Eleven Hours by Paullina Simons

emptied him of all feeling and then filled him with anger. She was at her car when she dropped the bag. She was heading out to meet him when she dropped the bag and vanished.
    He grabbed his chest, feeling a nightmarish tightness. “God, Didi, Didi,” he whispered, starting to pant and losing focus in his eyes. What’s happened?

3:40 P.M.
    When Didi regained consciousness, she wasn’t lying in the man’s lap, and her face wasn’t squeezed between his abdomen and the steering wheel. She was hunched over on the seat, nearly falling onto his shoulder. She realized he must have pulled her up. Her head was throbbing, as if her hair were any minute going to be disconnected from her scalp. Squinting, she looked for her bag. He had thrown it down on the passenger floor.
    She sat up straight and looked around, rubbing her belly. They were now in the right lane, going sixty-five. No more concerned drivers peering at her through the windows of their cars. Just Texas fields, a few shrubs, some houses off in the distance, a hazy blue post-zenith sky.
    Didi moved as far as she could away from him and pressed her body against the passenger door. She wished she could become a liquid and pour herself into the door and disappear. There was obtrusive and persistent ringing in the ear where he had hit her. The radio was playing country music, and the man, cheerful and unperturbed, continued to hum to it.
    Didi had to go to the bathroom. The baby’s head was pressing too hard on her shrunken bladder. She had hoped she could just sweat out all the liquid in her body.
    â€œI feel that we got off on the wrong foot here,” she heard the man say. She could not believe the words coming out of his mouth. She wanted to say something nasty back, but her teeth felt too large for her mouth and her tongue too unhappy. So she said nothing and waited for him to speak again. Why did her tongue feel so swollen? She rolled it around her mouth. It hurt. Maybe I bit it when he struck me. Parting her lips, she let some air in. Maybe I’m just thirsty.
    â€œDon’t you think so, too?” the man said to her.
    He’d asked her a question. What was she supposed to say to that? The Belly was locked in a Braxton Hicks. She held on to it for a few seconds and then said, shrugging lightly, hunched over against the door, “I guess so.”
    â€œNo, no, we definitely did,” said the man. “And it’s my fault, and I’m sorry for that. We didn’t have time to be properly introduced, and then I was so busy getting us out of Dallas that time just flew. You never even told me your name.”
    She opened her mouth to speak. His voice was gentle now, soothing, as if listening to soft country music had relaxed him and made him calm. Had it made him calm enough to stop the car and let her out here in the middle of the highway?
    â€œWhen we were in the mall, I was trying to figure out what your name was,” he said. “Did you try to guess what my name was?”
    What was he talking about? She needed a drink. A sip or two of water. She was going to lick her wet-with-sweat hand again and then thought better of it.
    â€œUh-huh,” she said, her mouth barely moving. She said it very quietly. “Is it John?”
    â€œNo, no.” He laughed. “When I sat and waited for you to be done at Dillard’s, and you did take a long time, you know, I almost left. But anyway, when I sat and looked at your back and hair and legs, I tried to figure out what your name was. Let’s see … Ellen? Sonia? Maybe Jackie?”
    He waited for her to answer him.
    No, she said, or thought she said.
    He nodded. “You don’t look like a Melanie, I decided. My wife is a Melanie, and you look nothing like my wife.”
    Didi stared at her yellow sundress. She had felt so happy when she put it on this morning.
    â€œMonica?” he continued. “No, that’s a tall name, and you