Sever - A Wattpad Featured Story

Jade - Chapter 12 - Now

It feels like hours before sounds spill out into the corridor. Far from the raucous commotion earlier, these voices are low and scratchy. Through the small window in the door, I see Ridley and another unfamiliar face dragging Belinda's slumped frame between them, her shoeless feet sliding along the concrete.

Blue follows, watching Belinda as she's deposited into her cell like a decaying vegetable, tossed to one side and left to rot. His face is bereft of emotion. What did I expect? He isn't the Blue I used to love anymore.

The adrenaline doesn't really pulse through my veins until my door unlocks, and then I scramble backwards fervently.

'Just a little visit, sweet'art,' Ridley says, scratching his goatee. 'You'll be used to it by now, if you've found a way of copying Prosper.'

Of copying them?

'Blue, help me,' I yell, though I can't see him.

A new guy beside Ridley, with weight around his belly sagging him down, doesn't register surprise like Ridley had in my bedroom. Instead they heave me down the corridor.

I stop wriggling when we pass through a set of double doors with a backswing on them as fierce as Andy Murray's. The rubber matting underfoot and starched white walls are as sterile as Blue's expression a short way ahead. He's still. He waits with his hands in his pockets, eyes trained on me.

'I'll take it from here,' he says.

Though Ridley looks disappointed, he steps back a few paces. Blue takes hold of my forearm, slightly higher than my wrist. For the first time, I feel marginally less vulnerable, though certainly not safe.

He escorts me to the end of the corridor, past an unlit sign saying theatre that makes me think of Belinda's rolling eyes as they dragged her back to her cell.

'Why are you doing this to me?' I say. 'After everything.' I can't bring myself to remind him of the past, of what broke us apart. 'What do you want from me?'

'You're going to be examined,' he says.

I pull back instinctively, and his grip tightens over my arm.

'You still need us, boss? Is she gonna be a screamer?' says the unfamiliar one.

'No!' Blue snaps, turning back. He takes a set of keys from the man's outstretched palm—my cell keys, I presume. 'Grow up. This is serious. There's—'

He doesn't finish his sentence, but I know he'd meant to say history. We'd shared so much history.

'Head back,' Blue says. 'We won't know anything for a while.'

Once they've gone through the double doors, I say, 'Where are you taking me? What are you planning to do?'

He walks on.

I used to dream about all the things I would say to Blue if I ever saw him again. I've bulldozed months of upset into a landfill-sized pit. Now all those questions are uprooting, colliding in my head, and I let them burn in my throat until the silence becomes oppressive.

'Is this how it's going to be, then? You can't ignore me forever, Blue!'

He sighs. 'It's just an ultrasound, Jade. Nothing intrusive. We'll just take some pictures of the baby. That will satisfy them.'

Only hours earlier, Adrian had talked his way into booking one at The Clinic as a way of getting those green notes. The irony doesn't escape me now.