Jenn’s thoughts were all over the place when she walked to her car that evening. She was giddy and excited about everything that had just happened with Steve, and she leaned against the door before getting in to process everything. Wow, so that’s what it’s like. I should call Kenzie. She couldn’t stop grinning, and she fumbled for her phone in her purse.

“You’ll never believe what I just did,” she said once her sister picked up the phone.

“Did you finally bang that hot doctor?”

“What? Ew, no. But close, actually.” She wondered if her sister could practically hear her grin on the other end of the phone.

“What! Oh my god, Jenn, what happened?” Kenzie’s voice had reached shrill levels. “Tell me, tell me, tell me!” Jenn laughed, and launched into the whole story: that day they met Steve in the hospital room, talking to him at the lupus awareness event, going on a date with him, and one thing leading to another today. In telling the story, Jenn kept pausing to give Kenzie time to shriek in shock and approval at her baby sister finally having sex. “Well? What did you think? I’m guessing you didn’t orgasm, huh?”

“No, but—“ Kenzie coughed “typical” on the other end of the line “—it was really great. It didn’t hurt at all, and he was gentle. It was a really nice change from how I’d been feeling. It was weird, Kenz, I’ve been feeling really strange for several weeks in a row and it’s gone now, but I don’t know what it was about.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, first I felt sick all the time, I couldn’t sleep well and had dizzy spells. I couldn’t eat much for about a month, so I probably lost a couple of pounds. It wasn’t good.”

Kenzie let out a chuckle. “You know, Jenn, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were the next Virgin Mary. Because those all sound like pregnancy symptoms to me.”

“Oh, stop it. There’s no way. Dr. Blake said—“

“Dr. Hottie?”

“Shut up, yes, Dr. Blake,” Jenn said his name more deliberately this time, “said it was a stomach virus and he had to go in and remove it. So luckily, everything went away after that, but then I felt really tired and lazy for weeks. Until today, really.”

“I told you that you needed to get some cock, didn’t I?”

“Oh my god, do you want me to hang up on you? I was just calling to update you on my life! Do you have to turn it around and make it gross all the time!” Kenzie only cackled in reply.

Jenn and Kenzie talked for a few more minutes about a couple of other topics before hanging up so Jenn could drive back home. She couldn’t stop grinning at home, and for several hours, she felt like she was on top of the world. Later that evening, as she was trying to fall asleep, more doubts began to creep into her head. Dr. Blake should have recorded everything, right? So maybe I should ask to see my chart, but he’s been on vacation for several weeks; I don’t even know how I’d reach him.

By now, Jenn had been lying in bed for hours trying to sleep and she needed to take another trip to the bathroom. When she stood up, she suddenly felt something wet in her underwear. Oh, no, she thought. Is it time for my period already? That came out of nowhere. I guess it has been a while since my last one, though. She grabbed a new pair of underwear on her way out of her bedroom and hastened her stride to the bathroom. Sure enough, when she sat on the toilet, she saw that the inside of her underwear was covered in dark red blood. Jenn started to reach underneath the bathroom cabinet for a tampon when she felt something wet and slippery push out of her and fall out of her into the toilet below. Gingerly she stood up and looked into the toilet bowl, where she saw a small translucent sac filled with blood about an inch long. She shrieked and jumped back. What the hell is that? When she leaned in to see it more closely, she suddenly had a flashback to her dreams, seeing the bloody child — herself — at the mercy of all the snakes. She flung herself back against the wall, panicked.

She stood in the bathroom for a few seconds, regulating her breathing, before she rushed out of the bathroom again. She quickly changed her underwear and stuffed a wad of toilet paper in the crotch to catch any more of the bloody substance. Then she did the first thing she could think of: she dialed the number for the hospital and spoke to a receptionist on the phone. After proving her identity as a patient there, she received Dr. Blake’s phone number and dialed his number immediately.

The phone rang four times before Jenn realized she had called the doctor’s home phone, not his cell phone as she intended. I forgot he was on vacation. He probably won’t even get any message if I leave one. Just as she was about to hang up, a voice sounded on the line. “Hello?” It sounded like the doctor’s voice, only groggier. Jenn looked at the clock: 11:32 p.m. Oh, he is home. I must have woken him. Oops.

“Dr. Blake? Hi, it’s Jenn Walsh. I—I just had a question for you. Something happened.” She heard the doctor inhale sharply on the line, but he didn’t say anything, so after a pause she continued. “I was just in the bathroom, and something fell — um, out of me, like, into the toilet. I don’t know what it is. Sorry for calling so late; I just....” She couldn’t find the words.

