It seemed like years before she finally heard a voice speaking to her, but she could not decipher what it was saying. Someone kept calling her name, pulling her back from somewhere, dragging her back forcefully to a life she no longer wanted. She wanted only to drift away, toward the blackness and the silence, but the dim voices she heard sporadically would not let her.

“Gabriella!… Gabriella!… Come on! Open your eyes now… Gabriella!” They were shouting at her, and clawing at her, and someone with a knife was tearing her heart out. She had begun to feel the pain now. It was like a dragon fighting from within her, tearing her from top to bottom. She didn't want to wake up to this, couldn't bear what she was feeling, and beyond the pain, she knew that something terrible had happened. She opened her eyes finally, but there were lights everywhere, blinding her, searing through her mercilessly, just as the pain was. People were doing something to her, but she had no idea what they were doing, only that the pain devouring her was beyond bearing. She could not even seem to breathe now. And then suddenly, as a pain so terrible it could not be borne ripped through her, she remembered why she had come here… her mother had beaten her… and broken her doll… she killed Meredith, and nearly killed her… and she knew that her father must be here somewhere, watching.

“Gabriella!…” They were shouting her name again, and the people around her sounded angry. All she could see was still light and dark, and no matter how hard she tried, as the demons of pain devoured her, she could not see their faces. And as she fought to see them again, and listen to what they said, a single horrifying pain seemed to tear her body apart, as she fought desperately to free herself from it. But it would not loose her from its clutches. And then suddenly, with total clarity, she saw not her father, but Joe smiling down at her. He was holding out a hand and beckoning to her, saying something she could not hear… the other voices seemed to drown out what he was saying. But when she looked at him again, trying to ask him where she was, he was laughing.

“I can't hear you, Joe…” she kept saying to him again and again. And then he started to move away, and she shouted at him to wait for her, but she found her feet would not move as she struggled to go to him.

Everything about her was too heavy. He stood there, waiting for her, and then he shook his head and disappeared, and suddenly she was free and running toward him. But he was moving too fast for her, she couldn't keep up with him, and the people who were behind her now sounded very angry as they followed. They were still calling her name, and this time when she looked at them, she saw why she could not follow Joe. They had tied her down, with her legs strapped high in the air, and her body and arms strapped down, and everything around her was too bright now. “No… I have to go…” she shouted weakly at them… “He's waiting for me… he needs me…” Joe turned and waved, and he looked so happy that it frightened her. But in the room where she lay, the people around her were very angry, and she knew that they were doing something terrible to her. They were ripping out everything inside her, tearing her soul away, and keeping her from him. “No!” she kept shouting at them. “No!” But they wouldn't listen to her.

“It's all right, Gabriella… it's all right…” There were women and men, and they all seemed to have knives and were stabbing her, and when Gabriella looked at them, she saw that none of them had faces.

“Her blood pressure is dropping again,” a voice said from somewhere, and she had no idea who they were talking about, and to Gabriella, it no longer mattered.

“For God's sake,” a different voice said, “can't you stop it?” And like the others, he sounded angry at her. She had done something terrible, obviously, and they all knew what it was, but she didn't. She closed her eyes again, howling in pain this time, and in the distance she could hear the same sound she had heard before, and this time she knew it must be sirens. There had been an accident, someone was hurt, and in the darkness that engulfed her again, she could hear a woman screaming. And then more people came, they seemed to be everywhere, surrounding her, but she couldn't help them. Every part of her was too heavy, except the part of her where the demons of pain were raging. She tried to move her arms, to push them away, but they were still tied down, and she didn't doubt for a moment now that they were going to kill her.

“Shit…” a voice in the darkness said, “get me two more units.” They had been pumping blood into her to no avail, and it was clear to all of them now, they were not going to win this one. There was no way they could save her. Her blood pressure was almost gone, and when her heart began fibrillating, they knew they had lost her.

For a long time, the voices stopped, and Gabriella lay quietly, at peace finally. They had left her alone at last, and the demon within her was silent. Joe came back to her then, walking slowly back from the shadows, but this time he did not look happy. He said something to her, and she heard him clearly this time. Her arms were free again, and she held a hand out to him, but he wouldn't take it.

“I don't want you to come with me,” he said clearly, and he no longer seemed angry, or even sad. He looked very peaceful.

“I have to, Joe. I need you.” She began walking next to him, but he stopped and would go no farther.

“You're strong, Gabriella,” he said, and she struggled to tell him that she wasn't.

“I'm not… I can't… I won't go back without you.” But he only shook his head and drifted away, as she felt a crushing weight drop down on her again, and a final searing pain that tore her away from him like a riptide. And suddenly, she knew she was drowning, just like Jimmy. She was fighting for air, and being pulled into the whirlpool with him, but when she tried to find him, she saw that she couldn't. He had abandoned her, just as Joe had, and she was alone in the roaring waters, and a force greater than any she had ever known pushed her suddenly toward the surface. She came up, gasping for air, spluttering and crying and screaming.

“Okay, we've got her…” She could hear the voices again, and hands seemed to pull at her from everywhere. She could feel each one of her broken ribs when she breathed, her eyes were filled with pain, they had tied her arms down again, and the place where the demons had been, burned with a white heat now.

“No! No! Stop!” She was trying to scream at them, but she couldn't, and all she knew was that they were tearing something from her. It was the place where her heart had been, and she knew they were trying to take Joe from her, but they couldn't. She had never before known such agony, and all she could think of now was her mother, wondering if she had done this to her.

