some clothes on. Someone might see you,” Rose said as she walked through the kitchen and opened the fridge.

  “The curtains are all closed. No one can see me,” Charlie said, rolling her eyes.

  “I can see you,” Rose said, grabbing her paper lunch sack from the fridge. She’d packed it the night before, as she always did, but forgot it that morning. It had been a real struggle for her to decide if it was worth coming home and getting it if it meant having to look at Charlie in her state. Running into her in the kitchen as she was, Rose decided it would have been better not to eat. She’d lost her appetite.

  “I’m going back to work. I’ll be working late since I had to take time to come home for this,” Rose said, holding up the bag.

  “Sorry if that was somehow my fault,” Charlie muttered as she walked out of the kitchen. Rose shook her head as she left.

  - 10 -

  “Charlie, it’s almost time,” the voice speaking her name sounded magical, like Glenda, the Good Witch of the North. There was a southern bend to it that was less like country and western music and more like vaudeville or a barker in a carnival. Come see the horrifying pregnant teenager! Marvel at her bloated belly and swollen, leaky bosoms! At the same time, it reminded her of the damsel in distress in some old 1940s western. A bordello wench with a drawn on mole and a corset, winking at the lantern-jawed hero. Somehow both southern and sophisticated and just a little trashy. Her mind drifted from association to association, unable to quite pin down exactly what it was that she found so pleasing and amusing about the sound.

  “Charlie honey, come on,” it said her name in that sing-songy way that made butterflies dance around in her stomach. It was the voice from the car. The voice that sometimes drifted through her dreams. Sometimes spoke to her as she slept. Her guardian angel.

  The telltale smell of vanilla wafted across the room and the bed sank slightly as someone sat down beside her. She didn’t open her eyes. Didn’t want to. The smell was familiar enough and opening her eyes didn’t help. The woman was usually backlit or in shadow. Always lost in the cobwebs of dreamy sleep, just out of focus and out of reach.

  “Hi,” Charlie muttered through sleep.

  “Hey darlin',” the voice said. She felt chilly hands move hair out of her face, the awkward pulling as a loose strand was drawn out of her mouth. Her skin was sticky with stale sweat. For a brief moment, the cold of the fingers on her skin was repellant, but the woman’s gentle voice relaxed her and she rocked back and forth in the soft cotton of sleep.

  “Soon, baby. Soon this will all be over and we’ll be together,” the voice whispered. An icy hand slid under the covers and along her belly. It was dry and stiff like it was made of wood or hard leather. She remembered the white gloves on the red steering wheel, tapping rhythmically along with the radio. These visits were always strange and in the morning she would find herself wondering if they’d happened at all, or weren’t some kind of recurring dream. The blanket was the only thing that kept her believing that someone out there was looking out for her. That someone wanted her to live. That crocheted blanket with the scent of popcorn and vanilla buried in its folds.

  Three tiny objects pushed their way between her lips, against her teeth, round and hard. She opened her mouth and allowed the objects in. The intrusion of a slender finger guided the pills into her mouth and under her tongue. For reasons she didn’t entirely understand, she closed her lips around the finger and sucked on it gently. The hand stopped moving for a moment and allowed her to suck, then pulled away and out of her mouth with a soft plop.

  As she floated back into darkness, cool, moist lips press against her forehead in a delicate kiss, and then she was dreaming again, walking down Main Street USA, holding her mother’s hand.

  - 11 -

  Something stabbed her in the belly, deep inside. It stabbed again. It wasn’t the usual cramping or baby kicking. No, this was sharp, vicious agony that ripped her out of sleep. Immediately she was aware that something was very wrong. The sound of sirens in the distance only added to the surreal panic that was very quickly building in her. She felt squishy wetness between her thighs and knew that her water had broken in her sleep.

  “Mom!” Charlie cried out. Her throat was dry and her voice was a cracked, pathetic rasp. She swallowed and found she had no spit.

  “Mom! Help!” she yelled again, finally pulling some strength from somewhere. The sound of the sirens built into an excruciating blare that drowned out all other sounds. She tried to roll out of bed but found no strength in her legs. They were frozen under the wet blankets. She reached down and pulled the blankets away. Her thighs were covered in blood. She'd apparently removed her underwear in the night and she was lying naked in a puddle of blood in the middle of her bed. That’s when she started to scream.