The doctor stayed silent, but Jenn could hear him breathing. “Dr. Blake?”

“Yes, I’m here. What happened, exactly?” Jenn told him an abridged version of what had happened recently: the nausea, the depression, the apparent blood clot in her toilet — even, reluctantly, mentioning that she had had sex that day for the first time. The doctor only murmured to himself in reply over the receiver. “Mhm, yes, okay, I’ll have to— Or maybe... Well.” He cleared his throat. “Can you get to the hospital right now? I’d like to look at you. There’s not much time for either of us.”

“What do you mean? What’s going on?” But the doctor only rushed on. “You’re about an hour away, right? That should give me plenty of time to prepare everything. Meet me in the usual room.” Then a click.

“Wait, Dr. Blake, I wanted to ask you—“It was too late; he was gone.

Jenn stood for a minute with her hands on her head, wondering what to do. Then she rushed back to her bedroom and packed a change of clothes and toiletries in case she had to stay overnight. It was now already midnight. As she left the house, she remembered to text Steve. If anyone could help her through this, it was Steve. “Come to hospital. Something’s wrong — having emergency procedure with Dr. Blake. Hurry.” She could only pray he was still awake and saw it, but to her great relief, less than a minute later came the reply: “On my way. You okay?” I don’t know how to answer that, Jenn thought, tears welling up in her eyes. “Not sure. Just hurry. Please.”

Jenn sped down the empty freeway to the hospital and rushed up to her normal hospital room, past the night nurses on duty. She could feel the toilet paper in her underwear starting to become wet, and she hurried to make it into the room. Half of the hallway lights were turned off for the night and her usual room was completely dark. Dr. Blake must not have made it yet. Jenn’s heart flipped over in her chest. Please let everything be okay.

She ran into the room, flipped on the lights and headed straight to the adjoining bathroom to change the bloodied toilet paper. When she opened the door again, the lights were half off, the door, curtains were closed, and Dr. Blake was nowhere to be found. Squinting, she took two steps into the darkened room when suddenly an arm flew over her head from behind her and clasped tightly around her neck. She sputtered and pulled at it but she felt herself growing lightheaded instead and she couldn’t fight it. Her grip loosened; her body fell limp; then her vision went dark.

The next thing she knew, she was lying on her back on a bed, staring up at a white ceiling covered in half-lit fluorescent lights. She sat up but was pulled by a restraint strapped over her chest; two more were holding her arms down to the bed on either side of her. Her instinct told her to kick and fight to get loose, but no matter how much she moved, she couldn’t get free. Then Dr. Blake appeared in her periphery.

“Stop moving,” he said harshly, grabbing Jenn’s throat and pushing her down to the bed. She cried out and thrashed against him, but he was too strong and held her too tightly. “Shut up, you little whore. Don’t speak.” He grabbed a roll of gauze from the medical cabinet against the wall and stuffed it into Jenn’s mouth. She gagged and coughed, but it wouldn’t budge; the quicker her breaths, the rougher it felt against her tongue, and her eyes began to water in fear and discomfort. To her left, she could see the doctor injecting some sort of clear liquid into a syringe, which he then set on the shelf at the foot of the bed. Whatever was inside dripped a few drops onto the surface.

Dr. Blake caught her looking. “It’s fentanyl,” he said, leaning menacingly near her face. “Not the usual propofol — oh no, you’d be too used to that by now. That amount will put you to sleep, into a little coma, and then you’ll die.”

Jenn’s eyes widened.

“You’ve given me no choice. You know too much.” As he spoke, he started tearing off Jenn’s clothing piece by piece, pulling her pants down forcefully, and snapping off her underwear with one strong motion. She whimpered each time he touched her, and the gauze pushed further down her throat. He sent one glancing blow from the back of his hand on the side of her face, where a red mark appeared. “This will be easy. It’ll look like you fell asleep and reacted badly to a new form of anesthesia and simply slipped away.” He made a fake pouting face at her. “And no one will know the difference.”

Dr. Blake moved to the foot of the bed now and looked over her, exposed and vulnerable beneath him. All Jenn could see of his face were the shadows that formed his cheekbones and the shine from his fang-like teeth. As if reading the fears in her head, Dr. Blake then leaned down and pursed his lips on her stomach below her navel, biting down hard until he broke the skin, and working with his fingers to undo his belt at the same time.

