Free Angel's Curse by Melanie Tomlin

wanted to protect me from that sort of thing.” I made a pathetic attempt at a weak laugh. “I really blew it, didn’t I?”
    “Everyone makes mistakes,” Maddy said.
    She was trying hard not to pass judgement on me and to gain my trust.
    “Am I going to be taken away from my family?”
    “That’s not up to me to decide,” Maddy said. “That’s for your case worker. I can only put in a recommendation.”
    “ Please, ” I begged. “They’re good people. I don’t want to leave them.”
    I fidgeted with the blankets, gripping, releasing, gripping, releasing.
    “I’ve been so good all these years. Don’t punish me for not knowing about sex.”
    “Helena, how do you feel about what’s happened?” Maddy asked.
    The question caught me off guard. I thought she was here to assess whether or not I should be taken from my foster family, not to determine my mental well-being.
    “I … I don’t know, ” I whispered, and cried again.
    “Give it time, Helena.” Maddy patted my arm. “Everything’s too fresh for you at the moment and the drugs are probably making it hard for you to think. You’ll need time to sort through your emotions.”
    I laid my head back on the pillows. I didn’t want to talk anymore.
    “I’ll be back to talk to you tomorrow, but here’s my card.” Maddy left the card on the bedside table. “Call me any time, day or night, if you need to talk. I only want to help.”
    People came and went, asking questions and taking notes. After two weeks I was allowed to go home, back to my foster family. Maddy’s recommendation that I not be removed from the only family I had known, due to my delicate emotional state, had been accepted. The only additional requirement was that I had to report in once a fortnight with Maddy, so she could continue to assess and monitor me.
    David knew what had happened to me and he also knew I hadn’t talked. He believed his parents would have been all over him if they thought he was responsible for what happened to me. He still didn’t know about my other secret life, but he was right to think the baby was his. It was. He was the only one I had unprotected sex with, though his parents thought one of their clients who really disliked condoms was responsible for my pregnancy. Now it didn’t matter, I’d never fall pregnant again.
    David’s parents had killed their own grandchild and he couldn’t do a thing about it. He couldn’t tell them what they’d done. He stopped dancing with me after that and we never had sex again. I think he felt guilty that because of him I’d never have children of my own …
    I opened my eyes, in the here and now, and the room spun, as it had once done when I was fourteen and a half. I thought I was going to vomit, but my stomach remained a rock, unyielding. I closed my eyes again and felt something warm brush the hair away from my eyes.
    “Helena, can you hear me?”
    It wasn’t the emergency room doctor and it wasn’t Maddy. If the fog lifted I might recognise the voice, but it enveloped me again.
    There was darkness, nothing but darkness. Was this what it was like when you died? No sights, sounds or smells? Empty, devoid of everything? Lonely?
    “Helena, can you hear me?” the voice called out again.
    How long have I been swimming in the darkness? I thought to myself.
    The darkness covered me like a shroud and I felt safe. Nothing can touch you when you can’t feel.
    “Helena,” the voice persisted.
    “Go away.” Did I say that in my head or out loud?
    I was back in the darkness, floating peacefully.
    Blinding light, joy and bliss flooded my body. I drew in a sharp breath. After the nothing of the darkness the sensation overload was a shock. My body convulsed, like I was having a seizure, and I couldn’t control it. I screamed out. This time I knew the noise was not in my head. It came from my throat, raw and primal.
    My body flopped down onto the bed, like a rag doll tossed aside, then I was pulled closer again, in