Chapter 4 - WHAT LIES BENEATH THE BLUE BLANKET
The wool came away with a soft, static hiss.
In the dim light of the Pilsen bedroom, I looked down at my wife’s body, and the breath left my lungs in a strangled, horrified gasp.
Megan was wearing a thin cotton nightgown, pulled up past her knees. Her legs, once lean and muscular from years of distance running, were swollen to nearly twice their normal size. The skin from her ankles to her mid-thighs was stretched so taut it had a waxy, translucent shine, marbled with deep purple and sickly yellow hematomas—huge, blossoming bruises that looked as though she had been struck repeatedly with a heavy wooden bat.
Along her shins, the skin was covered in a fine, petechial rash: thousands of tiny, pinpoint red dots clustered together like spray paint.
“Megan,” I choked out, my gorge rising. “What happened to you? Did someone hit you? Did Marcus—?”
“No,” she wept, turning her face into the mattress. “No one touched me. It started three weeks ago. After… after your mother started bringing the tea.”
I froze.
*The amber vial on the kitchen counter.*
*The Tupperware of bone broth in the refrigerator.*
*The sharp, chemical odor masked with eucalyptus.*
“Every day,” Megan whispered, her voice muffled by the sheets. “She would make me a cup of ‘restorative tonic.’ She said it was an old German recipe for pregnant women with low iron. If I refused, she would sit by the bed and read the legal petition out loud. She would describe the foster facility where they would take the baby while the court decided custody. She said if I didn't cooperate, she would tell the judge I was refusing prenatal care.”
My heart was beating so hard and fast I could hear the blood roaring in my eardrums like a waterfall.
“What was in the tonic, Megan?”
“She said it was herbs. Nettles and raspberry leaf. But it tasted like metal, Jake. Like sucking on a copper penny. An hour after I drank it, my hands would start shaking. Then my vision would blur. Then the vomiting started. And then… the bruises.”
She reached down with trembling, uncoordinated fingers and gently lifted the hem of her nightgown further. Across her ribs and the upper swell of her pregnant belly were more bruises—dark, mottled, subcutaneous hemorrhages that looked like ink spreading through milk.
“I stayed under the blanket,” she sobbed, “because I couldn't bear for you to see me like this. I thought… she told me that if you saw how broken I was, you would realize I was a liability. She said you were already looking for a way out, and this would give you an excuse to sign the custody papers with her.”
“That evil bitch,” I snarled. The words tore out of me, sharp and venomous.
I didn't care about background checks. I didn't care about the probate court. Looking at the woman I loved—broken, poisoned, huddled on a stained mattress in the dark—something fundamental inside me snapped. The boy who had spent thirty years trying to earn his mother’s cold, conditional approval died in that bedroom. What was left was a husband and a father who would tear the world apart to keep his family alive.
“We’re going to the hospital,” I said, my voice dropping into a hard, crystalline calm.
“Jake, the petition—”
“Fuck the petition.” I reached down and gathered her into my arms.
When I lifted her, she felt terrifyingly light, despite the swelling in her limbs. Her muscle mass had wasted away beneath the nightgown; her collarbones jutted out like knives beneath her pale skin. She gasped as I pulled her against my chest, her head lolling against my shoulder.
“Peanut,” she whispered, her eyes fluttering. “Jake… she hasn't kicked since noon.”
Cold terror gripped my throat.
I kicked the bedroom door wide open, carrying Megan down the narrow hallway. On the kitchen counter, the amber vial caught the late afternoon sun, glowing like a malevolent eye. With my free hand, I grabbed the vial and shoved it deep into the pocket of my jeans.
I carried her down the three flights of stairs, her breathing coming in shallow, fluttering rasps against my neck. In the vestibule, past Marcus’s muddy boots, I kicked open the heavy oak door and burst out onto 19th Street.
The Chicago sky had opened up. A torrential, blinding rain was drumming against the pavement, turning the gutters into churning rivers of brown water.
I didn't have time to wait for an ambulance. I carried Megan straight to our battered Honda Civic parked at the curb, laid her gently across the back seat, and threw my jacket over her trembling shoulders.
“Hold on, Meg,” I said, leaning over her, kissing her cold, damp forehead. “Hold on for me. Hold on for Clara.”
Her eyes fluttered open at the name. We had never said it out loud. We had kept it between us as a secret, a name to be whispered only when the nursery was finished and the crib was made.
*Clara.*
“Clara,” she breathed, a ghost of a smile touching her cracked lips before her eyes rolled back, and she slipped into unconsciousness.
May you like
I slammed the car door, jumped behind the wheel, threw the transmission into drive, and tore down 19th Street, the windshield wipers slapping furiously against the glass as I headed toward Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
***
