Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 21802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 109(@200wpm)___ 87(@250wpm)___ 73(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 21802 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 109(@200wpm)___ 87(@250wpm)___ 73(@300wpm)
The rubber coating on the cord was cold and slippery in my sweaty hands. It was easier to do what I needed to when I focused on the task and not the outcome. I took a deep, preparatory breath, and tugged.
It wouldn’t budge. It hurt to kneel on the hard, polished floor, but I did it to give myself a better stance. I adjusted my grasp and redoubled my efforts, jerking at the cord, and tried to wrench it free from the outlet. It gave a little, just enough I could see the three metal prongs. I clawed at the plug, short of breath from the exertion and the magnitude of what was about to happen. My heart hammered in my chest, pounded in my ears. I groaned in frustration as I wiggled the stubborn thing side to side, gaining a fraction of an inch each time. Until finally—
It popped free, and I fell backward onto my bottom, squealing across the hard floor with the black cord squeezed in my hands.
A dull alarm sounded on the machine, replacing the soft clicks and hiss, and the flap ceased its slow flutter. I tossed the cord away and scrambled to my feet. How long would it be before someone came running in, assuming they would?
I sprinted to the door and peered out into the hallway, which was empty, and counted the seconds. Ten went by as the alarm on the respirator wailed. Fifteen. I held my breath while I withheld it from my husband. At twenty seconds, goosebumps tingled down my arms. No one was coming. At thirty seconds, a second alarm blared, intense and angry. I could only assume it meant his pulse had slowed to nothing.
It was just over thirty-four seconds before the nurse appeared, all the way at the other end of the hall. She must have received an alert, because she immediately looked my direction and began to make her way toward me. I cursed her swift footsteps as they brought her closer.
“What’s happening?” I said as she reached me. I channeled my nervous energy into my voice. “Why are the machines making that noise? Why did it stop?” As she went left to try to get around me, I frantically moved that direction, slowing her down. I repeated it as she tried to go the other way.
“Move!” she ordered.
I lost my count of the seconds as she pushed her way into the room and assessed the situation, and time ground to a halt anyway. Her gaze darted to the flat lines and question marks on the monitors, then to the unmoving plunger of the respirator, and on to track the black power cord that disappeared under the wheels of the bed.
Her head snapped to mine, her face full of accusation.
“I tripped over it,” I said weakly. It was a terrible lie and she knew it. My hands still ached from how hard it had been to disengage the power cord. There was no way tripping over the cord would have been enough to yank it from the wall.
“What were you doing?” she demanded as she bent, seized the plug, and stabbed it back into the outlet. One alarm shut off, but the more urgent one continued to sound. She moved with practiced efficiency, silencing it with a single tap of the screen.
We watched the black monitor in taut silence, searching for any change. Had the system been off long enough? Sergey hadn’t wanted to take his brother off life support, but he also didn’t want to drag out the inevitable. He had signed a “Do Not Resuscitate.” If my husband’s heart couldn’t restart itself, there’d be no one else to do it for him.
The waiting was pure agony.
As time dragged on, everything inside me grew tighter. The good, moral part of me shriveled and died right alongside Sidor. Until death do us part, indeed.
I tried to sound heartbroken, but it came out sounding robotic. “Is he dead?”
“You stay here.” The nurse’s tone was clipped. “I need to get a doctor.”
I swallowed hard as she went, trying hard to ignore her judgmental glare. She thought I was a killer, and she wasn’t wrong. I’d sold a piece of my soul, but I’d done what was necessary to save the rest of myself.
I could only hope it wouldn’t backfire on me as badly as the last time.
-5-
NOW
Luke Rafferty’s cruel comment about my time in prison cut me with a thousand knives dripping with shame. I stared at the direction of the grain in the floorboards of his elegant studio.
When I’d been arrested, I pleaded and insisted I hadn’t intended to kill my husband, that he was already brain dead, but it didn’t matter to the State of Illinois. Due to my “extreme disregard” for Sidor Petrov’s health, I’d been charged with murder.