WARNING! This chapter contains some mature content that may be uncomfortable for some readers.
Chapter forty
"I... no." Anika couldn't process the emotions running though her mind. Fear and disgust were among the most frequent though. She sat in her bed frozen in shock.
"Anika-" Gelsey cautiously approached her and flinched when Anika snapped her eyes to her. A wild look of terror made her eyes go wide as they filled with tears.
"No! They... no. Please, god no." Anika bent her legs to her chest and buried her head in between her knees as she wrapped her arms around herself. Her body ached in protest but Anika was losing any feeling in her limbs anyway.
It broke Gelsey's heart to see Anika ruined all over again. She tried to take another step forward just when Anika started to claw at the skin around her neck again like the time in her office.
"Get them off! Stop! Please make it stop!" Anika wailed and gasped for air between long sobs.
"They're not here, Anika." Gelsey desperately tried to calm her down. Anika flinched away from Gelsey's arms and continued trying to claw the feeling of the men's hands off her body.
The door opened to reveal Ivy and the rest of the group with the exception of Ryleigh.
"What's happening?" Keira asked with a tremble to her voice as she watched the doctor frantically push a few buttons on a monitor. Anika's struggles slowly faded as the drug now in her system restricted her fight. Gelsey gently lowered her back to a laying position on top of her pillow while whispering soothing words. Angry, red lines mauled over the skin around Anika's neck and arms.
"I'm sorry about what happened to you. Gelsey here, told me. She also told me that you were pushed off a short bridge?" the doctor scanned Anika's face as she nodded weakly. She felt as though any minute she would pass out.
After a quick look at Gelsey, the doctor continued. "That short fall into the stream bed is what I think ended your pregnancy." he finished with a frown.
The tears continued to stream from the corners of Anika's eyes where they dripped into her hair and pillow. She felt too sick and afraid to close her eyes. If she did, Anika was certain she'd flash back to that night. A quiet whimper slipped past her lips as she fought against the sudden heaviness forcing her eyelids closed. Her effort was useless though, and within the next few seconds she was no longer in control of her body as it deflated in defeat as she was lulled into a familiar empty darkness.
"Gelsey..." The blond lady looked up from Anika's tear streaked face to see four pairs of worried eyes staring back at her.
The doctor spared the group a glance before he turned to Gelsey. "She's sedated and will be asleep for another hour or so. I'll come back then." He quietly departed after they exchanged a few more words.
"Gelsey..." Ivy repeated, her eyes never leaving the raised pink lines on Anika's arms and neck.
"It's alright now." Gelsey sniffled and blinked away her tears.
"But Anika..." Keira mumbled still slightly in shock. Her eyes unconsciously locked onto the section of sheets where Anika's stomach lay under.
"What happened to her? What did the doctor mean by saying he was sorry?" Mel asked, her usual smirking caramel eyes glistening out of character.
Gelsey took a shaky breath and grabbed one of Anika's hands. "Anika, she's been through a lot very recently."
"Her mother died, right?" Skinner felt Ivy wrap her arms around his waist but like the rest, he couldn't look away from Anika.
"Yes. And on the same night she was also sexually assaulted." Gelsey pushed down her tears again.
Keira and Ivy gasped while Mel had to close her eyes and look at the floor so she could keep her emotions to herself.
"B-But she was fine. I mean, she smiled and laughed. How..." Ivy broke off into quiet sniffles and Skinner comforted her. Gelsey frowned at the blank mask he wore.
"She's a strong girl but she also buries her negative emotions." Gelsey answered Ivy's unspoken question. Her frown deepened when she couldn't find the last person in the group.
"Where's Ryleigh?" The girls all stiffened where as Skinner remained hidden behind his stoic expression.
"He heard the doctor say... that Anika was pregnant." Keira's voice cracked.
"He walked off after that. Genevieve's with him." Mel added, still keeping her eyes closed.
A look of dread over came Gelsey's face as her heart dropped. She looked back to Anika with a sense of worry for her.
