CHALLENGE
Now most of my words were sobs.
“ Okay, it’ s okay, I believe you, it’ s okay,” she said quickly. There was a long silence between us as I calmed down.
“ Of course I’ ll be there,” she said.“ I’ ll come over tonight.”
I spent a good deal of time crying. Crying because I failed to practice safe sex. I failed to take my birth control. I failed to do things the right way. And now, I had to reject this unborn person from my body.
It was not an easy
“
This is never leaving me, and that’ s okay. I’ ll never be the same again, and that’ s okay too.”
decision. I very nearly chose death rather than go through with it. Even after, I thought about the gun locked in the safe in my dresser. That would be easy. The guilt flooded me, bashing my already beaten corpse into jagged rocks of regret and agony. It would be so easy. Noelle arrived sometime around 8 p. m. I felt awkward not being my boisterous self. So I tried to crack jokes. I tried to pretend like I’ m not hurting, deeply. But she saw through it. She always saw through whatever façade I had on and just looked at me expectantly.
“ I’ m really scared,” I said finally. She just nodded. It’ s understandable, she told me. We sat a few feet apart from each other, neither of us really looking in the other’ s eyes.
SATURDAY
I was strangely calm. I woke on time, showered, and dressed simply, as instructed.
I tried to ignore the battling hunger and nausea. Noelle and I didn’ t say much to each other during the ride. I just stayed focused on giving her directions. Thankfully that day there were no protesters.
The same nurse who did my ultrasound was sitting at the front desk. Her scrubs were pink. Again, I wrote my name on the sheet with the redacted names. We sat in the seats closest to the door. I gave Noelle my keys and said that she could go wait in my apartment if she wanted. She kind of scoffed at me and went back to reading her book, and that made me smile a little.
My nurse came to get me. I filled out paperwork for a few minutes about emergency contacts. I didn’ t put my parents. She took me to the back and sat me down to take my vitals.
She dumped a small Dixie cup into my hand. Two pills tumbled out.
“ This one will relax your cervix,” she said, pointing respectively,“ and this one is Valium.”
“ I thought I was getting anesthesia,” I said.
She shrugged halfway.“ You can have both.”
She led me down the hall to another room and instructed me to strip down and put on one of the gowns from the cupboard. When I’ m ready, she said, go into the room across the hall.
A nurse will come get me when it’ s time.
I changed quickly, trying ardently to avoid the mirror on the wall adjacent the door. I failed.
Clad in a stiff, pale pink Mumu, I didn’ t really look like myself. My eyes were sunken; the skin beneath was a strange shade of purple. My skin was pale, and I looked weak. I looked in my eyes and tried to ignore the guilt that’ s swelling again. My hands flew to my stomach, the center part of my hips, where it was. And more than ever before, I started to cry again. Not the desperate crying of a girl who’ s scared and confused, but the sorrowful crying of a woman who’ s making a conscious choice.
I held my stomach and whispered,“ I’ m sorry.” I wiped my eyes before exiting.
In the waiting room, the Valium soon took effect. A nurse came to get me, and she half-carried me to a room in the back.
The last thing I remember was wincing in pain and shock as the cold speculum forced me open.
AFTER
I will admit openly and freely that I did not handle it well.
I drank a lot in the following weeks. Every Saturday, it was a shot for every week it had been. Around eight, I started waking up in my kitchen after blacking out. Other nights, it was a glass of wine that turned into some vodkaand-whatever-I-had that eventually turned into just vodka.
I opened up about it a little. I told my closest friends, and they were all