The next morning I was allowed to be discharged from the hospital, along with a number of prescriptions for various pain killers, and a few follow up appointments to make sure my broken bones were healing up nicely.
Lisa had to go to class, having skipped two days to stay with me, but Jaret swore he’d be by my side.
“If you don’t want to go back to your place, you can always come stay with me at the hotel while we find a new place to share.”
Lisa had overheard some cops outside surgery talking (it may have involved her sitting in the waiting room with the cops waiting to overhear their conversation for a couple hours) and Tom made it through. He was expected to eventually make a full recovery, and was being charged with attempted murder, assault, and a whole number of other charges.
From what I understood from the cops who came in and took my statement, it was very likely that Tom was going away for a long, long time.
It was going to be hard to keep stalking me from jail.
“No, I want to go back to where it happened,” I told Jaret as we got into the Tesla, which he still had. “I want to get my things from my apartment, and I refuse to be so scared that I’m unable to go to my own place.”
“See?” Jaret replied, a grin on his face. “That’s why I love you. You’ve got a bit of spunk to you, behind that nerdy exterior.”
I rolled my eyes as I carefully got into the seat. Even with the pills I’d been given, my broken rib especially was very sore, and it took me a couple of minutes to manage to get into the car without feeling too much pain.
Ten minutes later we were outside my apartment building. I went inside and we took the elevator up to my floor.
I thought I would have been ok being here, seeing the scene. After all, it had only taken a couple of minutes. But when I looked on to where it had all happened, saw a little stain of blood on the carpet which I knew was my own, saw the yellow crime scene tape, my heart began to pound faster.
It all came flooding back to me. Not that I’d forgotten what had happened, but now, standing here, it all came back in such vivid detail that for a moment I thought it was happening again.
Jaret grabbed my hand, however, and the feeling of his warm skin against mine began to calm me down.
“Deep breaths,” he ordered softly, and I did as asked. A minute later, everything was good again. I nodded, and stepped forward, past the yellow tape – careful not to touch anything – and into my apartment.
Grabbing my suitcase, I began to pack up everything I was going to need for the next little while. Clothes, toiletries, that sort of thing. I could always come back and get the bigger things later.
There was one more thing I had to do before we left, however. Going into the room that was going to be the nursery, I cried.
My sobs racked my body as I grieved for the little girl that was never going to be. My little girl, that I’d lost before I even got to meet her.
“Why, God?” I asked aloud, wondering to myself how this could possibly happen.
Jaret was at my side in an instant, his face hard as he wrapped his arms around me.
“It’s going to be ok, Mikki. It’s going to be ok,” he told me, stroking my hair as I buried my face into his chest.
I felt the same way as I did when I lost my mom. A completely, totally devastating loss that I didn’t know how I was going to get through.
I felt empty. I kept finding myself touching my stomach, wanting to feel that little bump had that begun to form, wanting to wake up and find out that it was all a dream, or wanting to go to the doctor and finding out that it wasn’t true, that everything was still normal.
But I knew from the dull pain in my abdomen, a physical reminder of what my body had suffered, that it wasn’t going to happen. The pain was a reminder of the horrors that my little baby, my little girl had gone through, that I hadn’t been able to protect her from even before she was born.
I don’t know how long I stood there, crying into Jaret’s arms, letting the comforting embrace of his strong muscles give me the strength to finally look up.
Looking at the pastel green walls that I’d so lovingly spent hours choosing the colour for, the crib that was already set up, and everything else, I felt like my world had fallen apart.
Eventually, we left. As I locked the door, it felt like I was locking the door on the old Michaela Prescott. It felt like as I left with my stepbrother, I was going out to start a new life.
And in a way, I was.