“Gabriella!… Gabriella!” They were talking to her, more gently now, but all she could do was cry. There was no way to escape the pain they had caused her. They kept calling her name, and she felt someone stroking her hair. It was a gentle hand, but she couldn't see the face that went with it. Her eyes were still blurred, and the lights shining on her blinded her, but someone had begun to pull the demon from her.

“Christ, that was a close one,” a man's voice somewhere in the room said softly. “I thought we'd lost her.” They had for a while, more than once. But she was still alive, in spite of all her efforts to leave them. She had stayed because of Joe. It was Joe who had refused to take her with him. She knew, as she opened her eyes again, that he was not coming back again. They never did. They all went away and left her.

“Gabriella, how do you feel now?” She could see a woman's eyes as the voice talked to her, but they still had no faces. They all wore masks, but their voices were gentler. And when Gabriella tried to answer her, she found that she still couldn't. No sound came from where the screams had been. Every part of her body and her soul seemed empty.

“She's not hearing me,” the voice complained, as though, once again, she had failed them, and she wondered if now they would beat her. It didn't matter to her, they could do anything they wanted, as long as the demons did not come back again with their knife-sharp tails that cut through her soul like rapiers.

They left her alone then for a while, and she drifted off, but to a different place than she had been, and when she woke, there was a mask on her face. It smelled terrible, and she was very drowsy. And then, without saying anything to her, they rolled her away, and she saw people and hallways and doors drifting past her, and someone told her they were taking her to her room now. She wondered if she was in jail, if they were going to punish her finally for the terrible things she had done to all of them. They knew, they all did, that she was guilty. But no one said anything to her as they wheeled her into a room, and left her there, dozing on the gurney.

Two women in white walked into the room finally, wearing starched caps and somber faces, and without saying a word to her, they lifted her carefully from the gurney to the bed, and adjusted the IV that was still giving her a transfusion. They said very little to her, and left her to sleep for the rest of the day. Gabriella still didn't know why she was here, though she still remembered the sound of the woman she had heard screaming. It had been a wail of agony, a keening of pain, and sorrow. And later, when the doctor came in to talk to her, she cried again, but this time she understood what had happened. She had lost Joe's baby.

“I'm very sorry,” the doctor said solemnly. He did not know she was a postulant, but he assumed because of the convent where she lived that she was an unwed mother, and had been placed there by her parents. “There will be other children one day,” he said optimistically. But Gabriella knew better than he did, that there wouldn't. She had never wanted children because she was too afraid that she would become a monster like her mother. She would never have risked it. But with Joe at her side, she thought it might have been different. It had been a chance for another life, with a man she loved, and the child born of their love for each other. It had been a dream she had cherished all too briefly and didn't deserve, and now it had become a nightmare without him.

“You'll have to be very careful for a while,” the doctor admonished her. “You've lost a lot of blood, and,” he added ominously, “we almost lost you. If you'd come in here twenty minutes later, we would have.” Her heart had stopped beating twice in the delivery room, and it was the worst miscarriage he'd ever seen. She had lost more than enough blood to kill her.

“We re going to keep you here for a few days, just to watch you, and to keep up the transfusions. You can go home after that, as long as you promise me you'll rest and take it very easy. No running around, no parties, no visits, no dancing.” He smiled at her, imagining a life different than any she had ever known, but she was young and beautiful and he assumed she would be anxious to get out and see her friends again, and probably the man who had gotten her pregnant. Then he asked her if she wanted him to call anyone for her, and Gabriella looked up at him with grief-stricken horror.

“My husband died yesterday,” she said in a hoarse whisper, endowing Joe posthumously with the role she had wished for him, and the doctor looked at her with wisdom and compassion.

“I'm very sorry.” It was a double blow for her, he knew, and explained something to him. For most of the surgery and delivery he had had the odd feeling that she was fighting them and didn't want to make it, and now he knew that for certain. She had wanted to die and be with the man she called her husband, although he still doubted they'd been married. If they had been, she would never have come to them from St. Matthew's. “Try and rest now.” It was all he had to offer her, and after a few more minutes of observing her, he left her. She was a pretty girl, she was young and had a long life ahead of her. She had survived this, and would survive other things. It would all be a dim memory one day, he knew, but for now she looked and felt as though her world had ended.

And in Gabriella's eyes, it had. She was absolutely convinced she had nothing left to live for. She didn't want to live without him. And as she lay there, she thought about him constantly, and the journal she had written to him, the time they had shared, the talks, the confidences, the whispered laughter, the walks in Central Park, the stolen moments, and the brief hours of passion in the borrowed apartment. She couldn't even remember where it was now, and as she lay there, thinking of him, she struggled to remember every word, every inflection, every moment. And then each time, she came to the end of it, the two priests sitting with Mother Gregoria only that morning and telling her that he had taken his life, and she would live with it on her conscience forever. And now she believed that it was her fault. She remembered seeing him that morning, in her dreams, while they were working on her, and knew that she had almost gone to join him, and hated the fact that she hadn't. She would have done anything to be with him. And she tried to bring him back now as she dozed fitfully, but he would not come to her. She could not bring him to mind again, or make him seem real. He had left her, like the others. And all she could think of now was what he must have felt before he died, the agony that had brought him to a decision like that, the sorrow and pain he must have felt. It reminded her of his mother. She had made the same decision seventeen years before, and left her son an orphan. But this time, Joe left no one, except her, all alone now. She didn't even have their baby. She had nothing. Except sorrow.