Beep. It’s all I can hear. The damn sound has embedded itself into my brain – the short, sharp, repetitive shots of noise assaulting my ears. I’m sure that’s all I’m going to hear for eternity.

My world is black and I can’t move. My body feels heavy – so, so heavy – and my head is pounding terribly. My brain feels as if it’s been bouncing off my skull. Everything hurts – my head, my bones . . . even my skin.

Why am I in so much pain? Where am I? The blackness engulfing me shows no sign of fading. There’s no light anywhere to be found, and no matter how hard I try to convince myself to move, I can’t. My eyes won’t open and I can’t talk. Everything is failing me.

My mind descends into panic, and then quickly my panic turns to pure, raw fear. In my head I’m falling to pieces, hysterical and frightened. I’m crying but I’m not crying. I’m flailing but I’m not moving. It’s my own personal hell, and I begin to wonder if that’s where I actually am. Am I dead?

Beep!

That sound. It’s unbearable.

Beep!

A spasm in my eyelid surprises me, and I wait, wondering if I imagined it. I push my fear away and wait some more. Another twitch, this time in both eyelids. I focus, concentrate hard on the muscles in my eyes, willing them to open.

I’m filled with hope when I detect another spasm – small but definitely there. I get a glimpse of light, spurring me on. I need more. I can’t bear this blackness any longer. I shove the pain away and gather my determination and strength.

Beep!

My eyes open, seeming to wake my lungs as they do. Air gushes into me and my body inflates. My eyes quickly close again on a flinch. The combination of harsh light and searing pain bolting through my body makes it too difficult to keep them open.

I can’t scream. I can’t move to curl into a ball and curb the agony. My eyes fill with tears behind my lids, and the tears force their way to the corners of my eyes and trickle down the sides of my face into my ears. I work to regulate my breathing into smooth, even inhales and exhales, and the pain subsides a little.

Then I begin to open my eyes again, bit by little bit, squinting back the glare. My surroundings come into view. I don’t recognise anything. It looks like a hospital room.

Beep!

If I could make anything work, I’d sit up. Or get out of bed and find someone to tell me what on earth is going on. I try to turn my head and the movement triggers a wave of pain that rips through me again. I scream in my head. Oh God, I’ve never felt pain like this. More tears come, blurring my vision.

Beep!

And then I see him.

He’s slumped in the chair next to me, asleep, his head propped on his hand, his elbow on the arm of the chair. He looks haunted, even in his sleep. His skin is almost as grey as I know his eyes to be, and his scruff is the scruffiest I’ve ever seen. He’s wearing old jeans and a white T-shirt, and a blanket is spread across his lap.

My Jack.

Suddenly, the pain doesn’t feel so brutal.

His hand is wrapped loosely around mine, resting by my side. I see a bracelet. It has two charms. You and Me.

The sight of Jack along with the bracelet opens the floodgates to my mind. I close my eyes, willingly walking towards the memories. I’m at a bar with Jack drinking tequila. He’s licking me. And I’m staring at him in a complete, awed daze. I’m standing on the opposite side of the road from him. I’m pushed up against a rough wall, and then soon after a smooth window in a hotel room. I wake up in a bed with his beauty spread out beside me. I run. I relive every moment of the week that followed, remember obsessing over the intensity of our encounter and regretting not leaving him any way to contact me. I see his face when I open my front door on the night of my housewarming party. I hear glass smashing at my feet. I feel his touches and hear all his words, experience every kiss again and every painful thought. I feel his arms around my body when I threw myself at him after he gave me a solution to my roof predicament. I see him sitting across the boardroom table looking at me as if he were the proudest man alive. I see a pregnancy test. I see his wife and the crazy light in her eyes. And finally I see a car speeding towards me.

Beep!

My eyes snap open and I gasp for breath, my chest pumping. More pain, except this time it’s worse. This time I know why I’m hurting.

‘Annie.’ I hear Jack in the distance and turn my eyes, finding him suspended over me, his face grave. ‘Annie?’ He reaches above my head and slams his fist into something before returning his attention to me, watching me convulse on the bed.

His hands are stroking my face as I look up at him with wide, frightened eyes. ‘Jesus, baby.’ He chokes, reaching for the button again and smashing it hard. ‘Come on!’ He looks over his shoulder when a hive of activity breaks out, the door swinging open. ‘She’s awake but I think she’s having a seizure.’

A nurse appears above me, pushing Jack out of the way. ‘Annie?’ she calls loudly. Too loudly. She pulls the skin under my eyes down, looking closely into them. ‘Annie, can you hear me?’

I nod, fighting to rein myself in to stop the pain. A mask lands over my face and I suck in air ravenously. The hit of oxygen gives me instant relief, widening my airways and dislodging the panic.

‘Is she okay?’ Jack asks, appearing by the nurse’s side. He looks just awful – drained, tired and anxious.