"What you've heard here in this room doesn't leave us, okay?"
"But what about Ryleigh?" Ivy asked.
"Anika needs to be the one to talk with him. She was planning on doing it." Gelsey's frown deepened.
The room fell silent for a minute or two before Keira hesitantly broke the void in the air.
"Do you think he'll listen?"
Gelsey looked up with red-rimmed eyes and met each delinquent's eyes before her gaze settled on Anika.
"I don't know."
Anika... you were pregnant. Pregnant.
The words kept flashing behind Ryleigh's eyes as he walked at a brisk pace down the hall away from Anika's room. Away from the door and his friends. The sound of another's foot falls echoing behind his a few yards back alerted him that Genevieve was indeed following him. He could care less. The only thing that was clouding his mind was the fact that Anika had been carrying a gift of life.
She couldn't have been far along, Ryleigh decided.
After hearing the doctor say those few words, he felt like he had been slapped and punched in the gut at the same time.
Why didn't she tell me? Was she going to abort it so she wouldn't have to tell him? His mind reeled out excuses that she must have had to not tell him. After all, he had thought that the only secret he and Anika had kept from each other was their pasts. And as far as he could understand, a pregnancy was in the present.
Ryleigh jumped at the feeling of being pelted by waves of ice droplets. He blinked once, then again as he tilted his head back to peer up at the dark angry clouded sky. Without even realizing it, Ryleigh had unknowingly walked out of the hospital and now stood in the middle of the parking lot in the pouring rain. He ignored the burning sensation in his eyes when the rain directly dropped into them as he continued to gaze up at the clouds.
After another minute of having nearly lost his mind, he felt completely numb, which came as a relief. He didn't know how to feel. Angry. Upset. Betrayed. But why? After all, he had only known Anika for barely a month. Why would she tell him? Maybe she was actually never planning on telling him anything. That thought alone had him recoiling again as if each rain drop pounded him another inch into the ground.
Slowly, he lowered his eyes to the ground and turned around and took small steps back to the entrance. Genevieve stood a few paces away with a deep frown line marring her forehead. She didn't say anything for a while as she thought about what her sister had told her after she asked why an officer had showed up at the camp.
"Ryleigh... why don't we go back inside."
Ryleigh nodded robotically as he shut down his emotions one by one. He let Genevieve take a head start back towards one of the hospital's main entrances before he allowed his feet to follow after her.
A shiver raked through his body starting from his shoulders when the chilled air blowing from an overhead door vent blasted through his drenched shirt. He ignored the receptionist as she glared at him for tracking water across the floor with every squeaky step he took back towards the critical care unit.
After another forty five minutes of blankly scanning Anika's face to see if she'd wake up in the next second, Ryleigh and everyone else were rewarded with a deep breath as her chest rose and fell again. Other than the constant beeping from Anika's monitor, the room had been utterly silent since Ryleigh's return. From the moment he stepped into her room, he took a sideways glance at the nervous look in his friends' and Gelsey's eyes before he took his seat by the bedside to watch Anika silently.
His heart picked up its pace as he watched Anika's eyes flutter open. She silently glanced around the room before her eyes landed on Ryleigh. After taking in his blank expression, her stomach felt as if it dropped through the bed and into the basement of the hospital. He heard. They all did. There was no doubt they had with the sympathetic looks she was receiving and how Mel couldn't even look up from the floor. Tears sprung into her eyes once more and she saw the doctor shift in his seat like he was ready to pounce on her if she were to scratch again. Either that or he was readying to punch another code into the machine by her head until she passed out once more. She lifted her gaze until she was staring at the ceiling.
"Anika," the doctor started off slowly, as if speaking to an injured animal, "in a few minute's I'll have a specialist stop in her to evaluate you. Is that alright?"
"I'm not crazy." Anika spoke and was surprised by how steady her quiet declaration came out. She flicked her gaze to the doctor to see him trying to hold back a frown.
"I know. But with what's happened in the past month with your mother's death and everything that's been happening after that, you're under a lot of stress."
