The Killer in Me

By John Walker Lee

Emily Child is a young woman from Appalachia, and she's pregnant. Very pregnant. Her OBGYN gives her the worst news, and her estranged husband, a doctor, tries to convince her to abort the fetus because it will destroy her from inside. Emily is paranoid and believes they are all lying. She runs away to look for the midwife she knew as a young girl to help her through, and finds something larger at play. Meanwhile a nun from Ireland has a vision about Emily's baby and is also trying to find her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Walker Lee
• Release date: Jun 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005176730

John Walker Lee

John Lee was born in Africa but found the issues he wrote about were perfectly set in American towns A method writer, he acts out scenes in his books with actors and models to better understand the nuances of each character. John started writing as a young teen and published his first short story in the school newspaper at just 12. He loves novellas and short stories but occasionally delves into deeper topics in novels.

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The Killer in Me

John Walker Lee

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2022 John Walker Lee

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to a real person, place, or product is entirely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition

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Clinic

Emily Child, 41 Weeks Pregnant

Many words terrify an expecting momma. Accreta. Ectopic. Constriction. Words beginning with P like Preeclampsia and Preterm Labor, and terrible M words people only whisper in private. I heard the worst of all the words when a nurse arrived like the messenger of death and declared, Miss Child, you need to have an abortion.

My spine turned cold as ice water. I white-knuckled the rails of the clinic bed and sat upright, my five-foot-five inches not reaching the floor but for the tips of my toes.

The nurse's rough-hewn Texas drawl curled around the edges of her lips, as foreign a dialect to a native Pennsylvanian as a rusty Scottish brogue. You have what we call an IUFD? Everything she said sounded like a question.

Perhaps she misunderstood when I described my symptoms because of my Appalachian accent, that confuses people sometimes. I knew what she meant, I ain't no spring lamb, it was the manner of her talking made me angry, like she was teaching me the proper way to say my child was dead. She was mistaken. I must have confused her.

The serpentine coil of the Doppler machine lay impotent on the bed where I lay. The nurse chewed gum and slathered Texan barbecue words staccato, Intra-uterine fetal death? Some people call it a stillbirth? She checked her clipboard while waiting for my acknowledgment but found none. That's an IUFD, she repeated. The doctor will speak with you about it now and all that, she's just with another patient? If you could just fill this out... Did you say y'all from Pennsylvania? Her pen remained poised like the Sword of Damocles above the clipboard ready to strike out the innocent life of my child.

My hands shook scrunching up the plastic bed-sheet, my lips dry-tasting medical alcohol saturating every breath. I… I was born in Pennsylvania, but we moved to Texas not so long ago. I clutched at the obscene paper gown thin as onion skin crackling static like an old gramophone. The screen next to me displayed a haze of gray dots and blobs no rational person could assemble into the beautiful image of a healthy child.

I took the clipboard with a naked hand and stared blankly at the pages of cryptic typography printed on paper thin as the gown hiding the swell of my motherhood.

Doctor Dharmaraja entered in a flurry of white ceremonial robes and sat atop the throne next to the bed. She motioned me to lie back down with a wave of her holy hand. A stethoscope hung decoratively from her neck like a silver pendant. I was not fooled by her cloak of white, she was the opposite of an angel, she had become death, the destroyer of worlds.

Okay, open up the gown for me, Emily, we'll just confirm with the ultrasound. She massaged goo over the bump of my stomach and pulled a plastic gun from the machine. I pressed my back into the vinyl feeling like I was a basted turkey. The tip of the gun dragged through the goo and she pulled the trigger at my child. Everything in Texas looks like a gun, even the ultrasound. The gun's umbilical scraped back and forth across my leg before disappearing into the Rorschach machine where it performed science voodoo and turned my insides into the snowy television drama.

Doctor Dharmaraja did not look me in the eye, instead she focused wholly on the monitor while she searched the landscape of my belly for signs of life. She turned a dial marked 'focal' back and forth trying to find the station my baby was on. Her voice rasped deep like a man's. Yah, I went over your bloodwork and my suspicion with the doppler was correct. Looks like the fetus has atrophied and is precaustic. We need to abort as soon as possible, okay? Her words fell over pursed lips even-toned like she was reading from a script. We just need your signature. She nodded at the clipboard lying impotently in my hand. There was no space on the form for Dani's name, just insurance details and a liability waiver.

I don't understand, doctor. My baby ain't but stopped kicking around much, is all. Just don't feel very comfortable.

Miss Child, listen to me. Your child is stillborn. Do you know what that means?

Well, you mean...? I choked at the irony. I am Emily without child.

The doctor nodded and continued her probe.

The form rested on my chest in its dogged slumber. In the blue rectangle to the right smaller rectangles contained hand-written numbers above a red-letter warning: For office use only. On the top left in black pen: Patient: Emily Child. The multiple choice of Miss was circled. Did it make a difference? Should I have circled a better choice?

In the opposite box the nature of termination: Stillbirth. The words were corporeal in front of me but held no meaning.

Miss Child. The doctor was mocking me. She knew my maiden name was Snickel.

