Mara’s POV
A cold night always brought an angel to cuddle up inside my arms like her life depended on me. We had so many cold stormy nights and the always sent her flying into my arms; she was scared of storms, thunder, darkness; my little darling: my Marisa. That same cold night had plagued her little heart with an illness; she contracted pneumonia when we were kicked out of our home and had to spend a series of nights out in the cold, on the streets. It was during a cold stormy night , a stormy night, that the icy hands of death had snatched her away from me.
With everything I had gathered that morning after my night with Jared Shenko, including the exaggerated huge tip he’d left on the bedstand, I thought I had enough for the doctors to begin treatment on my niece. I ran at the speed of light back to the hospital, excited, barely able to contain my joy, even after everything I had been through the night before, I still felt light. I felt like things would be better from there on. I got caught up by a rain storm on my way but I didn’t stop! I couldn’t stop! I had way too much adrenaline in my veins at the time.
But I got the hospital and they were carrying her body to the mortuary. She’d died before I even started running. They had been waiting fro me to we her all day before they could move her body.
I never even had the chance to say goodbye while she could still smile.
Thunder rumbled in the sky as I cried hard outside, under the rain. I cursed everything and everyone that was taking away my love ones and letting just watch. I wished they’d take me too. But I was still alive and even multiplying. Soon, I’d have to part with my own child too.
I hated cold nights!!!
I had been laying quietly in my private ward at the hospital when a certain chill took over me. I got up from my bed and went outside to check the weather, making sure no one saw me. Not completely sure why but that was how I did it.
All I remember was hearing a little voice somewhere outside in the cold calling out to me. I couldn’t tell if it was in my head or outside my mind but it seemed to come from a distance; and it was one voice I could never mistake nor forget.
“Momma? momma I’m scared! Momma please come get me! Momma I’m under the rain! Momma the thunder is loud! Momma!!!”
The last call sounded a lot more like a cry for help.
Marissa?
I heard myself saying. It was the same as all the other times she’d run to my bed when it was a cold night.
I had no other choice.
I followed the call and completely forgot about everything.
The very last thing I remember was hearing multiple calls from different voices, calling my name while I laid on the green grass, caressing the tombstone; hoping it was keeping her warm. I could barely even feel the cold as I sat there with only a hospital dress on. I was selfless! All I cared about was protecting the little girl that had been buried underneath that tombstone.
“Maraïda!! Bloody hell Maraïda what are y…” just like that the voice of Jared Shenko was fading off into the familiar void I always ended up in when I lost consciousness.
Something about everything brought me peace.
I was probably dying of cold, but I was at peace, for the first time in a long time.
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Jared’s POV.
Issa piloted us to cemetery a long distance away from the hospital. How she’d walked that far was beyond my imagination. I had been thinking this girl’s craziness couldn’t surpass a certain stage of crazy but she just kept on proving me wrong.
A graveyard!!!
What can she want from a graveyard at this time of the night.
Probably bury herself alive?!
I told myself, I had no problem with this girl hurting herself or killing herself: she could throw herself in front of a moving train for all I care; but as long as she carried my child, she needed- no! She had to stay alive.
“Her entire family is buried here!” Issa told me.
Oh!
That shared a little light on to the scenario but still!
We shared courses and started searching through the graves. I felt like we were playing some kind of horror movie Halloween prank, going through tombstones during those unsafe hours of the night. I imagined all the things I could have been doing; with Sophia during that storm and the thought just made me even more furious. I could not even recount the number of curses and ill wishes I had thrown at her in my mind. I lost my train of thoughts when I heard Issa was calling out to her. We had been just searching in silence. It was a massive graveyard and we had no exact direction of where her family was buried.
Oh well! Why not!
I thought it’ll be easier to find her that way so I started calling. I stopped dead when I heard humming. Someone humming something like a lullaby; in a graveyard; at night. I would not lie, for a minute I was scared; terrified if may say. I wanted to turn around and run, but, I had to be a man. I followed the sound, only to find her slowly falling off the tombstone she was hugging and caressing; in a thin layer robe. She was loosing consciousness. She was ice cold. She was dying.
“Bloody hell Maraïda! What are you doing?” My first instincts was to cover her body for warmth and out of respect; my mama raised me right. So I took off my jacket and threw it over her. I was left in a T-shirt.
“Issa! Sophia! I found her.” I called out as I lifted her up bridal style and started off for the car. I only had enough time spared to read the name on the tombstone: Marissa Rosita Mendoza; 2009-2012.
So young! And probably innocent!
Poor child!!!