Chapter V: An Endearment of Lightning
Thinking of the realms that disassociate me
The weeds and bushes are merely just shadows
Shadows that cannot oppose
Lingering and stalking like an ocean drowning
The sand
Yet, I want to understand
Why that shadow always left a strand
Expanding like a monster
Taking away sisters and brothers of a different kind
Entwined with thoughts of despair
And, I'm just trying to breathe air
Air in which we breathe passes by like trains and cars. Colette wrote the poem in her journal and came up with melodies in her bedroom, humming to those written words. She checked her phone. On the news, reports have stated that aborted fetuses could be implanted through stem cells within a woman's womb for a second chance of life. Whenever time was manipulated, it could be manifested in one's own favor or the universe's favor. In this case, time was manifested in Raphael's favor - he was keen to see whether the aborted fetus could be transplanted into Colette's body. Raphael stood outside the house waiting for Colette to come outside. She remembered that she was to meet him at 1:00 PM.
The fetus was in store - they had time-traveled to the last moment of the abortion through Raphael's watch. He had told her to keep the fact in secrecy, yet Colette could not remember all the details. They were unable to travel to Peter Reed for the scene was disgraceful and evidently dismissing.
She arrived earlier in the outdoors.
"We have an appointment at 1:15, Colette. Let's hurry." He opened the door to the cab. It was a cold morning in New York. They shivered in their seats as the regular folks strolled past their fast car.
Colette did not say a word. She was in ashes for losing her child. Three years into the past, she did not know a thing.
Colette and Raphael had arrived to the lab where aborted fetuses were stored. These fetuses were used for medical research in labs to test vaccines.
A lady with orange hair was the receptionist, while several men in lab coats were standing near the left door of the receptionist's desk. The hallways expanded to many laboratories that tested the fate of mankind.
A man stared at Raphael's watch which he ignored - he knew that no one had any evidence against him.
"Hi, we have an appointment at 1:15." Colette smiled.
"Yes, have a seat." The receptionist said robotically.
They sat across the receptionist desk with a wide space in between them and the desk. Raphael checked his phone, scrolling through emails as Colette anxiously waited. Twenty minutes had passed.
"Ms. Colette Nowa." Another woman stated from the right door of the receptionist.
"Yes!"
"Come with me to my office." Her orange hair matched her orange glasses. Her office even had a color scheme or light orange.
"Legally, we are able to give you the cells, However, due to the contract from the abortion clinic, we are unable to give you the cells at this time."
Colette was tearing up in her eyes.
"What can we do? That is my baby. I saw on the news today that I can deliver the same child with those cells. You guys are monsters."
Raphael shook his head. He stood up looked around the corners of the room to make sure it was not monitored. He saw that the coast was clear.
"10,000."
"10,000 in donation for the cells."
The woman with the nametag Lisa curled her lips. "20,000."
Raphael wrote a check to the woman from his personal bank account. Colette was worried about the money that he was distributing to the woman. She had no recollection of his finances but believed that it was a large sum from his account.
Once the formalities had been completed, the cells were delivered to Colette. No utterances of thank yous nor sincerities were shown in the lab.
They went straight to the gynecologist's office, and the doctor had implanted the stem cells of the child within Colette's womb. She was pregnant.
Raphael had given her a side eye in the taxi to her home. "We must leave now." He told her aggravated. "Yes, we will."
Was he mad that I wanted to be pregnant again? What was wrong with him? He never acted this way.
"Okay, but what's up?" She asked.
"Nothing." He nudged her with a devious smile.
They arrived at the house and walked two blocks to the left of the home, so that Colette's mother would overlook Raphael; nothing was to be disturbed at that moment.
The corridor shifted as Raphael inserted the future time. He did not care what effects the baby may encounter. It was all an experiment for him.
As they returned to the present in Phoenix, the war in Ukraine had changed. Ukraine had won the war. Raphael was alerted that he had to leave the country in a month to investigate the country on any new formations growing or uprisings in the amateur capitalist country. The secret intelligence was to be monitored in Ukraine towards a new democratic agenda to stop riots and new totalitarian groups from forming, which was quite hypocritical for every politician in any country was a totalitarian.
Leader from leader, each person was corrupt, but the espionage were the leaders in corruption, offering more and more information of the innocent people to be manipulated.
The wedding had not been planned yet between Raphael and Colette due to the baby. The baby had taken up Colette's time throughout her pregnancy.
During Colette's birth, she experienced trial and error throughout the process. Eventually, she was able to give birth to the baby. She had difficulty with the pregnancy, but she was determined to give birth naturally. The birthing process was a success.
The previous night she received a strange vision with the aged man reappearing to her. She ignored the vision and interpreted it as a symptom of her new pregnancy.
The nurse handed her the baby. When she first gazed into her blue eyes, Colette knew to name the infant Cecilia. She began singing the song to her, "Cecilia, you're breaking my heart. You're shaking my confidence daily." The baby chuckled back, and Colette instantly was obsessed.
Raphael had not been in the operating room for he had to be in the office, preparing for his trip to the post Soviet blocks. Colette had been daydreaming, absorbing a fever dream of being in solitude away from Raphael. A flight of freedom enthralled her.
She played games with her baby, filled with days of playing games of hide and seek under blankets, peek a boo, and singing. Yet, guilt remained.
There were once shadows that followed her. Colette had remembered what Raphael had told her before he had left for Ukraine. She had stared at her shadow and said, "You see the black shadows always follow me," as his shadow was invisible. "You see Colette," he pointed to a flower rippling through the wind. "The flower also has a shadow, and it keeps going."
The aching in her heart never settled. Days without him felt like centuries yet centuries belonged to miseries disguised as tragedies, though her Achilles heel will never be her defeat. Instead, it would be her closed heart for Colette started to believe that something was wrong.
With Raphael's absence, Colette had endured insomnia, fatigue, and sickness such as auditory hallucinations immediately before she had a few minutes of sleep. This bewildered Colette. She did not feel normal at all. She retraced her steps again and again forgetting what she had done in the morning and the day prior.
Raphael was planning to arrive three months after his departure. As Colette worked alone with Cecilia in her arms, she gained a sense of independence - a sense of youth. Colette did not want the time to stop. She realized that she yearned to be alone. How come?
After all this time with Raphael, she had departed from her true self. She never even knew herself because she had rushed into the relationship when she was too young.
Colette found herself through Cecilia. Yet, the withdrawals were becoming worse. She had lain in bed for a week. Raphael was coming home that weekend. Tracing her daughter's hands, she had the revelation that they had to leave Raphael.
That figure was right. He looked so familiar. Who was he?
Colette spent an hour deciphering the face in her mind. She went through old photos on her mother's social media pages until she found him, her grandfather.
He was my grandfather all along.
She took a deep breath as she cradled and rocked Cecilia in her arms.
How can I leave? Raphael must be... drugging me. No. That's insane. But, my grandfather had warned me about him too. What should I do?
Looking into Cecilia's blue eyes, Colette could tell that the baby did not feel secure. There was a note of fear and sorrow in her eyes that Colette deciphered maternally to leave Raphael. The withdrawals were becoming worse and worse. Colette deducted that it was the drugs that no longer remained. The hallucinations, the panic attacks, her heart racing, it was all just a metaphor of Raphael's cruelty to inhibit her to control her.
"Colette, leave him. Go to Europe." She heard the voice in the dark morning's distance.
She bought a one-way ticket to New York to say her final farewell to her mother and left with Cecilia.