Delicate Condition, page 26
Io nodded, staring down at her hands. “Almost forty years ago now. I was twenty years old, poor as you can imagine, just truly desperate for money. I had this friend who’d made a couple thousand dollars being a surrogate—or at least I’d thought she was a friend—and I thought, Why not?” She shook her head. “Ten grand… Well, that was a fortune back then. To me, at least.”
I was leaning forward in my chair, listening hard, my heartbeat lodged in my throat.
“So you agreed to do it.” I was glad to hear that my voice sounded almost normal.
Io nodded. “I know that sort of thing is a lot more common now, but this was back in the eighties, remember. Surrogacy was virtually unheard of back then. The whole thing seemed like something from science fiction to me, and it was all very hush-hush. I never even met the couple I was supposed to be having this baby for. Everything went through my doctor.”
Somewhere in the back of my head I heard something click, but I didn’t know what it meant, not yet. I swallowed. “When did you figure out that something was wrong?”
“When the cravings started.” Io’s eyes seemed to go unfocused, like she was seeing something I couldn’t. “I used to sneak out in the middle of the night and peel the dead animals off the road… I can still taste them in my mouth, even after all these years. It was richer than other kinds of meat. Gamier.” She shuddered, like she was coming out of a trance. “There were other symptoms too, like I said on my video. Hallucinations. And I got this strange…rash all over my arms.” Again, her eyes darted to my leg.
Before I could say a word, I felt a shift of movement inside of me, the feeling of something turning over, and I looked down, my back suddenly rigid. Io released a breath through her teeth.
The two of us watched as a long thin shape appeared beneath the skin of my belly, then quickly vanished.
“What happened after the baby came?” I asked, still watching my belly. “Was he…she…were they okay?”
Io stared at me for a moment, something blank in her eyes. It occurred to me that she might not really know. She’d been a surrogate, after all. She’d never intended to be that baby’s mother.
“I never saw the baby,” she admitted. “I hadn’t wanted to see her. I made them take her immediately after she was born.”
Them. I looked up quickly, my heart was beating loud and fast in my ears. This was the part I still didn’t know how to believe, satanists and ritual sacrifices and spells. I wanted her to tell me that it wasn’t true, that she’d made it all up for her YouTube followers. “You mean the people you keep talking about in your videos? This…this cult you keep mentioning…”
Io stared at me, unmoving, a smug trace of pleasure on her lips. “I assure you the cult is very real, Anna,” she said. “Very real. But that’s not who I’m talking about. I was kept away from the cult members during my pregnancy. They’d wanted to meet me after, but I knew what was going on by then, so I refused. Everything went through my doctor. She’s the one who took the baby.”
“Your doctor?” I felt my shoulders tense up, realizing this was the reason I was here. This was why she’d wanted to speak with me so badly. “Who was your doctor?”
Io’s eyes came up, meeting mine. She only paused for a fraction of a second but, to me, it seemed to last forever. Because suddenly, I knew what she was going to say.
Unblinking, she said, “It was Dr. Carla Hill.”
31
Dr. Hill. My Dr. Hill.
“That’s why I wanted to see you,” Io continued. “Dr. Hill’s in deep with these people, and now she’s doing the same thing to you that she did to me.”
“No,” I murmured. “No, I don’t believe in any of that.”
Io continued as though I hadn’t spoken. “I think that all of this, your whole pregnancy, it was set up so Dr. Hill could take your baby and give it to them. I think she trades it for something, protection or wealth; I’m not totally sure.”
“No,” I said. But my voice was shaking so badly I sounded drunk. Dr. Hill has had more access to me than anyone other than Dex. She knew my address in Brooklyn and in Southampton, she’d prescribed medication, she’d read all of my labs. She was the one who kept saying everything was fine, even as I told her that something was wrong, that I could feel that something was wrong.
But cults? Ritual sacrifices?