He pulled his belt off with a flick of his wrist and ran it over her body, the leather dragging on her skin. “Don’t make a sound,” he threatened. “Be a good little girl and lie there, like you did all the other times.” Jenn emitted a muffled cry. Dr. Blake leaned down between her legs again and hissed at her. “I’ve had enough of you — you and your boyfriend, your sister, and your baby. Yes, that’s what came out of you, wasn’t it, Jenn — the rest of it, after I killed it? I wasn’t careful enough; I made a mistake. And you noticed.” Jenn’s eyes widened further and she weakly pulled at her restraints again. “But no one will notice now.” He reached for the syringe on the shelf and squeezed out a little of the liquid. “But not quite yet. I want to hear you scream before you go. You were always too quiet in bed.” Holding the syringe with one hand, he started reaching for the zipper of his pants, grinning maniacally all the while.

Just as he did, the faint sound of frantic footsteps became audible outside. The door flew open on its hinges, and Steve burst in to the grisly scene. He took one sweeping glance around and swayed backward in shock. Jenn, seeing him, screamed through the gauze at him and writhed in the bed, thrashing desperately to escape. From the foot of the bed, Dr. Blake stared wide-eyed at the intruder, still holding both the syringe and reaching into his pants. Without thinking, Steve lunged for the doctor and knocked him off his feet. The syringe went flying across the room, and Steve heard it clack across the floor when it fell, along with the sickening crack of Dr. Blake’s skull against the floor.

Then Steve ran to Jenn and yanked the gauze out of her throat. She coughed, gagged, and reached for him. “Steve, it was him—the whole time—you were right—“ He ripped through the restraints that were holding her down and squeezed her in his arms tightly, pulling her clothing back on her to cover her up. “Are you hurt?” he asked. She shook her head and he helped her to her feet. The two stood there for a brief moment of respite, arms wrapped around each other.

Then a noise came from the floor: Dr. Blake had come to and had started to groan. He sat up slightly and looked up to see Jenn and Steve standing together before him, looking down at him.

Steve’s arms had tensed up. “You son of a bitch,” he said, taking a step toward the doctor.

Dr. Blake scrambled to reach the syringe, which he brandished toward Steve, who stopped short. “That’s what I thought,” Dr. Blake said with a sneer. “This is certain death.”

Jenn tried to pull Steve back, pleading with him not to get any closer.

The men locked eyes with each other for just a few seconds. Dr. Blake’s hand had begun to shake from holding the syringe in his extended hand — and then, in a flash, he turned it toward himself and plunged it into the side of his neck. The impact made him wince and he fell forward onto the floor once more. Steve gasped and staggered backward and Jenn clutched him tighter with one arm, covering her mouth with the other.

Dr. Blake only laughed. He tossed the empty syringe toward the wall and tilted his head back to look at Jenn and Steve. Slowly, as the drowsiness began to set in, he lost his balance and crumpled onto the floor. He coughed, took a few ragged breaths, and, within a few minutes, fell motionless.

The only sound in the room now was the overhead hum of the air conditioning in the ceiling vents. Jenn and Steve could scarcely breathe. Then, all at once, they collapsed into each other and grasped each other as firmly as they could.

“I’m sorry,” Jenn said, gasping for air amid her tears. “I didn’t think—I didn’t know—it was him—“

“Shh. It’s okay. You’re okay.” Steve could only stroke her hair with his hand; he felt her shaking in his arms. “It’s over.”

“I kept having this dream. Dr. Blake — he was a snake, chasing me and then it went black. I couldn’t move— all this time when I was asleep. Oh my god, oh my god.”

Steve only squeezed her tighter into his body. Her cries began to subside into sniffles and then he held her by the arms and looked into her eyes. “We’re going to make this right. Don’t worry,” he said with a kiss. “I’ll make sure everything is made right.”

“How? What do you mean?”

“I never told you, but—“ Steve reached into his pocket for his wallet and pulled out his hospital identification card with his full name on it: Steven Joseph Connelly, CNA “—my dad owns this hospital system.”

Jenn blinked. “What?”

“My dad is Richard Connelly. He’s the President and CEO of the hospital system. I didn’t want you, or anyone, to know; I was afraid everyone would think it was nepotism, you know, and that I’m only here because of him.” He reached down and touched her fingers gently. “We’ll fix everything, Jenn.” He gave her another sweet forehead kiss. “Just trust me. We’re in this together.”

Jenn only buried her face in his chest, while he used his free hand to pull his cell phone out of his pocket. The phone rang twice before a man’s voice came on the other end. “Hello?”

“Dad, it’s me. Are you alone? We need to talk.”