She spends the rest of the night facing towards the wall, lacking the energy to stem the tide of sadness washing over her. A pain radiates from her stomach and she knows it's not the pain of the knife wound but from the life extinguished in the womb. Our baby, she thinks. In her mind the baby grows into a child, a little girl with her red skin and Andre's turquoise eyes. Before her eyes the girl becomes a teenager and then a young woman and then she begins to dry up and fade away, at last turning to dust.
In the morning, the nurses admit a woman calling herself Sergeant Reddy of the state police. Jackie refuses to look at the policewoman. "Miss Fuller, I know this is difficult, but I need to ask you a few questions," Sergeant Reddy says.
"I don't care," Jackie says.
"Please, ma'am, any information you have may help us catch the person who did this to you."
"What difference does it make?"
"Don't you want to bring this person to justice?"
"Justice? Hah!"
"I know you've been through a lot, but you have to help us find this person before he hurts someone else."
Jackie turns to face Sergeant Reddy, who takes an involuntary step back. Tears continue to stream from her swollen eyes as she says, "You want to know what happened? Fine, I'll tell you. It won't change anything."
She wakes up to the smell of bacon frying. Her stomach roils and churns until she has to bolt from the tent and collapses onto her knees behind some bushes. She empties the contents of her stomach onto the coarse red stones, heaving until there is nothing left.
"What's wrong?" Andre asks.
"Must have been something I ate," she says. She wipes her mouth and then gets to her feet. Only after rinsing her mouth out with water and brushing her teeth does she let him kiss her.
"We don't have to do anything today," he says. "We can stay here like a couple of newlyweds."
"But we're not married yet," she says.
"A minor technicality," he says and kisses her again.
"I'll be fine in a little bit. I just need a few minutes for my stomach to settle."
They start up the mountain around noon. Jackie hasn't ever climbed a mountain before, but Andre assures her this one isn't too difficult. "It's like a bunny hill," he says. She doesn't bother mentioning she doesn't ski either.
To her the mountain looks like a solid sheet of red stone. She can't imagine getting halfway up, let alone to the top. She wants to back away and scurry back to the camp; she wants to snuggle with Andre all day beneath the sleeping bags. She can't back out now after insisting she could go.