“No,” I said again. But the light in the bar seemed to dim suddenly, the walls and the floor all falling away until there was only me and Io in the circle of yellow light, surrounded by black nothingness, just the two of us in a void at the end of the world, spinning through space. I had a feeling of vertigo, like there was a gravity reaching out from the nothingness around us, and I had to lean forward and put my head in my hands, clenching my eyes tight just to get everything to stop spinning.
Dr. Hill. Dr. Hill, who knew how badly I wanted this, how I’d suffered for it, how I’d prayed for it. Could Dr. Hill have been planning all this time to—what?
Kidnap my baby?
“…water…” Io was saying when I finally managed to start listening again. “You need some water. Here.” And she pressed something cold and hard into my hand. I blinked at it, frowning: her water glass.
She was right; I did need water. My head was pounding, and my throat was suddenly unbearably dry, so dry that swallowing was painful. I really should ask the bartender for something to drink. But I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t eat or drink anything once I got here just in case Io wasn’t as trustworthy as I was hoping she was.
Instead, I swallowed a few times, trying to wet the inside of my mouth, to convince myself I wasn’t actually thirsty. “You said online… You made it sound like there were others…”
Io was nodding. “Oh yes. This sort of thing happens much more frequently than you would think. Satanic cults need children for their depraved rituals. That’s why they work with doctors like Dr. Hill, because they discovered they can pay them for unborn babies and children. It’s sick.”
I gripped the arms of my chair, trying to steady myself. “Okay…let’s say I believe you about Dr. Hill. Is there some other reason she might be doing all this? Something that doesn’t have anything to do with cults or Satan?” I still couldn’t make myself believe this was a ritualistic sacrifice. There had to be another explanation.
But Io leaned closer to me, licking her lips, lowering her voice like she was worried she’d be overheard. “I’ve spent the last forty years looking into this, dear. It might seem far–fetched to you, but when you’ve done as much research as I have, the signs are all very clear. Dr. Hill is one of many doctors working with a very small, very powerful Satanic cult. She does something to the pregnant mothers, and then she delivers the babies to them. I believe they need the babies for a ritual of some sort, or a spell maybe?” Io laughed once, the sound short and brittle and entirely unamused. “Believe me, I know how all of this sounds. I used to be a skeptic too. But there has to be a reason they need babies. There has to be. It’s why I keep looking for others, because I have to know…” Io trailed off, her face grave.
I thought she was going to say something about her baby, the one she carried. But she just added, a little more quietly, “I have to know what happened to me.”
I closed my eyes, thinking of the baby inside of me, tiny arms and legs, tiny fingers, tiny nose. Skin softer than a puppy’s belly. Midnight feedings and milk-warmed breath. My baby’s face nuzzled against my chest. For nine months I’d been dreaming of her, planning for her.
Could what Io was saying be true? After all this time, could my own doctor, the person I’d trusted the most, be planning to take her away from me? I didn’t believe in Satan, but maybe I didn’t have to. It was enough that Dr. Hill did, that she thought she was engaging in some horrible ritual, that she was going to do something to my baby.
I wasn’t going to let her. Not after I’d come this far.
“Thank you for talking to me,” I said. “This has helped, really.”
“I hope it has.” Io watched me push myself out of my chair. Her expression had gone blank, unreadable. Before I could step away from the table she added, like an afterthought.
“Did you see the birds circling outside?”
I felt a chill straight through to my spine. “I did.”
“It’s a sign of bad luck.” Then her eyes flicked to my belly and I saw disgust pass over her in a shiver.
* * *
“Back home?” Kamal asked once I’d climbed into the car. I nodded, too numb for words, and turned to watch out the window as that god-awful bar slowly grew smaller behind me, those birds still flying in a low, tight circle. We made it out of the parking lot and down the street before I had to bend over, head between my knees. Breathing hard.
I was having a hard time sorting through my own thoughts. Dr. Hill. The claw I thought I’d seen. The cat I’d wanted to eat. The rash still covering my legs.