  - 12 -

  The next hour was a blur of chaos and pain. Almost immediately after she discovered the blood, an avalanche of voices and oddly dressed people stormed the room. She was pulled from the bed to the floor and a bald man that looked something like a turtle wearing glasses reached up inside her and felt around, pulling out a bloody gloved hand.

  Her consciousness became a strobe, flashing horrifying images and sensations that only vaguely made sense. A
crowd of masked strangers knelt around her on the floor of her bedroom. Her mother stood in the corner, staring blankly at her. The paramedics rubbing her belly with cream and then the slicing and cutting.

  So much blood. IV lines were strung above her and into her arm. Blood going into her arm, blood coming out the opening in her belly. Blood surging from between her legs. The red baby rising, wailing, struggling, and fighting. It was fierce. Rose crying, screaming, being taken out of the room. Hands and instruments and lumps of bloody tissue going in and out of her. EMTs put her on a stretcher and took her out of the house to the ambulance, dragging IVs and paramedics and the doctor and her hysterical mother bringing up the rear.

  As they rushed her to the hospital, she floated and tried to make peace with what was happening. She was dying. Standing outside of her body, looking down, Charlie barely recognized herself. Her short, bobbed hair with its wispy bangs, plastered to her pale, sweating face. A face too skinny and sickly to have been so recently pregnant. There was no glow, only a black cloud looming above her, casting a shadow over the sad looking girl before her. The blood soaking through the blue ambulance blankets was scary to look at, but in the end, it seemed only fitting that this baby would kill her on its way out.

  While she couldn’t remember the original attack, she was well aware of what the aftermath of it had been. They wouldn’t tell her specifically what sort of damage she’d experienced, but Charlie was smart enough to put most of it together herself. It was horrific and it had been dealt to her by a monster in the dark. There were nights when she would lie in bed and wish that whoever had done this to her had finished the job and just killed her. Killed her and left her in the desert for the animals to eat. That night on the train tracks wasn’t her only tussle with suicide. It just happened to be the one time she actually went through with a plan.

  As it turned out, the man who had done this to her may have actually finished the job. It only took nine months to finally play out. The long con. Charlie laughed at herself propped up on the stretcher, her half-open eyes staring at nothing, her slack mouth hanging open, a long line of drool running out onto her chest. The EMTs and paramedics climbing around her and over each other, injecting her with this and that, poking and prodding and measuring. They spoke to each other in even, soft tones, as though they’d rehearsed the entire thing.

  - 13 -

  The first thing she noticed upon waking was that her throat hurt. It took a moment to get her eyes to obey the command to open. They were crusted shut and she was exhausted. The room was mostly dark, aside from the soft glow of a small bedside lamp. She could see fluorescent light in the hallway through a window covered with closed blinds. When she tried to speak, she found her voice was gone.

  She felt around her bed and discovered a device with a single green button at her side. She pressed the button and heard a soft buzz from outside her room. After a moment the door opened and a nurse poked her head in.

  “You’re awake,” the nurse said. Not a question, just an observation. Charlie always found nurses a little scary, in their white uniforms and odd caps. Especially when they were young and pretty like this one. There was something creepy and cult-like about the uniform and the deliberate, undercut tone of voice that made Charlie uncomfortable. When she tried to speak, she again found that she could barely manage more than a thin whisper.

  “Let’s get you some water,” the nurse said as she went to the sink and filled a plastic cup and brought it to Charlie’s lips. The water burned as it soaked into the rough terrain of her throat, but her body cried out its appreciation. The nurse pulled the cup away.

  “That’s enough. You’ll make yourself sick,” the nurse said, setting the plastic cup on the bedside table. Charlie ran her tongue along cracked, dry lips, sucking as much water as she could into her mouth. She noticed the scar and ran the tip of her tongue along it.

  “Thank you,” Charlie managed to mutter, finally finding her voice.

  “There’s more when you’re ready,” the nurse said. “Is there anything else I can get you? How is your pain?”

  That was the first time it occurred to Charlie that she should be in pain. Hell, it was the first time it occurred to her that she was alive.

  “I’m not dead,” Charlie muttered, mostly to herself.

  “No, and that’s amazing. You should be. You're a very lucky girl,” the nurse said with surprising familiarity and warmth.

  “What happened?” Charlie asked, still finding speech difficult.

  “I think that’s a conversation best saved for the doctor. Is there anything else I can get you?” she asked, bringing that clinical, detached tone back into her voice.

  “The baby. Did the baby live?” Charlie asked, not sure if she wanted to hear the answer. The nurse bit her lip and nodded.

