Yesterday, she had gone to the wrong clinic. Like the Center, it was painted orange. It was literally around the corner from the Center. The sign even said THE WOMEN’S CENTER, as if they were deliberately trying to confuse patients.
The waiting room was filled with posters of fetuses in different stages: I AM SIX WEEKS AND I HAVE FINGERNAILS! I AM TEN WEEKS AND I CAN TURN MY HEAD AND FROWN! I AM SEVENTEEN WEEKS—I JUST HAD A DREAM! It had seemed patently cruel to her, to have these posters on the walls, but maybe they were meant to weed out the women who were still unsure of their decision. Joy closed her eyes, so that she wouldn’t have to look at them.
She heard her name called, and a smiling woman with a dark cap of hair led her back to a cubicle. The woman wore a lab coat and had the name Maria embroidered over her heart in loopy script. “How about we start with an ultrasound!” Maria said, and Joy realized she was one of those women who spoke only in sentences with exclamation points. “To see how far along your baby is!”
On the examination table, Joy watched Maria squirt gel onto her belly and then rub the ultrasound wand around. “Look at your little miracle!” Maria said, turning the screen toward her. On the screen was a fully formed, chubby black-and-white baby.
Joy had looked on the Internet; she knew her fifteen-week fetus was about the size of an apple, maybe four inches long. But this thing on the screen, it was sucking its thumb. It had hair and eyebrows and fingernails. It looked like it could crawl already. As she stared at the ultrasound screen, she noticed that the movements and twitches of the fetus were repetitive. It was playing on a loop.
Joy cleared her throat. “I think maybe there’s been a misunderstanding,” she said. “I’m here for an abortion.”
“You know if you get an abortion, you probably won’t be able to have children … ever! And that’s if you survive in the first place,” Maria said.
She went on: “Do you go to church? Does your boyfriend?” Even these questions sounded enthusiastic. “If you’ve let Jesus into your heart,” Maria said, “He doesn’t want you to kill your baby!”
By now Joy was utterly confused. “I think I’ve made a mistake.”
Maria grasped her arm. “I am so glad to hear you say that. We can help you, Joy. We can help you and your child. We have lots of resources on adoption!”
A suspicion crept into Joy’s head. “I … need to think about it,” she said, pulling down her shirt and sitting up.
Maria brightened. “There’s no rush!”
Even that was a lie. Joy knew she had exactly four days before she could no longer legally have an abortion in the state of Mississippi.
It wasn’t until she was out on the street, breathing hard, that she looked up and saw the actual Center across the street. She ran past the protesters who shouted at her and repeatedly pressed the intercom button. The electronic door lock buzzed, and Joy hurried inside.
“Is this the Center?” she asked the woman at the reception desk, who nodded. “You’re sure?”
“I better be, since I own the place. Do you have an appointment?”
She had a name tag—VONITA. When Joy apologized for being late, Vonita knew exactly what had happened. “Goddamn pregnancy crisis center,” Vonita said, “pardon my French. They’re like weeds—sprouting up next to every abortion clinic, to purposely confuse patients.”
“I’m pretty sure they’re a bunch of quacks.”
“I know they are,” Vonita said. “The state’s got us jumping through a hundred legal hoops just to keep our license, and they’re completely unvetted. They tell you we don’t have real doctors here? And that you’ll probably bleed to death?” She shook her head. “You’re more likely to be hit by a bus crossing the street to get here than you are to die from complications from an abortion.”
You’re more likely to die from sneaking into an abortion clinic to make some kind of moral point.
With a sinking feeling, Joy realized that Janine had gotten what she wanted. It may not have been the way she intended, but in all likelihood this clinic was now going to close—if not temporarily, then permanently. Vonita, the owner, was dead. And who would be willing to come here after this? What would happen to women like Joy, who were fifteen weeks pregnant and scheduled for an abortion tomorrow or the day after?
Joy glanced down at Janine’s sprawled body again. It just went to show you: there was no right way to do the wrong thing.
Except to not do it at all.
She could feel the prickle of everyone else’s eyes on her as she slowly knelt on the carpet in front of Janine.
Go figure. When you cradled a liar’s head in your lap, it felt just like anyone else’s.
—
IN A WAY, OLIVE THOUGHT, being in the dark was even harder than being out there with the others. She could hear conversations, stomping, crashes. She knew when the shooter was angry and she knew when someone was in pain. But because she couldn’t actually see with her own eyes, she began to paint pictures in her mind of what was happening. And what she could dream with a fertile imagination had to be much worse than the reality.
Right?
Beside her, Wren shuddered. “Do you think he killed her?”
There was no need to ask who. The woman who had been babbling about how they kill babies here had fallen silent after a heavy thud.
“He didn’t shoot her,” Olive whispered.
“That doesn’t mean she’s alive.”
“The brain can do a lot of things,” Olive said, “but it can’t distinguish between what’s really happening, and what you’re imagining. That’s why scary movies scare you and why you cry at Nicholas Sparks books.”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
“You talk like a teacher,” Wren said.
“Guilty as charged,” Olive said. “I used to teach at the college.”
She considered the woman who’d insisted she did not belong here. Olive could have said the same. The Center was all about reproductive choices, and she didn’t have any of those left. But she would never have jeopardized Wren’s life by throwing open the closet door to save her own skin.
“If I die,” Wren murmured, “they’ll make a shrine at school.”
Olive turned at the sound of her voice.
“They’ll put flowers underneath my locker. And posters saying REST IN PEACE, and photos of me doing stupid things, like with my face painted for Spirit Day or dressed like Supergirl for Halloween. It happened last year, with a girl who died of leukemia,” Wren said softly. “All these people pretending they miss me, when they never even knew me.”
Olive reached for her hand and squeezed it. “You’re not going to die,” she said.
As if to punctuate her promise, Wren’s phone buzzed.
—
R U STILL SAFE? Hugh texted.
Those three dots appeared, scrolling, and he let out the breath he was holding.
There was someone yelling & then a thud & now it’s quiet.
He wondered how many women were in there, other than his daughter and his sister.
He knew his responsibility was to every hostage inside the Center, but the truth was, he was thinking only of Bex and Wren.
Aunt Bex? he typed.
??? don’t know.
When he was a kid, and he’d gone somewhere after school, Bex used to insist that he call her when he arrived. He hated it—it made him feel like he was the biggest loser. It wasn’t until he had Wren, and worried about her every minute she wasn’t with him, that he understood why his sister had been so vigilant. The reason you hold on to someone too tightly isn’t always to protect them—sometimes it’s to protect yourself.
Hugh stared down at his phone, as if he could will Wren courage, strength, hope. Stay calm, he texted.
. . .
. . .
Daddy, Wren wrote, I’m scared.
She had not called him Daddy for a long time.
When Wren was little, Hugh had come upstairs to find her scrubbing her face with lemons, trying to get rid of her freckles. I have spots, she had said. I’m ugly.
You’re beautiful, he’d told her, and those are constellations.