Page 29 of Cassie
“The anesthesia didn’t work right. My heart was racing and I couldn’t stop shaking. One of the nurses held a mask over my face and it felt like I was suffocating. I know I wasn’t, but that’s what it felt like. Tied down, I couldn’t fight back. Then they made the first incision.”
“Fuck, baby. You were awake?”
“Yeah. Only for a minute, I guess. They were shouting, and I screamed and the doctor yelled at the anesthesiologist. It burned like ice, then scorched like fire. That’s all I remember.”
“Jesus, Cassie. That’s enough for a lifetime.”
“Yeah, it is.”
She’d recounted seeing her son four hours later when she awoke, had held his lax body for barely an hour before her mother urged the hospital staff to take him away. Wrapped in a donated blanket, his coffin had been scarcely the size of a breadbox, small and final.Stillborn.
Hoss well remembered the wealth of amazing emotions that had filled him when he’d held Faith for the first time. Seeing her only moments after her birth, warm and squirming, her tiny body dangerously slick. He remembered how she’d loudly protested the cold, bright chaos of the delivery room after being carried in careful sanctuary for so many months. His daughter had cried and squawked until the doc placed her on Hope’s chest, skin to skin. Those cries trailing slowly to silence as her little face burrowed close, hands relaxing at the stroking touch of her mother’s hands, safe within the sound of her mother’s beating heart. The murmurs of Hope’s awed voice mixing with his as they lovingly cataloged their daughter’s charms. His and Hope’s Faith. Healthy and precious, and a miracle he cherished to this day.
Hoss couldn’t imagine her any other way. He couldn’t even bear to think about her born silent and still, scooped lifeless out of a belly, no thin shrill, then stronger-still demanding cries voiced in the room, or ever. No sunny chatter through his house, phone and vid bills running up, laughter ringing bright and true.I was right about Cassie.His arms tightened reflexively.Bravest woman I’ve ever met.
Ever since the unthinkable happened to her, Cassie had been fighting demons. Fears assailed her everywhere, people and places pulling unmetered responses from her. Then there was the sheer terror of the panic, which had proven as much a deterrent against reentry into the world as the actual attacks. She was determined not to be stifled, though, always looking for ways to expand her world, push back the horizons that seemed to be shrinking in on her every hour.
His art had become one sure way for her. Cassie had found the emotion in the pieces enough of a draw to bring her out to shows. Each moment of the night carefully orchestrated, but managed. Hockey another, finding what she could stand and maneuver her experiences into that space. Use of tools and rituals her measuring stick of success. Now the bike, a thing she could control, something to master. Her own competence finally winning out, bringing her into the world in a way so unique it beat back the terror.
Fuck.
He had triggered her twice in this bed without knowing it.
The first when he lost her eyes, when she couldn’t see his face—when she could no longer seehim—she’d felt the rapists’ hands on her, experienced again the paralyzing fear when all she could see were the stocking-distorted faces, noses smashed flat and upturned, porcine in appearance, their obscene tongues waggling through strategic slits, nothing to make them human.
The second was when he rolled her, leaning in for a kiss. His weight morphing into a restraint in her mind, his mouth the operating room mask that mixed with the pain in her memories to turn it into a terrifying thing.
Two things I can easily avoid, he thought, stroking her hair slowly.
My gorgeous girl. So fucking brave.
