A mother’s grief knows no bounds.

A halogen tube flickered overhead. For just an instant, the shadow of an operating table danced across the far wall. Then the bulb burned out, and Jason sighed. Two down, only one to go. The harried young doctor was far too weary to search for a replacement – it had been a tough day, and his head was pounding. First that poor kid got in the way of one of Chicago’s nastier gangs and got two shots in his gut for the trouble. Then Clive again, this time with a bullet in his shoulder. The first time could have happened to anyone. The second was a little suspect. By the third, Jason was beginning to seethe. Still, no questions asked. That was the deal. Life was the only thing some of his neighbours had left.

Jason finally sighed and stood up. His prematurely grey head nearly brushed the low ceiling of his office. Those halogen lamps were his only light, and the last thing he needed was to be plunged into darkness in mid-operation. Once upon a time he’d had a window to look through. But then somebody decided to leave him a message the old-fashioned way, in the form of a nearly unintelligible note tied around a rock. Chickenscratch though it was, the words “Baby killer” featured prominently. God’s work, the doctor reflected ruefully. His only window to the outside world had been boarded up ever since. Still, it was probably nothing to worry about. Pro-lifers were just about the least immediate threat in this part of the city.

He made his way past the stained coffee pot, all sludge and acrid stink from having been forgotten on the burner, then past the buzzing – and empty – refrigerator. He stretched out his arm to paw at a set of shelves that did not quite reach the ceiling in the hope that he’d remembered to pick up more bulbs, but before he could find one, the doorbell buzzed.

“Coming,” he sighed, shaking his head to clear out the cobwebs. The clinic’s open hours had come to an end, but inner-city no-questions-asked-surgery was not so lucrative that Jason could afford to turn clients away. Shambling over to the heavy door, barred from the inside to discourage the usual bevy of crackhead visitors, he pulled open a small viewing slit and peered through. On the other side was a woman who seemed faintly familiar, holding a towel to her face with one hand and pulling a pram with the other. With a start, Jason realized that the towel was soaked crimson with blood. He threw the door open and beckoned his visitor inside.

“Judy? Jesus, Judy, what happened to you?” he stammered, rushing the woman and her baby carriage over to his operating table. He recognized her. A year ago, he’d been the only thing standing between Judy and a coat-hanger abortion – he even delivered the baby. Jason pulled the towel aside gingerly to reveal a gaping red hole where her right eye had been. The left eye was exactly as he remembered it – a bright shade of green like freshly mowed grass, but bloodshot and bleary with tears.

“My eye..” the woman whimpered almost inaudibly.

“Who did this to you?”

“They said they’d kill my baby. Because I came to you.”

Jason felt sick to his stomach. Suddenly, the rock that had sailed through his window took on new meaning. “Who said?” he asked, examining the wound with a set of tweezers to make sure no foreign objects remained inside.

“They said they’d kill my baby,” she repeated in a whisper. Jason darted a glance at the baby carriage, where a small form lay huddled under a quilted blanket.

“NOBODY is going to hurt your son. I delivered him, remember? I convinced you to have him. I’m not going to let anyone take him away.”

“They said it was him or you. I… I couldn’t. I … didn’t want to hurt anyone,” Judy quavered.

“Is that when they cut your eye out? Hold still… This is gonna hurt real bad,” Jason asked, holding up a patch of alcohol-soaked gauze to his patient’s ruined face. Judy hissed and sucked in a breath, then shoved him so hard that he fell over backwards, chair and all.

“That’s when they killed my baby! It was your fault!” she was shrieking now, a banshee mourning the loss of her child, “YOUR FAULT! BABY-KILLER.” With a blood-curdling yell, Judy leapt down from the operating table and kicked Jason so hard in the ribs that he could feel them crack. He sucked in an agonized breath and tried to crawl away, then took another kick to the hip.

“Judy… What. Judy, I’m trying to HELP you!” he yelled, trying to distract her. Only a few more inches…

Another sharp kick sent him flying into a small cabinet, knocking it over. Jason threw it open and grabbed his pistol, pointing it at the one-eyed woman. For a second, she froze, her baleful green eye burning straight through him.

“I’ll.. I’ll shoot you. If I have to…” Jason stammered through burning lungs, trying to keep his shaking gun pointed in her direction. “Judy… please Judy, for the love of God, it doesn’t have to end this way! You’re not an assassin!”

She cocked her head at him curiously, then grinned. “You’re right. I’m not.”

A high-pitched whine pulled Jason’s eyes away from the one-eyed woman in his clinic. The last thing he saw before serrated teeth ripped out his throat was a baby with one bright green eye leaping directly at him.