Biology and evolution and social mores allowed Joe to leave; Joy was the one stuck with the pregnancy. Even though there had been two of them in that bed. Joy realized, in retrospect, she should have expected this. Life had repeatedly served her a big old side dish of miserable anytime she had a taste of anything good.
She had one more year of classes before she graduated with her bachelor’s degree—a degree she had fought for by scrimping and saving to pay for her credits. She worked two jobs already in order to make that happen. There was not a world in which she could take care of a baby, too.
That was Joy’s reasoning, as she sat in the bathroom at the library and whispered answers to the woman who scheduled her appointment at the Center.
Name. Address. Date of birth. First day of your last menstrual period. Have you been pregnant before?
Have you had any bleeding or spotting since your last period?
Are you breast-feeding now?
Do you have a history of uterine abnormalities?
Have you ever had asthma? Lung problems? Heart problems? Stroke?
And a dozen more questions, until: Is there anything else we should know about you?
Yes, Joy thought. I am pathologically unlucky. I’m perfectly healthy, except for this one thing that never should have happened to me.
The woman explained that because of the state of Mississippi’s requirements, an abortion was a two-day procedure. She asked if Joy had health insurance, and when she said no, the woman said Medicaid didn’t cover the cost. Joy would have to scrape together $600, if she could get here before she was eleven weeks, six days pregnant. Otherwise, the price jumped to $725 till thirteen weeks, six days. After that, it was eight hundred bucks, till the sixteenth week. After that, the procedure couldn’t be done.
Joy was already ten weeks pregnant.
She texted Joe, saying she needed to speak to him, but she didn’t want to tell him over text that this had happened. He didn’t answer.
She did some math in her head, and scheduled an appointment for a week and a half out. But even after skipping class to double her shifts at the bar and the library, she didn’t have enough money by the deadline. So she worked even harder, hoping to schedule an appointment at thirteen weeks. But her carburetor died and she had to pay for it or risk losing both her jobs. Before she knew it she was fourteen and a half weeks pregnant and running out of time. This time she called Joe, instead of texting. When a woman answered, she hung up the phone.
Joy pawned her laptop to get the cash, and rescheduled.
If she’d been richer, she wouldn’t have been here today.
She wouldn’t have been getting an abortion when a madman stormed the Center and started shooting.
It was just another layer of icing on the shitcake of her life.
This morning, when she had walked past the protesters, one of the women yelled that Joy was selfish. Well, she was. She had worked her ass off to get somewhere after aging out of the foster care program. She had struggled to pay for classes at college. She was determined to not wind up dependent on anyone.
The phone rang. And rang and rang. Joy slanted her gaze to the gunman to see if he would pick it up, but he was struggling—unsuccessfully—to tie a bandage around his bleeding hand.
It’s crazy, what puts you on a collision course with someone. You might wind up in an airport, drunk. You might be too poor to pick the appointment date you wanted. You might have the bad fortune to be born to an addict, or to be bounced from foster home to foster home.
What had brought this shooter here today with his gun? Joy had heard bits of conversation when he was on the phone with the police outside. He wanted revenge because his own daughter had come here for an abortion. Apparently she hadn’t told him what she was going to do.
Joy hadn’t told Joe, either, but then, he hadn’t returned her messages.
“What the fuck is your problem?” George asked, looming over her.
Startled, Joy pressed herself back against the chair. After what they had done to him—after what she had seen him do to Olive—she was terrified. She felt sweat trickle down her back. She had not felt this way—paralyzed—since she was eight. Back then the villain hadn’t had a gun, just fists. But he had still towered over her; he’d still had all the power.
Joy wondered, again, about George’s daughter.
She wondered why the girl had wanted an abortion.
She wondered if the girl was watching the news, if she felt responsible.
She wondered what it felt like to have an act of violence committed because someone loved you too much, instead of too little.
—
WHEN SHE WAS LITTLE, WREN had believed her father knew everything. And she had asked him thousands of questions: Are there more leaves in the world, or blades of grass?
Why can’t we breathe underwater?
If your eyes are blue do you see everything in blue?
How do you know you’re real and not someone else’s dream?
How do you get wax in your ears?
Where does the water go when you let the bathtub drain?
Why don’t cows talk?
Once she had asked, Are you going to die?
Hopefully not for a long time, he had answered.
Am I going to die?
Not if I can help it.
There were so many things she had not asked her father, that now she wished she had. What it is like to see someone die in front of your eyes?
What do you do when you realize you couldn’t save them?
Wren lifted her gaze to the man she had stabbed in the hand, the one who had tried to shoot her. The one who had shot her aunt. The one who had killed Olive.
He was wrapping gauze around his bleeding palm, and doing a really shitty job of it. When the gun had gone off, at first Wren couldn’t hear anything, and she thought for a second she had actually been shot and this was what death was. But the silence had been her eardrums shutting down, and the blood all over her had come from Olive. By the time Wren could hear again, the room bleating in fits and starts, she didn’t want to.
The tattered name ripped from Olive’s lips, for anyone who would be a messenger.
Janine keening.
Dr. Ward moaning in a yellow haze of pain as Izzy checked his tourniquet.
And a tiny, high whistle that it took Wren a while to figure out was coming from the center of her own body, the sound of fear vibrating through the tuning fork of her skeleton.
She stole a glance at the shooter. He clumsily tied off the bandage, using his teeth.
Just watch. Wren would be the girl who had come to a women’s health clinic to get birth control, but still managed to die a virgin.
Suddenly the man lunged forward. Izzy shifted slightly, as if she were willing to throw herself between Wren and the shooter, but Wren would be damned if she let that happen again. She twisted at the last minute so that when he grabbed her forearm and jerked her upright, Izzy couldn’t get in the way.
A small cry escaped Wren’s clenched teeth, and she hated herself for showing any weakness. She forced herself to look him in the eye even though her knees were knocking together.
Bring it, you motherfucker, she thought.
“Let’s go, girl,” he said.
She could smell the cellar of his breath.
Where was he taking her? Where was he taking her?
He glanced at the others. “Do not move. If any of you move I’ll make sure you never move again.” As if for punctuation, he glanced down at Olive’s body.
“Let go of me,” Wren yelled, actively fighting. She tried to pull out of his grasp, but he was too strong. “Let go of me!” she shrieked, and she lifted her foot to kick him, but he twisted her around roughly, his arm pressing against her windpipe.
“Do not,” he said, “tempt me.”
He increased his pressure on her throat until she saw stars.
Stars.
And then it all started to go black.
Suddenly he let her go. Wren fell to her hands and knees, sucking in air. She hated that she was at this man’s feet, like a dog he could kick to the curb. “My dad is never gonna let you out of here alive,” she gasped.
“Well, too bad your dad isn’t with us.”
“Oh yeah?” Wren said. “Who do you think that is on the phone?”
For just a moment, everything stopped, like it does at the apex of the roller coaster when you are caught between heaven and earth.