I don’t want Madge in here. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. So I say it. “It’s my choice.”
Janet’s hands go to her hips, and she looks at me for a long time while I study the cuticles on my thumbnails.
When she sits down again, her voice is soft. “This is a permanent choice. There’s no going back. Which is not to say it’s not the right choice for you. It very well might be. But only you can decide that. So I’m going to ask you a very important question, and I want you to answer it honestly.”
I look up at her.
“Do you have any doubts about this choice, or have you made up your mind?”
I start crying. I can’t help it. Because there’s only one way out of this mess, and it’s not fair that the decision comes down to me. I’m not the only one who brought me to this awful moment. So why am I the one who has to shoulder all the weight of this decision?
I could tell her all that. I could tell her I’m not sure yet and need more time.
But I don’t. “I wish things were different. But I’ve made up my mind.”
She nods, all business, and writes something on my paper before asking me to take a seat back in the waiting room.
I sit three chairs down from Madge and refuse to look at her. She doesn’t even care. She just shrugs and pulls out a book.
How can she sit there and fucking read? We’re about to take a life, and she’s reading a shitty romance novel like it’s nothing.
I can’t look at her anymore, so I look around the waiting room instead. There are three other girls here, and I wonder about their stories. They’re all young, though none as young as I am. Two of them look about seventeen or eighteen, and the other is probably in her early twenties. The girl in her twenties is alone, and I feel a pang of jealousy. I already know that I’ll be walking around with the memory of today for the rest of my life, and I wish that Madge weren’t a part of it.
I check out the mothers of the other two girls. They’re so different. The one beside the blond girl is holding her hand, and that breaks my heart into a million pieces. They’re leaning into each other, and the mom never takes her eyes off her daughter’s tearstained face. I wonder what they talked about on the way here. I wonder if they made this decision together.
The other girl’s mother sits rigidly in her seat. She reminds me of Madge. There’s no handholding or reassuring pats on the leg with this woman. She never once looks at the shamed-looking girl curled into a ball beside her. She stares straight ahead, and I can feel the anger rolling off of her.
I wonder what Madge and I look like to them. Do they feel sorry for me because she’s all I have left in the mother department? I want to announce to the whole waiting room that she’s not related to me. That I didn’t come from inside this cold woman. She’s just my stepmother! I want to shout.
A woman in a white coat appears at the door on the far end of the room. She looks down at the charts in her hands, and my heart freezes. Not yet. “Amy and . . . Nicole.” She looks up and smiles while the two younger girls get up. The blond one’s mother stands up with her and gives her a long hug. They rock from side to side while she whispers something in her daughter’s ear.
I make eye contact with the other girl, and something passes between us. We’re both crying. Her mother doesn’t get up or even look at her. I know exactly how this girl feels.
I’m still thinking of her when the nurse comes back and calls my name. She shows me to a little closet closed off by a curtain and asks me to get changed and then sit on a chair in the hallway.
I stow my clothes in one of the cupboards in the little room and then tug at my shirt to make it longer. When they asked for a long T-shirt, I didn’t really think about why. Now I find that it’s my only coverage. I had to take off even my underwear.
I perch tentatively on the chair, pulling my shirt under me to act as a barrier between the seat and my body. I don’t want to touch anything in here. Everything feels dirty.
I look around for another door. Some way to sneak out the back of this building and hide.
But then a nurse taps me on the shoulder and gestures to a dark room. I follow her and climb onto the table, starting to panic. I’m not ready to do this. I turn to the nurse and open my mouth to ask for help when a doctor rushes noisily in.
He peers at a piece of paper on the table and then smiles widely at me. “Annabel? My name is Dr. Duncan.” He snaps on a pair of latex gloves and takes a seat beside me.
“This is how things will work. I’m going to use this machine to get a look at the fetus and see where it’s positioned. I’ll then take some measurements to determine how far along you are. You’re welcome to watch the screen or look away if you prefer. Some women find it helps them to accept the loss if they’ve seen the fetus.”
It’s all so official. So scientific. I start to calm down a little.
The nurse positions my feet in the stirrups at
