Izzy had grown up with her face pressed so hard against reality that it was impossible for her to believe in mythical creatures: fairies and unicorns and men who cared more about Izzy’s future with them than about her past. She had tried to picture herself in Parker’s world, learning how to ski and spending fifty bucks at a movie on seats and popcorn and sodas without feeling guilty. But if she became that woman, she wouldn’t be Izzy anymore. And wasn’t that who he had fallen in love with?
It was better this way. Parker would never know. He wouldn’t be forced to stay with her out of some misguided sense of honor or chivalry. Once he had space and time to think it over, once he settled down with someone more like him, he would realize she had done him a favor. Someone who had grown up getting by day to day just didn’t have the resources to dream about the future.
When Izzy had left the little room, she’d stopped at the nurses’ desk. “How come there aren’t more babies?”
The nurse had looked at her like she was crazy. “They’re in the rooms with their mamas.”
Izzy had felt like an idiot. Of course they were. Even now as she drove she wondered about Levon’s mother. Had she needed to get a good night’s sleep? Was she sick? Was he?
Izzy was afraid the answer was also something any vaguely maternal female knew, which was why she hadn’t asked the L & D nurse. If she needed confirmation that she was making the right choice, she’d received it.
The GPS on her phone told her that in two miles, she would be turning right. She put on her signal, following the directions carefully because she was not familiar with the roads in Jackson, Mississippi. But even with her detour to the nursery, Izzy knew she would be fine. Barring unforeseen traffic, she would reach the Center in plenty of time for the first appointment of her abortion.
—
YOU HAD TO GET UP ridiculously early in Atlanta to get to Mississippi by eight A.M., but Louie preferred sleeping in his own bed to sleeping in a hotel. He spend so many days of the month jetting to Kentucky and Alabama and Texas and Mississippi and other states where abortion clinics were being shut down left and right, that when he could pull up his own covers and rest his head on his own pillow, he moved heaven and earth to make it happen.
He was in Mississippi four times a month to provide abortion services, as were three other colleagues who rotated coverage, flying in from Chicago and Washington, D.C. Louie had known that working in the Deep South as an abortion provider was more challenging, say, than working on the East Coast. The biggest difference between the North and the South was not the weather or the food or even the people—it was religion. Here, religion was as much of the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. You had to offer folks a chance to be pro-choice not in spite of their faith, but because of it.
Louie liked routine, and he adhered to it whenever possible. He knew the flight attendants by name, and always reserved his favorite seat (6B). He drank coffee, black, and he ate a Kind bar and a yogurt that he packed from home. He used the time on the plane to catch up on medical journal articles.
Today he was reading the research of a team from Northwestern University, who had recorded a zinc flash at the precise instant a sperm fertilized an egg. A rush of calcium at that moment caused zinc to be released from the egg. As the zinc burst out, it attached itself to small, fluorescent molecules: the spark that was picked up by camera microscopes.
Although this had been seen before in mice, it was the first time in humans. More important, certain eggs glowed a little brighter than others at the moment of conception—the same ones that went on to become healthy embryos. Given that 50 percent of eggs fertilized in vitro weren’t viable, and that often it came down to a clinician guessing which one looked the healthiest—the implications of the study were significant. The correct embryo to transfer was the one that had burned the brightest at the moment of fertilization.
“Then God said, Let there be light,” Louie murmured to himself. He shook his head in wonder. Those infinitesimal bits of zinc determined whether an egg would become a completely new genetic entity. Science never failed to humble him, just as much as his faith, and he unequivocally believed that the two could exist side by side.
As a resident, he’d sat with his share of terminal patients, and what you heard was true: people who were dying talked of a tunnel, with a warm glow at the end.
It stood to reason that both life and death began with a spark of light.
Louie was so absorbed in the article that the jolt of the plane hitting the runway startled him. He gathered up his reading material and waited for the seat belt sign to go off. Then he stood up and pulled his suitcase down from the overhead bin. He traveled only with a carry-on, preferring to keep extra clothes in Vonita’s office just in case.
He said goodbye to Courtney, the flight attendant, and turned left when he entered the terminal. He knew this airport by rote: when TSA PreCheck got busy, at which gate he could find Starbucks, where the men’s rooms were. He knew exactly how long it would take for him to get his rental car and drive to the Center.
And as always, because he was on such a predictable schedule, his welcome committee was waiting for him when he arrived.
One of the regular protesters at the clinic met Louie at the airport without fail, waiting at the base of the stairs near baggage claim, which was the only route to the rental car agencies. Louie liked to think of the dude as Allen the Anti. He held a hand-lettered sign that said LOUIS WARD MURDERS BABIES. Louie didn’t know what pissed him off more: that the man was as regular as clockwork, or that he misspelled Louie’s name.
Allen was standing, as usual, with his sign. Louie never engaged. He knew better. But this time, the sign was spelled right. It was enough to cause Louie to slow his gait. “Dr. Ward,” Allen said, smiling. “Good flight?”
He stopped. “It’s Allen, right?”
“Yes, sir,” the man said.
Louie glanced at his watch. “What do you say we grab a bite to eat?”
He had fifteen minutes of slush time because his flight had come in a touch early. And he felt safe in the airport, surrounded by people. Maybe it was possible to walk in another person’s shoes, without trampling his steps.
Allen tucked his sign beneath his arm and they walked back up the stairs to McDonald’s, where Louie treated the protester to a Big Breakfast and coffee and then sat down across from him at a table in full view of anyone passing by to get to the ticket counter. “Can I ask you why you meet me here?” he asked.
Allen swallowed and smiled. “I want to shut down that murder factory you work in,” he said, as easily as he might say, It’s been a really warm fall so far.
“Murder factory,” Louie repeated, turning the phrase over in his mouth. “How long should the women in my care go to jail for their offense?”
“Hate the sin, not the sinner,” he said.
“Unless the sinner is me, right?” Louie clarified. “So if you could, you’d ban all abortions?”
“Ideally.”
“Even in cases of rape and incest?”
Allen shrugged. “Really, how big a percentage is that?”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Louie pressed.
“You didn’t answer mine,” Allen countered. “And even if it’s one of those rare circumstances, that doesn’t mean you’re not committing homicide.”
Louie thought of the sac he removed during an early abortion. It was tissue that didn’t feel pain or have thought or sensation. To him it was potential. To Allen, it was a person. And yet who would argue that there was no difference in the moral implication of chopping down a hundred-year-old oak tree versus stepping on an acorn?
Allen took a mouthful of eggs. Yet another life potential squandered, Louie thought. “You know, I consider myself pro-life. I just happen to be pro-the-life-of-the-woman. I’d call you pro-birth.”
“I could call you pro-abortion,” Allen said.
“No one is forcing women to have abortions if they don’t ask for them. It’s the difference between supporting free will and negating free will.”
Allen leaned back in his chair. “I don’t think you and I are ever going to be on the same page on that.”
“Probably not. But maybe we can agree to neutralize the public space around policy making. We’re all entitled to our religious beliefs, right?”