And Io’s voice, repeating on a loop, She does something…she delivers the babies to them.
I wanted to curl into a fetal position, I wanted to breathe into a bag. My thoughts were thick, chaotic: This can’t be happening, there has to be some other explanation, there has to be.
And, at the same time, She can’t have my baby, I won’t let her…
My phone pinged. For the first time in hours, I thought about my husband. I imagined him going into our shared bedroom, finding me gone. I hadn’t even sent him a text to let him know where I was going, that I was safe, that I was coming back.
I pulled my phone out and stared down at the screen. There were dozens of messages from Dex, new ones popping up every few seconds:
Where did you go?
Anna come back, please.
I’m really scared here.
Think about what you’re doing! This isn’t safe for the baby!
I’m calling Kamal and if he doesn’t answer I’m going to call the police…
Anna please don’t do this.
I reread his messages twice, but when I saw the little gray dots that meant he was typing something new, I flipped my phone over in my lap. I didn’t want to read whatever he was about to send. I’d be home soon enough. He could yell at me all he wanted then.
I settled back in my seat, my arms curled protectively around my bump as the car’s heat settled over me. Something about Io’s story was still bothering me. I stared at the back of Kamal’s head, sorting through everything she’d told me, everything I already knew. Sweat gathered under my arms and thighs, but I didn’t tell Kamal to turn the heat off. It felt good. I hadn’t realized how cold I’d been for the last few weeks. Cold down through my skin, cold all the way to my bones.
The warnings, I realized, after several long moments of quiet. They were the one piece of this puzzle that didn’t fit. And not just the warnings, but the altered appointment times and the sabotaged meds. I pulled my phone out and read the warnings in my calendar, just to be sure I was remembering them correctly.
They did something to your baby.
Are you sure it’s dead?
You can’t trust anyone.
Headlights passed through the car, the sudden flare of light making me cringe. I realized I hadn’t taken a breath for several long moments and forced myself to inhale, one hand braced against the car door to hold myself steady.
I’d suspected for a while now that these messages might’ve been coming from someone other than my stalker, maybe even someone trying to help me. But now that I knew about Dr. Hill, I felt stupid for not putting it together sooner. All this time playing amateur detective, trying to narrow down my pathetic list of suspects, and at the end of the day, there was only one person I could think of who knew my schedule at the clinic almost as well as Dr. Hill, who would know exactly which appointments I couldn’t afford to be late to, which meds couldn’t be left out overnight without going bad. I felt like an idiot for not seeing it before.
I dialed the number to Dr. Hill’s office with stiff fingers and she answered halfway through the first ring, “Riverside Clinic, this is Cora.”
“Cora, hi, it’s Anna Alcott.”
“Good afternoon, Ms. Alcott. Dr. Hill’s attending a labor at the moment, but I’d be happy—”
“No,” I said, cutting her off. I could barely hear my own voice, my heart was beating so loud. “Actually I’m calling to speak with you.”
There was a long uncomfortable pause. A knowing pause. And then finally, Cora cleared her throat and said, “Uhm. Yeah, okay. Hold on a second.”
I heard the squeak of a door and then a muffled walking sound, distant voices.
Finally, Cora brought the phone back to her ear, exhaling loudly. “Okay. I can talk now.”
If I’d had any doubt about Cora’s involvement, it left me then. It was the way she’d taken the call somewhere private before she even knew what it was about, the caution in her voice when she spoke to me. She was nervous. I could feel it vibrating through the phone.
“You’ve been messing with my calendar,” I said. Not a question. “You’ve been leaving me weird messages.”
There was another long deliberate silence. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to figure out whether there was any point in denying my accusation, or she just didn’t know what to say. It took forever for her to speak again.
“You had to create a password for your online account through Riverside,” she said finally. “The assistants can see what one you use. I figured you probably used the same one for everything. Lots of people do.”