Miss Carriage was a name I could learn to accept. Nature making the decision for me, doing the unpleasant job on behalf of her employer – evolution – a multinational system of eugenics favoring procreation over female happiness. But not this. This was not the nature of trees and birds and sweet mountain dew of a Sunday morning resting on the leaves of a great hemlock tree, this was nature not even taking time to intervene. Nature had forgotten about me. Evolution had written me off as a bad experiment. A bad egg. Or the doctors. They had done something, they had interfered with their poking needles and voodoo machines and were trying to avoid a medical malpractice suit.

Jeff would know how all the machines worked, he'd tell me about electric currents and sonar beams and how great it all was and how lucky I was because it could have been so much worse and how he supported my decision whatever that was, but best be safe, Emily, best have it seen to.

I lay my hands on the burial mound of my child rising from the folds of the gown in this garden of the Devil's machines. The doctor's diamond wedding ring twinkled under the illuminating gray blobs on the screen, while the sonar beam of the ultrasound sliced through my child. Is that an arm? A head? Is she happily married?

My stomach's bulge pulled my skin canvas-taut, stretching out over my hips like a Thanksgiving turkey. The lightning-strike stretch marks down the sides didn't bother me, they were none but the battle-scars of motherhood and I was to be the great worrier triumphant from battle.

The pregnancy was magical at first, even the uncomfortable parts were nothing compared to the wonder of having a child grow inside me. Then one day for no reason I felt my baby gnaw at me. Not with its mouth like a skeered pup, but where it was attached inside. At the root. I could feel it. I became my child's food. I felt it pulling nutrients from my blood with a vigor what grew day by day.

I need iron now, it would call out. I felt it need iron like I used to feel in my knees when the weather was about to change and the big Sweep strode across the great Smoky mountains to wet the crops down. How I missed the sight of billowing corn fields right now.

A burp escaped my bone-dry throat and I fought off a wave of nausea. The doctor had been talking but she was not in her chair no more. She half-closed the door as she left and had a private conversation with another doctor I had never met about the fate of my child. Patient has… something… and is unresponsive to… something.

Is she anemic? the male doctor asked in a calm and penetrating tone. I would rather he were in the room with me, his soothing voice washing me instead of Doctor Dharmaraja's unnervingly deep voice.

She's atypical. Possibly self-medicated.

Nulliparity, or…

Nulliparity with no prior partners.

Really? The male doctor poked his head through the doorway and did not mask his surprise when he took in the length and breadth of me.

Yup, Doctor Dharmaraja continued with a touch to his arm. No cordal constriction that I can see, nothing around the neck. No accreta. No abruption or visible stress on the fetus. It's otherwise perfect.

I felt a sharp pain rise from inside my sternum and up into my chest, something I felt once or twice a day. The growing pains of child-bearing. I craved another joint to calm the tempest of my child. My child-abortion. Schrodinger's Baby cradled in my womb mocking me through dull pink electric powerlines carved on the pale skin of my belly.

I have cut you, it laughed.

When I first told Jeff I was pregnant he knelt in front of me like he was going to pray and ran his finger over the flatness of my then taut stomach and kissed my outie belly-button in uncharacteristic tenderness, whispering, I love you over and over laying his head against my skin. I believed with all of my good heart we were meant to be and the baby had come to save our marriage, but that was the very last time Jeff touched me.

A nice fat Acapulco Gold and a cup of coffee, heck even a Maui Wowie would do the trick about now, rolled in one of them dried banana leaves we got on vacation in California. Mix in a jag of Cherry Rum and all the cares in the world were cast in the river. Jeff knew where to get the good stuff, he was always after the best of everything. It should have been such a big red flag but I didn't know better then. So much changed in six months.

The doctor returned with fresh forms. I just need you to fill these out as well. She handed me the clipboard. I'll give you a few minutes alone to process the information. She was like no other doctor I ever met before, certainly not like the doctor back at Copper Kettle Crick. This one was cold as an ice bucket. She offered me a stock smile no doubt recommended by a plastic-clad training manual to appear sympathetic to the patient's loss.

I felt a burst of rage at the incompetence of this ice doctor, her wintry bedside manner vastly inferior to our family doctor back in Pennsylvania. When I still lived with my parents the doctor would come to our house and bring sweets for my baby brother, Toby. There was no clinic in our small town, just a few people who cared for each other, and the doc. That's the way of us crick and holler folk, we had our nose in each others business but we also looked out for one another. Doc had most of an education and made us feel better, so it never bothered us he did not have a license or nothing. And there was Isabella.

I had lived in a big ol' stone house Jeff called Castle Pennsylvania and we laughed and joked around with each other and he swept me off my feet like a real Prince Charming come to rescue his princess. I gave up my tranquil life in the cove for him. I gave up everything for him. Now look at me, splayed like a spatch-chook at a hospital barbecue.

Doctor Dharmaraja switched off the machine and pulled the condom from the tip of the gun with a snap before replacing the gun in its holster. She threw the condom in the bin under the bed.

The cloying disinfectant odor attacking my nose was annoying my child because I could feel its arms twitching in my stomach, pleading with me to return to the quiet air of my one bedroom apartment.

