Her head rolls from side to side as I shake her about, even though I know there’s no point. Her skin is bone cold. Her lips are blue. There isn’t a single piece of life left in her.
“Reggie!” I screech.
He appears in the doorway, followed by the other girls. He swears and calls me over to him. Still clutching Maxine in my arms, I shake my head in refusal.
“I said ‘come here’!” he growls, as he walks over and grabs my hair before dragging me out, and dumping me on the couch.
“Stay there,” he commands, a finger pointed in my face like I’m a dog, before he walks out of the room.
He speaks in soft tones to some of the other men in the apartment. They’re his security and our handlers. They do whatever he asks just like us girls do, but they do it because he pays them.
One of them walks over to me and grabs me around the waist, dragging me, kicking and screaming to the ‘cool down’ room. I want to know what they’re going to do with her. I want them to call an ambulance. I want them to do something to help.
“Why am I in here?!” I scream. “I haven’t done anything wrong!”
“You’re becoming a problem. Calm the hell down,” he tells me, as he shuts, then locks the door.
I scream my head off in there, but it makes no difference. The room is completely sound proof.
Chapter Thirty-One
I don’t know how long I spend in the cool down room, but eventually my body is kind enough to let me pass out. When I come to however, I’m not at Reggie’s anymore. I’m somewhere else.
The stench of the room is a mix of rotting garbage and human filth. I look around, and I’m lying on a stained mattress laid on the floor of a large room littered with other filthy mattresses, broken bits of furniture and listless bodies.
There are a group of people huddled in a corner, passing around a pipe, and I wonder if I’m in a crack den. When I sit up, a sharp pain stabs through my middle.
“Ow!” I cry out, as the pain radiates around to my back and fiercely clenches at my abdomen. I look around me, desperately looking for someone to help me.
A person, or maybe two, give me a cursory glance, but that’s about it. No one really cares.
I force myself to stand, and weave my way toward the door. I have no idea where I am once I make it outside. The area I’m in looks industrial. There’s nothing that looks familiar.
Clutching at my stomach, I start to walk until I come to a petrol station. The smell of the gasoline is strong in my nostrils as I stumble past people standing by their cars, filling up their tanks.
I must look a fright, as a woman gasps when she sees me and hisses at her kids to look away.
When the automatic glass doors open, I step through and freeze, as I feel a burst of warmth seep between my legs. When I look down, there is a dark stain spreading on my pants. Touching it, I look at my hand. There’s bright red on my fingertips.
“Are you alright love?” the cashier asks carefully, from behind the counter.
“I…” I stammer. “I think I need an ambulance.”
Pain rips through my middle, and I cry out from the shock of it, my knees buckling beneath me as I fall to the floor.
As I start to lose consciousness a man’s concerned face appears above me. Slipping away, the last words I hear are, “Be careful mate. She looks like a druggy. Who knows what diseases she has?”
Chapter Thirty-Two
It sounds like people are speaking underwater as a rocking sensation brings me back to reality. Feebly, I reach my hand up and try to take the thing off my face that’s causing some pressure.
“Leave it alone love. It’s helping you breathe.”
I force my eyes to focus so I can make sense of my surroundings. I think I’m in an ambulance, an EMT flicks a light in my eyes, causing me to recoil slightly, as he asks me who I am.
“Paige,” I say, my voice muffled by the mask on my face. “Paige Larsen.”
“Ok Paige. You’re in an ambulance on your way to the hospital. We’re going to take care of you ok. Do you know how long you’ve been pregnant for?”
“Pregnant? I’m not…” I mumble, confused.