‘Are you in pain, darling?’ the nurse asks, ignoring Jack.

I nod again, and she immediately looks across the bed. ‘Check her chart and tell me the last time she was given morphine. Intravenous.’

‘Eight this morning,’ a female voice replies. ‘Straight after the first transfusion.’

‘Hook her up again.’

‘Straight away.’

‘Annie, we’re getting you some more pain relief, darling. Won’t be long, okay?’ The nurse makes fast work of hooking up a fresh bag of drugs, and I close my eyes, welcoming the cool liquid into my veins, hoping it numbs not only my broken body but my mind too. The door closes quietly and I try to relax, focusing on Jack’s closeness. He’s here. Everything will be okay because he’s here.

‘Annie, can you hear me?’

I feel his touch on the tips of my fingers and force my eyes to open, my head resting comfortably to the side. Jack pulls the chair closer to the bed and perches on the edge, leaning forward to take my hand in both of his, squeezing gently.

‘Hello, gorgeous,’ he whispers, his expression harbouring all kinds of trepidation. It doesn’t matter how terrible he looks. I’d put money on the fact that I look worse. I flex my hand a little in his, my way of replying, and he smiles, his lips trembling as he exhales deeply and drops his forehead to our cluster of hands on the bed.

I stare at the back of his head for an age, building up my strength to speak, soothed by the relief from pain that the morphine delivers. ‘J . . . ack.’ His name comes out of my mouth jagged and broken, and I find myself able to lift my head a little, now that the pain isn’t hindering my movement.

His own head whips up considerably faster than mine. ‘Don’t move, baby,’ he rushes to say, gently pushing my head back down to the pillow. ‘Don’t move.’

‘I’m stiff,’ I complain, feeling like I need to crack every bone in my body into place, especially in my hips.

‘You mustn’t move.’ Jack faffs with my pillow, not really making much difference, but I let him tend to me nevertheless.

My arm feels like lead, and I look down to find it concealed in a cast, from the tips of my fingers to the very top of my arm. It’s ramrod straight. I look at Jack, who’s watching me assess my injury. Or one of them. His bristly face is close and straight, his grey eyes cloudy. He drops the most delicate kiss on the corner of my mouth, and I manage a small smile.

‘Better?’ he asks, scanning my face for any sign of discomfort.

I nod. ‘How are you?’ I ask, watching as he more or less plummets back to the chair, leaning in and resting his forearms on the bed, his hand holding mine.

He huffs a short, quiet puff of amusement. ‘Don’t ask me how I am when you’re lying here looking like you’ve been run over by a bus.’

‘It was a car, wasn’t it?’ I reply simply and emotionlessly, making Jack pull up in his chair.

‘You remember?’

‘Who was driving?’

He starts patting at the bedding around my thighs, avoiding my eyes. ‘Let’s not do this now.’ He’s trying to avoid the conversation that we’re going to have to have at some point, but I’d rather just get it done with. ‘For now we focus on getting you well.’

‘It was her, wasn’t it?’ I don’t mean to allow emotion into my voice, and I wholeheartedly hate myself for letting it, because Jack’s face is a picture of pure misery as a result.

‘She was arrested at the scene,’ he whispers. I look away, my lips pressing together to stop the cries of devastation from escaping and crippling him even more. ‘She said she didn’t see you in the road.’

‘She saw me,’ I say quietly, looking down at my tummy, not wanting to ask the question that’s most important to me. Jack’s hand appears in my downcast vision, coming to rest lightly over the bedcovers on my stomach. I look at him, my eyes brimming with tears that are ready to tumble. ‘Our baby?’ I murmur, my hand coming to lie atop his, hoping and praying that my battered body protected our unborn child. ‘Please tell me our baby is okay.’

Tears begin to stream down Jack’s cheeks as he shakes his head. And my heart breaks clean in two. ‘I can’t.’ He swallows, his handsome face distorting with grief. ‘I can’t, Annie. I’m sorry,’ he whispers. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

A ragged sob rips through me, my broken body jerking as a result. I’m in agony. ‘No,’ I whimper, my eyes bursting with tears, encouraging more from Jack. ‘No.’ My body begins to spasm uncontrollably, my world exploding into a haze of devastation. ‘No, no, no!’

Jack shoots up from his chair and bends his body over the bed, getting as close to me as he can to comfort me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he sobs, trying desperately to console me as we cry in each other’s arms. ‘I’m so sorry.’

I shake my head, not prepared to accept it, hiding my face in his neck. ‘She killed our baby.’

Jack doesn’t say anything more – no apologies, no attempts to calm me. All he has the energy left to do is hug me and cry his heart out along with me.

The darkness returns, and so does the pain. But now it’s agony. She tried to kill me and she succeeded in killing our baby. This is my penance. For all of the wrong decisions I have made, for touching the forbidden, this is the ultimate punishment.

I will never forgive myself.