ALICIA
The labour room was cold.
Or maybe it was me.
I was shaking violently, my hands clenching the sides of the metal bed while my body convulsed in pain. Sweat dripped down my forehead, mingling with the tears I could not hold back.
I screamed again as another contraction tore through me like fire. The pain didn’t build — it slammed into me without warning, like a sledgehammer, over and over and over.
“Push!” the nurse shouted.
“I am!” I screamed back, my voice hoarse and ragged.
The pain was unbearable. Worse than the stabbing, worse than the months of hunger and hopelessness, worse than blindness. This was a different kind of pain — one that dragged my insides inside out and stretched every nerve into snapping.
I bit down on my lip until I tasted blood.
Every breath felt like a betrayal.
I couldn’t see, but I could hear the rush of people, the urgency in their voices, the metal clinking of tools, the cold touch of latex on my thighs, and then—another contraction.
Another wave of agony.
“Almost there,” someone said. “One more, Alicia!”
I screamed again, not from fear, but from the raw, animal desperation of a woman trying to claw her way out of death.
And then… a sound.
A cry.
My baby.
My baby was crying.
I gasped in disbelief. A sob escaped me as the pain blurred, faded, vanished. That cry was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.
A tiny voice, strong and defiant — just like I wanted them to be.
And then—darkness.
My body gave out.
When I woke up, I felt… light. Weak. Broken.
My whole body throbbed from the war it had been through, but my first thought was the baby.
“My child,” I whispered, reaching for the air. “Where’s my baby?”
A moment passed.
Then a calm voice spoke.
“I’m sorry, Alicia. You had a stillbirth.”
I blinked. “What?”
“You lost the baby.”
“No…” I shook my head, my bandaged eyes stinging with tears. “No. I heard crying. I heard my baby…”
“You were in shock,” the doctor said flatly. “Your mind was overwhelmed. There was no cry. No signs of life. “You were hallucinating. Happens more than you’d think during trauma.”
She said it like she was reading from a chart. Like my baby wasn’t real. Like I hadn’t just felt them inside me, hadn’t screamed them into the world.
But I still remembered the sound. It wasn’t imagined. I felt it in my bones.
“Let me see them,” I begged. “Please. Just let me hold my baby.”
“They’ve already been buried.”
“What?”
“They were a stillborn,” she repeated. “The state follows protocol in such cases.”
I couldn’t breathe.
I started sobbing. Reaching. Screaming.
“Please, just let me hold them. Just once. Please.”
But her footsteps were already retreating. The door opened. Then closed.
And I was alone.
The next day, they returned me to my cell.
I didn’t ask any more questions. I didn’t speak at all.
I let them guide me back to the bed like a ghost being carried by the wind.
I couldn’t see.
I couldn’t cry anymore.
I couldn’t even scream.
I just sat. And breathed. And wished I wouldn’t wake up again.
The others barely noticed me anymore. The four who used to torment me had grown quiet. Maybe they pitied me now. Maybe they were afraid of how hollow I’d become.
Fiona and Miss June tried to speak to me.
But I never answered.
At night, I curled up on the bed, facing the wall, letting silent tears soak the bed.
Every night the same question haunted me:
Why me?
What had I done to deserve this?
Why had I lost everything—my sight, my child, my freedom?
Two weeks passed.
My body still ached in ways I didn’t know were possible. The tearing pain. The heaviness. The emptiness. But I’d grown used to it. I barely moved, barely ate. My cheeks had sunken in. Pretty sure my ribs showed through my thin jumpsuit.
I had stopped counting the days.
Time didn’t matter when all you wanted was for it to end.
That afternoon, I was leaning against the wall, legs curled under me, lost in the rhythm of my heartbeat.
Then I heard it.
“Alicia Stewart.”
It was the warden’s voice. Tired. Stern.
I turned my face toward the sound, my voice barely a whisper. “Yes?”
“You’re free to go.”
I froze.
At first, I thought I imagined it. That maybe my mind was slipping again.
“What did you say?” I asked slowly.
“You are free to go,” he repeated, clearer now. “Someone powerful has secured your release. Alicia Stewart, you are officially a free woman.”
I didn’t move.
Didn’t breathe.
I just sat there, lips parted in shock.
Free?
I finally stood, wobbling slightly on my feet, still not understanding. “What… what do you mean? Who?”
But he didn’t answer.
He just repeated the words that shattered everything I thought I knew:
“You’re free.”
Free?
But why now? Who would want me free? I had nothing left to live for.
Or so I thought.
