HUM by Dan Hawley (chromebook ebook reader TXT) 📕

Jason stared at Sam’s pelvis with confusion. It was blood, that was clear. But it wasn’t the fresh, bright blood of a newly opened wound. No, this was something different, something from inside, from—“The baby!” Jason said with sudden realization and horror.

“Oh, no, oh no.”

Sorrow and pain smacked him dumb as he fully realized the consequences of the bloody shorts.

“Fuck,” he said as he moved to grab his phone from the nightstand. He picked it up and began to punch in his passcode, smearing the screen with blood.

“Jay?” A soft whimper of a voice.

Jason turned around. Samantha was staring at him with the saddest eyes he’d ever seen. Her hands had instinctually went to her stomach, holding it, protecting it.

“You’re ok, babe. You’re ok.”

Jason rolled back and knelt beside her. He touched her face.

“I’m calling 911 right now; you’re ok.”

“No.”

“What?”

“No, no ambulance, Jason.”

“But we have to go to the hospital!” Jason roared out in anger marked with fear.

“We will. You can drive me. Just let me get cleaned up.”

Samantha’s words came calm and authoritatively. The contrast was stark against Jason’s frantic, pleading tone.

Samantha sat up and looked down at herself. Jason watched her as her face remained calm. Calm but sad and without any fear. Jason relaxed some as he realized she wasn’t in any immediate danger. She was conscious and coherent. She wasn’t bleeding to death. He hadn’t stabbed her sixteen times and left her for dead in the woods.

“Ok,” he said flatly.

Samantha got up and headed to the laundry room, leaving Jason staring after her dumbly. She removed her soiled shirt and shorts and deposited them into the washer. She threw a detergent pod in with them and turned the machine on, doubting the clothes would come out clean. She emerged from the laundry room naked and made her way to the bathroom, where she found her tampons, took one out, inserted it, and cranked on the shower.

She got in quickly and shivered against the cool water as she waited for it to warm. Jason got up from the bed and stripped it of its sheet. The blood had soaked through to the mattress cover, so he removed that as well. He took the fitted sheet and mattress cover to the washing machine, opened it up, stopping the cycle, and added the sheets. He tossed in another pod for good measure and restarted the machine.

As he passed the bathroom, he looked inside. Samantha was sitting cross-legged under the cone of water. He paused a moment when he heard soft, slow sobs coming from the shower.

Jason thought to ask her if she was ok but decided against it. The best thing he could do right now, he thought, was to get ready to take her in.

* * *

The visit to the hospital was long and stressful. There were questionnaires and surveys to complete and sign. COVID posters hung on the walls with colorful depictions of the virus, a red “X” drawn to show the virus wasn’t welcome here. There were warnings posted everywhere, along with several security guards. Even though Samantha and Jason had arrived at the emergency department early in the day, there were already many people in the waiting room.

Jason helped Sam find a place to sit and then went to the desk to register. The nurse was visibly stressed and anxious. It was clear to Jason that the staff was stretched thin and overworked during the pandemic. After registering, the tired nurse asked Jason to take a seat and wait to be called.

The couple sat waiting for hours as sick and desperate people came and went, wearing masks and sanitizing their hands constantly. Some people wore expensive respirator masks and goggles, their hands wrapped in gloves. The tension in their muscles was visible. The fear in their eyes was palpable.

It was scary to even look at, like witnessing a nuclear holocaust or chemical warfare.

Dressed in two layers of scrubs, wearing gloves, N95 masks, and face shields, nurses would periodically call a few names before disappearing again behind the big, automatic doors.

Finally, the nurse called Samantha’s name, and they too were invited back behind the doors.

The room behind the doors was large and filled with beds. Around each bed and its accompanying small plastic chair hung a long, blue curtain. The nurse led them to their destination and drew the curtain around them as they waited for the doctor. Jason sat on the small plastic chair, and Samantha hopped up on the hospital bed, the fresh paper crinkling and crunching beneath her as she moved.

They could hear everything that was going on in the emergency room: someone had been stabbed in the leg, someone’s husband beat them up, a little boy had broken his arm falling out of the top bunk. Jason thought he heard hushed talk from a woman complaining to a doctor that it burned when she peed. Jason cringed and looked up at Samantha. She was lying back with her hands clasped and resting on her belly, staring up at the ceiling. She felt Jason staring and looked over at him and smiled. Just a soft, “I’m ok, babe” kind of smile.

His lips pinched together, and he nodded and looked away.

Where is the damn doctor? he thought impatiently, tapping his foot to some unheard frantic beat.

He tried at a fingernail, but there weren’t any long enough to bite. He gnawed absently at a finger and frowned at the sharp, bitter taste of alcohol against his tongue. He scraped the top of his tongue against his teeth and wondered how three months of tasting rubbing alcohol hadn’t deterred him from chewing the shit out of his nails.

As Jason pondered this, a gloved hand appeared through a crack in the curtain and pushed it aside.

Finally, Jason thought and sat up straight in his small, plastic chair. The doctor inspected Samantha and asked her several questions. He said with the amount of blood she described,