"I'm not suicidal either." she spoke and this time the doctor frowned but nodded to himself.
"Alright, I'll be back in a few minutes." he announced after checking his beeping pager.
"Can I speak with Ryleigh?" Anika asked before she could convince herself to just keep quiet and stare at the ceiling some more.
"Of course." Gelsey gave a gently reassuring pat on the back of Anika's hand before she stood and followed everyone else who had their heads bowed as they walked out. The door clicked shut and a stretch of silence pursued before either delinquent broke it.
"I'm sorry." Ryleigh finally broke eye contact as he looked at his hands laying open palmed on his lap.
"You know." It wasn't a question, but rather a statement.
"I heard." he answered her with another two words. Anika watched his blank expression crack long enough to read the hesitation in his eyes.
"Were you going to tell me?"
Anika blinked at him before she had to break off his intense stare. "My past, yes."
"What about this? What the doctor said." Anika flinched at the slight under tone of anger laced in his voice along with the hurt.
"You don't understand." Anika closed her eyes against the tears that wanted to escape their wells. But she was done with crying. She was done with being haunted by the men in the alley.
"Then tell me." Ryleigh pleaded. He watched Anika struggle with her emotions and take a deep breath before she opened her swimming grey eyes again.
"She still had the needle in her arm, Ryleigh." Ryleigh stared into the raw turmoil on display for him to see in her eyes. The fear. The pain.
"When I found her. I don't even know why I went looking for her in the first place. She didn't care about anything but her precious drugs. It wasn't like she never stayed out late before." the acid in Anika's tone made Ryleigh wince as she leaned back on her bed to glare up at the ceiling.
"I went out anyway. I looked for two hours and she had been under a street light from the very beginning. With that stupid needle was still stuck in her arm. She was just, sitting there." he watched as Anika angrily swiped her tears away.
"So I called the police and watched them take her away forever. Not like she was even all there to begin with." Anika laughed, but the sound was void of any happiness and rang with hollowness.
"I walked back to the deserted part of town and- I can't remember if they had been following me the whole time or if I just came across them- but they were there in the alley I was walking down." Anika shivered at the memory and slowly pulled her arms around herself to fight off the grimy feeling etched in her mind and on her skin.
"At first there were only three of them in front but there were two behind me as well."
Ryleigh held his breath trying to figure what what she was going to say next even though he had an inkling.
"If there was just one of them I could've maybe ran. Two, then I could've tried to fight. But there were five of them." Anika fell quiet as she controlled her ragged breathing.
"Anika..." Ryleigh trailed off, honestly scared for what he knew was going to come next.
"I screamed, Ryleigh. I tried to fight. But it was so hard. You know what I did? I screamed for my mother. My mother who had never even really looked at me. Just through me, like I wasn't even there. She was dead but I still cried for her." Ryleigh sat stiffly in the chair as Anika's broken sobs carried into his ears.
"Now I find out the results."
Ryleigh knew he should've flew to her side. He knew he should've held her and whispered soothing words to her. Hell, he wanted to tell her he wouldn't let anything like her past happen to her again. That it was just that, in the past. But he couldn't find the strength to look past the horror he was drowning in at himself for jumping to conclusions. He should have knelt by Anika's beside and brushed her hair away. He should have taken her hands in his and never let go.
Instead, he felt his legs carry him from the room as he dropped his head in shame. Disgust at himself clouded his vision for thinking that Anika would lie to him. Even if she did, it was her past to tell. Who was he to force her nightmare back to the forefront of her mind? His hatred for himself only grew when he recalled the way he treated her from the very start of meeting her.
A chill ran through his body as he opened the door to step out into the hallway. He paused and dared to look back at Anika to find that he could only meet the end of the bed.
"I'm sorry." he whispered and turned around to walk out of the room.
A part of him was amazed by how Anika smiled and laughed through the previous month he knew her after all she's been through.
The other part of him ached as his heart felt like it was being ripped from his chest.
She's so strong.
She deserves so much better.