And there it was, the answer to the riddle that had been plaguing me for months.
“Did you do the meds too?” I asked when I could trust myself to speak. I thought I was calm; I really did. It wasn’t until I heard how badly my voice was shaking that I realized how furious I was. Whatever her motives, what she’d done to me was unforgivable. “We found medication left on the counter all night, even though I know I put it away.”
A pause, and then—
“I had to,” Cora said, her voice thick with tears. “I couldn’t let her hurt you.”
“What about my miscarriage? Did you—?”
“No,” Cora said firmly. “I swear, the second I found out you were pregnant, I stopped, you have to believe me—”
“Why?” I snapped, cutting her off. “Why would you do that to me? I thought I was losing my mind. If you wanted to warn me about something, why not just talk to me?”
“I couldn’t.” Cora sniffed on the other end of the phone, and I realized that she must’ve started crying. “It was awful, I’m sorry. I just…I really didn’t want you to find out who I was. I couldn’t think of another way.”
“I still don’t understand how,” I said. “Did you—? Were you the one who broke into my house?”
“I didn’t break in.” Cora said, too quickly. “I mean, I…” and she trailed off, swearing under her breath like she’d said too much, which didn’t make sense. Of all the things she’d just admitted, the fact that she didn’t have to break in was what bothered her?
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Was the door open or something?”
“No, I…I had a key.”
“You had a key to my house? How?”
“He gave it to me.”
That’s when it hit me, right then. I felt the word like a bullet, and everything inside of me went still.
He.
“You mean…you mean she gave it to you, you mean Dr. Hill?” But of course that’s not who she meant. Dr. Hill didn’t have a key to my house.
“Anna,” Cora said. Her voice was different now. It was lower, raspy. Familiar. It was the same voice that had whispered the word baby to me in the dark, the voice that had haunted me for nine months. “Anna…I’m sorry. I never wanted you to find out.”
“No,” I said. I was beginning to understand. I didn’t want to, but it was too late. I was replaying the night she broke in, how it had been dark, so dark that I hadn’t even been able to see her face. So dark that she hadn’t been able to see my face. I thought of the whispered rasp. Baby.
I thought she’d meant my baby. But she hadn’t.
She’d meant Dex.
Cora started talking faster now, words tumbling over words in her rush to get them out before I hung up the phone. “He said it was over between you two, that you’d been trying to get pregnant for two years, but you both knew it wasn’t going to work, that you wanted to try one last time, just in case. He said he was going to leave you once this round of IVF was done. That’s why I told myself it was okay…that sleeping with him was okay. I’m so sorry, Anna. You have to believe me. I was stupid, so, so stupid.”
I stared straight ahead, feeling like I was walking through gunfire. I’d barely registered the first bullet when the next one came and the next.
Dex had slept with someone else. He’d given her a key to our house. And he told her it was over between us. He was going to leave me after that last round of IVF.
He had to know she was the one who’d broken in. He had to at least suspect. But he let me believe I had a stalker. He let me live in fear for months.
I felt a twist in my gut and doubled over, worried I was going be sick.
Cora was still talking, her horribly familiar voice echoing from my phone. “It’s over between us, Anna; you have to believe me. Over this last year, with you coming into the clinic all the time, I—I got to know you so much better, and I realized how horrible it was, what I was doing to you. I only came to your house that night to break it off and…and to say goodbye, I swear. I didn’t think you’d be there. You’d stopped putting your appointments in your online calendar and I had the day off, so I didn’t know about your procedure. I waited outside your house until I saw you leave, but I was pretty far away, and I didn’t get a good look; I just saw someone walk out the door wearing this pink hat. You know that pink stocking hat you always wear?”
I had a sudden flash of memory: Dex putting on my hat. Dex leaving to get the dogs after my surgery. She saw Dex leave and she was far enough away that she thought he was me. She thought he was alone. She’d thought she was climbing into bed with him.
