The Kidnapper's Wife

2. After

"Sweetie, you have to relax." the nurse looks at me with widened eyes, "I can't stick your vein if your arm is shaking."

"Right," I whisper hoarsely, "I'm sorry."

I tighten the fist she asked me to make, eyeing the rubber band wrapped around my arm. The sight of it reminds me of another day, another rubber band, another needle. But that time, I wasn't here alone.

I fight back the tears that seem to come so easily these days, focusing all my attention on the white seam of her blue scrubs in a weak attempt to distract myself. Only the right sleeve has white threading, I realize, and immediately wonder why. Has she re-sewn it? Was it even worth it to sew up scrubs that have had their seams come out? Why wouldn't you just buy new ones? But maybe un-seaming was a common problem in hospitals. I'd always imagined that nurses dealt with a lot of messes, and probably the kind that could pull out seams. 

So maybe she was trying to save some money by not buying new scrubs every week. But why didn't she use navy blue thread? How could she ignore a detail like that. It wasn't that hard to find navy blue thread. Or at least black. I mean, come on.

But then, sewing a navy blue shirt with white thread is probably something I would do now. Before, I was in tune with every minute detail, obsessed with having every little thing in my life be perfect. But now, those details seemed to slip me by, they seemed so unimportant in the grand scheme of things. 

The other day, I caught myself pouring sugar into the salt shaker. That's how far gone I am. 

The nurse observes my frantic blinking and gives me a sympathetic look, "Afraid of needles?"

She doesn't know. She doesn't recognize my face from the countless press conferences, the unending coverage of the case. I almost laugh. I would get the one nurse in Frederick who doesn't know who I am. 

How can she not know what this is for? Do they really not tell the employees anything around here? Doesn't she at least know who sent me? 

You would think having the chief of police call in your medical instructions would get you some sort of specialized treatment, at least some furtive, I-can't-wait-to-go-home-and-tell-my-husband-who-I-took-blood-from-today glances. But no, nothing at all from this lady. 

I can't say I'm complaining. The anonymity is kind of nice. The constant attention has gotten to me over the months. Everywhere I go, the cameras follow. It's gotten to the point that I've had to hire a dog walker even though I work from home. I'm that petrified of leaving the relative safety of our - of my tiny townhouse. I always knew I should have forced Connor to put up the fence before we got a puppy. 

But of course now poor Ruby will probably never get to run around a nice fenced in yard on her own. She is eternally sentenced to the leash, and a person standing over her shoulder, watching her every move. 

In a way, it's fitting, because I have felt exactly the same way for the last few months. If it isn't the reporters, it's my mother, always "just dropping by" to see if I "need anything." Or it's my friends, tiptoeing around me on eggshells, like at any second I might break. I am so very tired of all of it. I just want to be normal again. I want to laugh, and smile, and be the girl they all used to know and love. But every time I try, I feel too much like that other girl. And I start to feel like I've gone back in time. And then, as I fall further into the fantasy, I always remember with a jolt that this isn't then. That things are different now. And the reason I remember that is because I am alone. Completely, and devastatingly alone. 

So it's a conundrum of sorts, the reporters. I heard a song on the radio, soon after everything went down, that described it perfectly. "Dark blue, dark blue, have you, ever been alone in a crowded room?" a male frontman sang out from my car speakers. That was me alright. Alone in a crowded room. All the time. 

I feel the quick prick of the needle as it enters my arm and squeeze my eyes shut, looking away. The nurse was right. I hate needles. 

"Now your results will be available from the lab in a week or two. Remember, we won't call you with the results, you need to check the online portal." she says the words 'online portal' like they are another language, one which needs to be emphasized carefully. Since she looks like she was born sometime around 1950, I'm not surprised. She probably doesn't even know what the internet is. 

Not that it matters. I won't be viewing the results of this blood work. Nor do I believe for a second that these particular results will take a whole week. But that's for the police to deal with, not me. 

I don't point this out to the nurse though, instead I just nod and pick up my purse, needing to get out of the sterile examination room with its headache inducing fluorescent lights. 

"Don't move too fast!" she calls after me cheerily, "You may still be light headed!"

Again, I laugh internally. She was giving the wrong advice. If I've learned anything over the past few months it's that you can't move fast enough.