Free Into the Light by Aleatha Romig Page A

intensity they had last night.
    One, two, three, four—turn, one, two, three, four—turn . . .
    I lay back and searched for my memories, hoping for something, a clue, a crumb . . . anything. I couldn’t understand how I’d willingly come to this place, a place where shadows of perversion lingered outside my reach. I also wondered why I’d want to do training and if I’d done it before. Does everyone do it? If I did, why am I doing it again? I tried to clear my mind, to think about nothing, in the hope that something would come. Nothing did.
    It didn’t make sense. Everyone here knew me. Everyone knew my past . . . except me. I wasn’t ready to face the reality that the problem must be me.
    Time passed as tears slid silently from beneath the bandages and down my cheeks. Even that felt wrong. I wasn’t a crier. Then again, maybe I was.
    I didn’t try to stop the tears. They were my wordless appeal to my husband, my unspoken request for support. I needed more than him fighting for me while others were present. I needed him to help me when we were alone, to explain why this all felt wrong. Mindlessly I wiped away the tears that I’d vowed to let rain free. The longer they fell, the more I understood: my tears didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
    “Sara.”
    Lost in my own thoughts, I startled at Jacob’s voice beside me. I hadn’t heard his pacing cease. I didn’t move or turn in his direction. It was too late. I didn’t care anymore. If showing weakness was what it took to get his attention, then I didn’t want him or his support.
    Instead what I wanted was to get away . . . away to a place where I wasn’t powerless, where I had a voice, where I belonged. I didn’t know where that was. All I knew with increasing certainty was that it wasn’t here. Here, I was trapped.
    My dampened face fell toward my chest as my tears morphed into sobs, each one deeper than the one before. The cries didn’t come from my throat but from my soul, consuming me. Each sob thrust deep into my heart, splitting it open, crying out for my stolen sense of self.
    Under this onslaught, my heart was unable to beat at its normal rhythm, instead thudding in my chest, a dull repeating sound echoing in my ears. Without its steady rhythm I’d cease to exist. Then I realized . . . it had already happened. I no longer existed.
    Whoever I really am is gone.
    I gasped, but air wouldn’t inflate my lungs. My heart, my lungs . . . internally I was disappearing.
    The bed rail beside me lowered. Jacob lifted my hand, but I couldn’t feel his touch. Even his words were gone. I heard only the sound of my cries. The bed shifted, but where our bodies connected there was no warmth. Mine no longer belonged to me. Jacob held someone else’s hand, his leg pressed against someone else’s thigh. The wails grew louder and louder.
    Who was this desperate person?
    Sara .
    Jacob spoke to her, to Sara. He called her by name as he tried to calm her. His words were there, but I didn’t listen. His tone was comforting, but I was beyond calming. It didn’t matter, because he wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to the woman on the edge of panic, the woman who willingly lived a life of subservience. A woman who could exist in this strange and terrible place.
    That’s not me! I didn’t want any of this. I wasn’t that person. There’d been a mistake, a terrible mistake. Sara and I were two different people, and somehow I had to make him understand. I didn’t know who I was, but without a doubt, I wasn’t Sara.
    With a fleeting gasp, air finally came, finding its way to my lungs. The deep breath momentarily stilled the sobs, though the ringing in my ears continued. My inhalation brought the sharp pain back to my side. It was the hurt that Brother Timothy said was mine to bear for sins I’d committed.
    Anger sparked a fire that had nearly died. I didn’t commit any sins . Perhaps Sara had, I didn’t know nor did I care. The only sin I recalled