Save Her

Natalie - Chapter 1 The blindfold lifts from Natalie’s eyes. She shifts her blurred vision around the room of unpainted cement walls and bright fluorescent lights, and finally lands her focus across the square metal table at the only other person in the room, a woman over 50, her hair half-grey and half-black in a tight ponytail, wearing scrubs a slightly darker shade of gray than the walls. In front of the woman is a yellow legal pad of paper and a mechanical pencil. Natalie tries to lift her arms. There’s an inch of slack before the chains of the handcuffs stop her. She looks down at the chair. Wooden. Not comfortable. Armrests that secure her shackles. To her right, a mirrored pane of glass reflects the left side of the woman sitting across from her. Natalie’s heartbeat picks up as her eyes focus entirely. She considers her change in circumstances — just hours ago she had felt so safe. “I know who you are,” Natalie says, not recognizing her own scratchy voice. “I mean I know what company you’re with. You’re Rine International. Tell me I’m wrong.” Her voice sounds weaker than she wants, low on energy like she had just awoken from a nap, though she did not remember taking one. How had she gotten here? “Are you feeling okay?” The woman asks, all business. The woman’s English is good, but Natalie detects a slight accent. German? Something else? “Like you care.” “We do,” says the woman in a monotone as gray as the cement. The bright fluorescent lights hum from above. Natalie blinks several times quickly to moisturize her eyes. They blur and refocus slowly. It’s odd to her that her heart can beat so rapidly while her eyes feel so weighted down. “Where am I? Where is this place?” “Tell us about Drayden Routton,” the woman says. “You already know,” Natalie says. “We want to hear it from you,” says the woman. The monotone color of the walls blends together with the doors, the ceiling, and everything. There’s nothing colorful for Natalie to look at. There’s nothing for her to focus on except the woman sitting across from her, but even her cement-colored outfit has nothing unique about it. The woman blurs and then comes back into focus. Natalie can’t seem to get her bearings. She wants to press her hands into her eyes, but she can’t. The binds restrict her. “Like what? Like from the beginning?” Natalie asks. “Yes. Everything,” says the woman. “Everything?” The woman waits. Natalie looks at the reflective glass to her right and expects for the woman to look at her in the reflection. She finally does. “I can still see his body falling in my dreams. When I replay it in my head, at first it’s a dark shadow in the upper peripheral of my mind’s eye, as if an airplane was flying too close to the ground. And then it quickly becomes the form of a man with flailing arms.” Natalie huffs a laugh. “A man trying his hardest to slow down an inevitable crash to the ground.” Natalie looks away from the mirrored glass and across the table at the woman in gray. The woman looks at Natalie. “It was crazy,” Natalie says. “Even telling you now it’s like it’s happening again.” Natalie clenches her fists. “I slammed the brakes, but I couldn’t miss him.” Natalie’s right foot tenses under the table. “I saw him, ran into him and then over him all within a single beat of Lady Gaga on the radio. Right over him.” Natalie’s fists relax. “I screamed and got out and ran to the other side of the car. He was there underneath, closing his eyes and opening them like a speck of dust was irritating him. Mom wanted me to leave him alone, but…” She takes a deep breath. The story awakens her. Remembering the details is sharpening her mind. Her eyes focus, and she sees for the first time the coarseness of the gray cinderblock walls. “He was fine as far as I could tell, but there was no way. I felt horrible because I was just learning to drive and thought I had missed a sign or something. Anyway, Mom got her phone and dialed for an ambulance. I can’t remember everything she said. I was helping Drayden. I’m sure there’s a recording filed somewhere on some police computer if you really want to know what she said. Find it yourself if you’re so interested.” “I already did,” the woman says. “What happened next?” “I freaked out a little. Normal considering the situation. I mean, I think my hysterics were entirely reasonable. I wasn’t yet 17, but I would be soon. And I thought I had killed somebody!” Natalie sighs. The air is stale. “I felt his forehead, which was dumb, but I wasn’t thinking.” Natalie’s voice still sounds clogged in her ears like she's hearing herself under water. She takes another deep breath and clears her throat. It’s dry. She’s thirsty, and she wants food. No, she needs food. “He and I looked up at the large oak over us, or that’s what I thought he was looking at. Now I know he was looking much higher.” “What do you mean?” Natalie lifts her arms quickly, forgetting she’s bound. The cuffs hurt the top of her wrists. “You know what I mean! You know exactly what I mean! Is this really how this will go?” The anger wakes her voice. A long moment passes between them. Natalie’s resolve wavers only slightly when she feels a slight grumble near her belly. “Do you want water?” The woman asks. Natalie wants to rub her belly. She might get her fingertips to reach, but she doesn’t want to draw that attention. It’s best they don’t know. The thought of water is too much to pass up. She knows she should drink anything offered. “Yes. And some crackers or something more substantial if you don’t mind.” Her small frame never usually required much food, but she was famished. Crackers sounded heavenly. The woman in charge looks to the glass window to her left and nods as if such a gesture would summon a smorgasbord of options. “You didn’t know at the time how he had gotten there?” The woman asks. “No. Because it was the first time we met. It shocked me he was alive and that he wasn’t even bleeding, and that he was already sitting upright without a sign of a scratch anywhere. As far as how he got there, I naturally assumed that he had fallen out of the tree, and, naturally, I wondered what he was doing climbing up there in the first place. I pulled a leaf out of his hair, which backed up my theory and when I did, he looked up at me with his gentle blue eyes and said, ‘Sorry about that.’ His eyes felt locked on mine, and he only told me later that he couldn’t even see mine because the light was so bright behind me from the late afternoon sun. He said later on that he could see the outline of my body, and only after he stood could he see…”. Natalie trails off. “Never mind.” “See what?” “My beauty. He could see how beautiful I was. I don’t know why I’m embarrassed to tell you that.” Natalie feels the need again to rub her belly. She remembers how Drayden would gaze into her hazel eyes while gently feeling the soft wisps of her fine brunette hair that grazed her ears and her temple and her cheeks. She smiles at the thought of him tucking the hair behind her ear and then kissing her softly on the cheek, forehead, and chin, before finally settling on her lips and kissing her more firmly there. “Go on,” the woman says. “I asked what he was sorry for. He stood and told me he didn’t mean to land in front of my car like that. It was clear he was American. We told him an ambulance was on the way, but he said he was fine and didn’t need one. No way, I said, and then the sirens sounded from blocks away, and you should have seen the look on his face like they were much closer than he thought they’d be. He dusted off his clothes and asked my name. Mom got mad because I told him my full name. Natalie Heston! I said, enthusiastically. He introduced himself, and that was the first time I ever saw his captivating smile. And then the sound of the sirens got louder, and he ran off.” “He ran? On foot?” “That’s what I said.” “You didn’t think he was running away from the siren?” “No, I was thinking more about his eyes and his smile. And I wondered if he was older than me. I thought about whether he could tell that I was only sixteen, and if I would ever see him again. Later I worried about some internal damage he might have sustained, and that made it difficult for me to fall asleep that night.” “That he ran from the ambulance did not concern you?” “No. Not at all. Why would it?” “It should have,” said the woman. “My heart opened when I saw him, and when he allowed me to pull the leaf out of his hair, I realized this was somebody I wanted to take care of — I can’t explain that part any more. He was beautiful. And haphazard. And mysterious. That’s what I was thinking about.” A heavy steel door opens behind Natalie. She turns and watches a guard enter with an opaque, gray plastic tray, on top of which is a Styrofoam cup of water, a plastic sleeve full of saltine crackers, and a large dollop of peanut butter on a small paper plate. Seeing the peanut butter makes her realize how hungry she and the tiny one inside her really are. The guard puts the tray on the table and unlocks one of her handcuffs. Natalie wastes no time. She reaches for the plastic sleeve, opens one end with her teeth, and dips a crisp cracker into the creamy peanut butter. Natalie chews without interruption and looks more closely at the woman. She has traces of silver beginning at the hairline near her temples, and thick gray strands aimed toward the bun of her dark, full head of nearly black hair. The gray hairs run from the roots to the split ends, which means to Natalie that this woman opposite her had stopped caring about other people’s opinions many moons ago. The circles under her eyes look like the swooshes from Nike sportswear, and her lips look like they couldn’t smile even with the funniest joke. She could be pretty, Natalie thinks, with a figure-enhancing and more colorful wardrobe, maybe a cobalt blue blouse to pull out her grey eyes, and a silver necklace to accent her somewhat pale skin. An ivory concealer would help hide the dark circles under her eyes, and a master colorist could do wonders to get rid of the gray in her hair. If Natalie could loosen the woman’s hair out of the tight bun and style it more casually, she might even be quite pretty. Getting her out of these fluorescent lights and into natural light could take five years off the early fifties age bracket Natalie had placed her in. When Natalie can no longer sustain the dryness of the crackers and had eaten all the peanut butter, she reaches for the cup of water and chugs it gone. She puts the cup down. “Anything else you’d like to know?” Natalie asks. “Our blood tests show you’re pregnant,” the woman says. It hits Natalie like a rock in the throat. Her heart races and her mind loses focus as the fear spreads through her. “When did you take my blood?” She doesn’t recall ever being pricked. She looks down to her free arm, but her shirt sleeve covers the inside of her elbow. She tries tugging at it with her teeth, but it’s no use. “We’re curious to know if Mr. Routton knows he has a baby on the way.” It’s at that moment that Natalie feels the first surge of real panic — the kind that makes her eyes focus and her mind to think too fast — because if they’re interested in Drayden’s baby, then they might never let her out. Her look tells the woman all she needs to know: No, Drayden doesn’t know. “Let me out of here!” “Where is Drayden Routton?” “He’s gone, and he’s never coming back!” The heartbeat of her small baby is too tiny to hear with naked ears, but Natalie imagines she can feel it. Her free hand rubs on her belly to soothe her nerves. She hadn’t been able to tell Drayden about his baby, and after he decided to leave, it became impossible. If he had known about the life inside her, then he would have stayed, because he was a good man and because he loved her truly, but then maybe this place would have captured him, too. Or perhaps he would have saved her and their baby and then she wouldn’t be here now, locked up and probably a prisoner until they determined whether her baby could do the same things as Drayden. And how long would it take for them to realize if her child had his abilities? Two years? Five? Ten? Would they be locked up that long? Oh Drayden, where are you? “He’ll find me.” “We hope so.” “And he’ll destroy you.” “What happened after he ran away from the sirens?” “My parents will have your throats!” Natalie says with all the anger she feels. “They don’t talk to you anymore.” Natalie takes a deep breath. She wants to scream. That last comment had probably meant to show off their knowledge, instead, it harshly strums two separate emotional chords deep inside, one of which makes her want to cry, and the other to fight. Natalie stands. The heavy wooden chair pulls against the remaining handcuff on her left arm. The woman across from her stands. “You think you know a lot! Trust me when I tell you — you don’t know nearly enough! As many questions as you can ask, there are a thousand questions you’ll never even think you need to know!” The steel door behind her opens. Two guards enter and hurry to her and push her back into the seat. The woman across from her walks away toward a steel door behind her. “So what that you know about my parents! Big deal that you were listening in on my life! This place, wherever I am, can’t hide me from him! And that means you can’t hide either!” The woman in gray exits.