I should never have moved to Texas with Jeff. I should have gone back home, I know, but I could not face my parents because 'I told you so' would be behind every sentence for the rest of my life.

Doctor? Can you tell me… is it a boy or a girl? I did not know if Dani was a boy or a girl, but I had my suspicions. The way they tired me, the poison they injected into me after they fed on the nutrients I provided. The topic of sex never came up during the examinations before. Midwives back home were inclined to wait and see, didn't want to ruin the surprise, and also did not want to tempt a mother to do the wrong thing for the wrong reason. Many a rash decision made on the way to bed, momma said.

Does the father know you came here today? the doctor asked instead of replying, her hands casually in the pockets of her white coat-shroud of death.

I shook my head just a fraction. No, I stumbled out.

I just need to get those forms and we'll check you in to emergency, okay? We prefer a vaginal birth, it's easier for, you know, disposal. She swallowed and offered a wan smile. She handed me three squares of paper towel and glanced over her shoulder at the man standing at the coffee machine outside. I'll give you a minute to clean up.

I scooped gel from my belly in several sweeps, the paper napkins hopelessly inadequate to cope with the sticky mound of ultrasound mucus. I felt exposed and dirty. How like sex this whole process was. I put my sweater back on and buttoned it up to the neck. It was the crab-colored knit my mother picked out from the homespun store in Intercourse – an actual town just a hair South-West of our homestead and around the corner from Paradise, Pennsylvania where the Amish folk lived.

I picked up the clipboard with an unsteady hand and tried to make sense of the new form, the new test. It was divided into three sections, each requiring my signature and the same exact details. Emergency admission. Waiver of liability. Disposal of remains.

I clicked open the pen and shakingly touched the first box where it said, 'Maiden Name'. For a second I could not remember my name. It occurred to me I had no real maiden name, only the name of my father before me. Was there ever a woman had her own name?

Jeff and me was married for just three years but it felt like thirty. The Marriage. The Fight. The Separation. Titles of three Hollywood blockbusters followed by a spinoff called Emily Lives on Her Own After Getting Knocked Up.

Dani pulled at my muscles. It told me it wanted me to go back to my apartment and make toasted waffles with liver and onion and eat ice cream with peanut butter and lie in the hot bath.

I was lucky to find a one bedder with a bathtub; you only get showers now. Us grain-fed farm-cattle don't need much in the way of luxuries, but I must have a bathtub and a big ol' bar of wildflower soap to soothe my spirit. The tub at Castle Pennsylvania was so big I could float freely in it like a little boat and not touch sides. Fire-heated too. I know heat is heat but I needed that fire-heat something crazy right now. Electric boilers had the Devil in them. It sounds crazy. I may be hill-folk but I am very well read, I know all about electricity and chemistry and I'd seen all the movies and the TV shows I wasn't supposed to growing up because poppa was strict like that. I knew that electric heaters weren't evil, but there's something about them never sat right with me. Jeff showed me a lot of things too, some good, some bad, some real bad tales from what he saw at his practice. There was strange and sad people in the world who needed to find happiness by way of cruelty to others and I had experienced so little of it.

I brushed the cynicism from my mind (oh Jeff, how you have polluted my thoughts) and focused on the words in front of me. They were a test. If I made a mistake a herd of doctors would march in with red pens and lecture me about all the mistakes I had ever made.

I made the first stroke of my maiden name and a scratching pain burned its way along my arteries to my fingertips. I stopped the pen and the pain faded away. I let out a sob because this form carried the weight of a lifetime, except outside in the hallway the doctors were flirting and laughing at each other's small-talk while I was having a breakdown.

Outside I heard my doctor call to her secretary. Dana, I have an abortus in room three, can you schedule a ride to San Angelo? See if Vasquez is available to take it.

Yes, Doctor Dharmaraja.

They were discussing the execution of my child.

My child gave me a gut-punch of pain, and a new wave of panic enveloped me.

While the nurse processed my forms outside I slipped on my dress and pumps and for some reason stuffed a handful of medical supplies lying on the table into my bag. I ain't never stole nothing in my life but for a bottle of licker from Uncle Jess when I was fifteen.

I pulled the elastic from my ponytail and let my hair fall over my shoulders. A disguise of sorts.

Don't be afraid, Dani said.

I fumbled with my bag and slung it over my shoulder. My vision blurred. I slipped out the door unnoticed by the doctors too distracted by each other's smalltalk and walked through the icy foyer into the blissful sunlight. The clinic was on the main road leading to town. I waited for the bus but decided to walk to town to clear my head.

Keebler's, the long distance bus company, had an office on the same road as the clinic, and I don't rightly know why I decided to go inside. I pulled out three crumpled bills and paid the cashier at the front desk who gave me a hand-sized bus ticket stapled with a meal coupon. The unmarked service bus would take me to the long distance depot, and on to the Pennsylvania transit. I stood for thirty minutes with my hand entwined in a gray strap trying to stay upright on the halting lilting bus. People don't give up their seats for pregnant women no more, that's a bygone fancy you only see in those re-colored movies all dank pink and chartreuse with men so handsome and dapper with their fedoras and pin stripe suits.

My other hand rested on my belly where a normal mother would