Immaculate

“Oh no, Mina,” Dr. Keller said, squeezing my shoulder. “I should have said right away. The baby is fine. I’ve checked the heartbeat, and everything is fine. Your baby is safe and strong, and so are you.”

I’d known the baby would be fine, of course. Iris would have told me otherwise. But I was still overcome with relief to hear the words from Dr. Keller’s mouth, to know without a doubt that my baby was still here with me, that we were fighting—and wi

But there were still roadblocks to cross, questions to answer, before I could start feeling too content.

“What’s happening?” I asked, trying to push myself up to sit. “How did I get here? Where is everyone else?”

“Your parents and your friends are in the waiting room, and will all be enormously relieved to know you’re awake. From what I hear, your dad and Jesse managed to carry you back inside, and your friend Izzy drove her Jeep through the crowd and pulled around to the back of the house to pick you up. Most people were clearing out as soon as you went down, though. For as threatening and determined as they may have tried to sound, I suspect most of them hadn’t pla

She leaned down to lightly kiss my forehead. “You’ve been unconscious since you got here, but your vitals have been fine. No signs of premature labor. I was about to take you to the hospital, though, if you’d been unconscious much longer. You had us worried. It was like you didn’t want to wake up.”

“No,” I said, my lips curling into a small smile. “I think I just wasn’t ready.” Not until after Iris was finished with me.

“Mina.”

The door opened, and my mom peered in, her eyes red and swollen. “We thought we heard voices. Oh, thank God, you’re okay. We were so scared. So scared.” She rushed over to me, sweeping Dr. Keller aside as she lifted me up into her arms. My dad came in after her, but Ha

“Come on, guys,” I said, waving them in. “You’re family, too. Don’t be so silly.”

For the next few minutes we were all a tangle of arms and hair and tears, until finally, after everyone had been adequately squeezed and comforted, we were quiet again—thinking about what would come next. What should come next.

Dr. Keller coughed and edged her way to the center of the room.

“I want to propose something,” she said, her eyes fixed on me. “As far as anyone else knows, you were ambushed by a crowd and knocked unconscious, rushed away for medical assistance. No one else but the people in this room right now know that the baby is fine. What I’m suggesting, what might be easier for you, Mina, for everyone—is that we keep this our secret. We tell the rest of the world that you lost the baby. That you’re leaving town to recover and mourn after everything that’s happened. And then you escape. You go somewhere, find a safe place to hide out, at least for now. Have this baby in peace. Figure out the rest of the plan one day at a time. People can speculate as much as they like, but according to the record—according to what I’m prepared to tell the staff here and the press and whoever else asks—there is no baby, not anymore. I’ll worry about the details. Let everyone who was involved in the protest today think that the blood is partially on their hands. It’s the least of what they deserve.”

This wasn’t a new suggestion, the idea of leaving, disappearing with the baby and starting over somewhere new. It was what I should have done straight after the shower, right when I’d first learned of the protest. But as I heard it all now, the details arranged out loud, each of Dr. Keller’s words rained down on me like hot, biting pellets. A distant possibility had instantly become reality. The whole proposition was so sudden . . . but maybe so perfect, too—so much harder and somehow maybe so much simpler than anything else I’d already considered on my own.

“I . . .” I started and stopped, still too taken aback with the abruptness of it all. I tried to let the suggestion settle, to see if the parts all actually fit into a rational whole. Was it possible? Could I—could we—really pull this off? The idea that no one would have to know, that I could disappear, raise my baby in peace until . . . until when? Until Iris came back for us? Or forever?

“But what if I could never be Mina Dietrich again?” I asked, not able to look anyone in the eyes. My skin was hot and clammy, and I tugged at the neck of my sweatshirt for cooler air. “I can’t ever really come back, can I? People—some people, at least—will always remember. Green Hill will always remember. I’ll have to spend the rest of my life with a new identity.”

I could never go home.

Or at least, not if I kept the baby. And giving the baby up, giving my little miracle away to strangers—that had never been an option, and it still wasn’t.

I would miss my family. I would miss Izzy and Ha

I would miss Mina, the girl I’d been, the girl I’d known, for the last eighteen years.

Because without my family, without Green Hill, without my past . . . who would I be?

“What do you think?” I asked, lifting my head up to face all of them. “All of you, I want to hear what you think I should do.”

My dad cleared his throat and we all turned to stare at him, waiting. “I think it’s the only idea that makes sense right now. We all saw how crazy people can be when religion is in question, when basic beliefs are threatened. Maybe we’ll come up with a better solution down the road, but for now . . . I think we get you out of Green Hill. I think we get you away from everyone.”

“But how will we disguise her? Where will she go that no one will recognize her?” my mom asked, her eyes darting between me and my dad. “Who will go with her?” Her skin looked suddenly so sallow to me, so lined with stress, and I realized with absolute certainty that something had to change—that I couldn’t keep putting all of them through this kind of anxiety.

“I have family in New York City,” Jesse said quietly. “Brooklyn. An aunt and an uncle whose kids have all moved out. Mina could stay there, at least for a little while, until she can find a place of her own. New York seems like a good place to disappear, no?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” my mom said, biting her lip as she wrapped her hands protectively around my wrist. “Mina, alone in the city, and I can’t ask your family to take her in like that . . .”

“I would go, too,” Jesse said. “I was already pla

My head snapped up in his direction. But just as quickly he looked down at his feet, leaving me alone with the dizzying rush of the possibility of it—of me and Jesse, together, ru

“You can visit, of course,” he continued, “though I have a feeling people would try following you, at least at the begi