  “I’ll let the doctor know that you’re awake. Ring me if there’s anything else you need. You have the buzzer,” she said as she closed the door. Charlie nodded and let her head fall back into the pillow. She tried to lift her arms to touch the scar on her lip but couldn’t gather the strength.

  - 14 -

  The baby was gone. They wouldn’t tell her much, but she was able to find out that it was alive and was moved to the Primary Children’s Medical Center, an offshoot of the LDS Hospital in Salt Lake. The baby was getting the best possible care available, presumably whatever happy family was in line to add it to their flock was there as well. They wouldn’t give her a name. They wouldn’t give her a gender. Just that it was alive and healthy and it was a miracle that they both managed to live... and that it was far, far away.

  Rose sat in the chair next to the bed staring at the floor. The morning after Charlie woke up, Rose hugged her and they’d cried together. Charlie wasn’t even sure what she was crying about. There were so many conflicting things to pick from. Happy that she was alive. Sad she wasn’t dead. The strange feeling of having fallen asleep pregnant and woken up empty, a dull ache in her stomach where a baby once lived. The surreal greenish light of a hospital room made her feel like she was underwater. Another hospital. Laying in another hospital bed with a broken, abused body, lucky to be alive. She didn’t feel lucky. She felt completely threadbare and about to fly away on the wind like loose, shredded tatters.

  In the chair by her bed, her mother was crying. It was a different sort of crying and it scared her. Before, her mother had cried in relief and regret and love. The look Charlie saw on her mother’s face in the light of the bedside lamp was anger and despair. It was a look she’d seen in the past, but never with such intensity. Such loathing.

  “Mom?” Charlie whispered. Rose didn’t acknowledge her, only brought her cigarette to her lips with a shaking hand.

  “It ends with you, Charlotte,” Rose said after a long, painful silence. Ash from her cigarette fell on her blouse and she either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

  “What do you mean?” Charlie asked, genuinely confused. She’d spent the last three days recovering, still unable to stand or go to the bathroom herself. She’d seen her mother twice in those three days.

  “I mean they took your womanhood. Your father is gone. I’m too old. I’ve barely seen or spoken to my sister in nine years. It was just you, kid, and now that’s gone,” her mother looked at her, tears quietly rolling down her cheeks. “You’re a dead-end.”

  They told her about the hysterectomy on the first day she woke up and it hadn't been mentioned since. The impact of what actually happened to her sank in. Her mother was right. She would never have children of her own. She couldn’t if she wanted to. She was so focused on getting the baby she didn’t want out of her, she never considered whether she would ever actually want children someday. Of course she would. Why wouldn’t she? She wanted the option anyway. She was sixteen years old. Her entire life was ahead of her. Of course she would get married and have a family.

  The last of what made Charlie Charlie drained out of her. She was an empty shell, sitting up in the hospital bed, staring at h
er mother, who was staring at the floor. She heard the soft patter of tears on the tile floor and some monstrous part of her, deep inside, wanted to laugh. It was a hysterical kind of thing, welling up inside her. Tears bit at her eyes, making them sting and blur. Rose took one last long drag on her cigarette and dropped it into the water cup on the bedside table with a hiss.

  “You could have trusted me. Listened to me. You ran away like a little brat and you never came back. My daughter has been dead since she walked out the door that night. My baby girl is gone,” Rose muttered. Charlie shook her head, panic springing up inside her, tears spilling down her cheeks. What was happening?

  “No momma! No! I’m still here! I need you momma!” Charlie cried out, grabbing Rose by the sleeve. Rose yanked her arm away and left the room without looking back. Charlie tried to climb out of bed and cried out as she dropped her foot to the floor. A nurse rushed in and grabbed her by the leg and maneuvered her back into the bed. She could feel fresh blood wetting the bandages across her belly. Charlie squeezed her eyes shut and screamed and didn’t stop screaming until the warm burn of an injection spread up her arm and dragged her down into blackness.

  - 15 -

  The following week was a gray smear of bandage cleaning, being pushed around in the hospital in a wheelchair and bland, colorless food. Her mother hadn’t been back and Charlie didn’t expect her. She didn’t care anymore. In fact, she found her only incentive to do anything asked of her was simply to make whoever was bothering her go away. Eat, ride in the wheelchair, go to the bathroom, get in the shower and they’ll leave. Some of the nurses were friendly and tried to engage her. Charlie ignored them. Some were angry and bitter. Charlie ignored them as well. Charlie ignored everyone.