Page 392 of Eternal
Then I collapsed, weak, trembling, the cold wire finally pulled free. Blood pooled beneath me and they watched me suffering, and I died a little more.
I tried to scream but all I could do was cry.
At first, I begged for it to stop, but it didn’t.
I bled until I passed out. When I woke, I was alone, in my room this time, soaked in blood and tears.
Brittany came down later, cleaned me up like I was garbage, not a girl. She forced my legs open to make sure it was effective and then she smiled. “You’ll thank us someday,” she whispered.
I stared at the ceiling, the black stars I’d drawn swimming above me.
Empty.
Dead inside.
108
AZRA
“TV” by Billie Eilish
Present
Ididn’t tell anyone about the appointment. Not Kat. Not him.
I’d been thinking about it for days. Weeks, maybe. Ever since he looked at me in that way. That soft, stupid way, like he thought about a possible future with me.
He touched my stomach one night while hugging me, barely laid his hand there like it meant something.
Like he was dreaming, too. Something unreachable. And it made me want things I never let myself want. A family. A real home.
Something that could prove all of them wrong. Even me. Like maybe I could break the cycle.
I don’t even know if I’d ever want it, not really. But the simple idea that I could. That the choice might exist. That was enough to crack something open.
I never planned to be a mom. I never wanted that. But I pictured it. Just once.
What if it was in me?
I knew I couldn’t do it. Not because I didn’t care. But because I did.
That baby would’ve had me for a mother.Me, broken, angry, lost as hell.
And maybe people say “love is enough,” but I watched what love did to me. How my mom said she loved me and still left bruises. Still disappeared when I needed her.
I wasn’t going to become that. I wasn't going to hand a kid the same poison I swallowed willingly because of love. Because I was a kid who trusted her mother.
I didn’t want a baby to grow up learning that silence means good. That doors slamming means run. That love might come with a bruise, or a lie, or nothing at all.
So yeah. I made the choice. And maybe that makes me selfish. But I call it mercy.
And so I wanted to know.
It was a check-up, that’s what I told myself. A routine check to see if things had… changed. If the damage was reversible. If the tissue had healed.
I think I needed the doctor to lie to me. Shedidn’t.
She was kind. Gentle. Clinical. Said things like scarred uterus and trauma-related atrophy and not impossible but very unlikely. I nodded like I understood. Like I didn’t already know. I thanked her and walked home.
