The Blackstone Chronicles

Chapter 6

Andrea drove slowly, searching for the impossible: an empty parking spot in Boston. She’d already passed the red brick building three times, twice going this direction, once the other. Should she try the other side again, or give up hoping to find a spot within a few steps of the building, and try one of the side streets?
Or should she just turn around and drive back to Blackstone?
She rejected the last idea immediately. She’d thought it all through too many times to back out now. If she didn’t go through with it now, she never would. Her mother would start in on her, and this time there would be no escape. Sooner or later she’d give in. And whatever Martha decided, it wouldn’t be good for her, and it wouldn’t be good for the baby.
It would be good only for Martha Ward, who would then spend the next few years exacting emotional payment for having “gotten you out of that mess, even though I had nothing to do with getting you into it!” A three-way bank shot, the kind Andrea knew her mother loved best, leaving Andrea feeling guilty, grateful, and indebted, all at the same time.
But not this time. This time Andrea was going to take care of it—take charge of her own life. Her mind made up, she turned off onto a side street, resuming her search for a parking spot. She finally found one three blocks from her destination, pulled into it, and automatically locked the rusting Toyota, even though she suspected it was worth more stolen than not. Hunched against the cold drizzle that had begun an hour before, Andrea trudged back toward the clinic, her steps heavy, her eyes fixed on the pavement in front of her.
The doctor’s office was on the third floor. To Andrea’s surprise, the door was unlocked. There were several women in the waiting room. Only one, a neatly dressed Asian woman several years younger than she, glanced up when she came in. The woman smiled briefly, then quickly lowered her eyes again to the magazine she was leafing through. A white-coated receptionist behind a glass partition looked up and said to Andrea, “May I help you?”
Andrea hesitated. There was still time to change her mind, still time to turn around and just walk out.
But then what?
Then, nothing.
No school, no decent job, no life.
Ever.
“I was wondering if Dr. Randall has an opening today,” she asked.
The nurse glanced down at the appointment calendar that was spread open before her. “Can you come back at two?”
Andrea nodded, gave the nurse her name, then filled out a medical history form, and filled in her MasterCard number, uttering a silent prayer that Gary had neither canceled the card nor run it past its credit limit. The first was doubtful; the second not at all unlikely. Leaving the office, she went back to the street, spotted a Starbucks half a block down on the other side, and settled in for the long wait.
When she returned to the office at exactly two that afternoon, the waiting room was empty. “Right on time,” the nurse said, smiling at her again. She opened the inner door and led Andrea into the doctor’s office, where a man of about forty, with a blond crew cut, the build of a football player, and a ruggedly handsome face rose and offered her his hand.
“I’m Bob Randall.”
As Andrea sank into the chair opposite the doctor, he reached for the forms she’d filled out, and she saw the gold wedding band on his finger. Damn.
“Do you want to talk about this?” Randall asked.
Andrea groaned to herself. Now what? Was she going to have to explain herself to the doctor too? What business was it of his? The operation was perfectly legal—hundreds of women had it every day, and thousands more, she believed, should have.
The doctor seemed to read her mind. “I don’t mean about having the abortion,” he said. “I just mean about the procedure itself.”
“You mean you’re not going to guilt-trip me?” Andrea asked.
Randall shrugged. “It’s your life, and your body, and nobody but you has the right to tell you what to do with it. You’re old enough to know what you’re doing, and if you’re as healthy as you say you are, there shouldn’t be any problems. You’ll be out of here in little more than an hour.”
For just a moment, Andrea hesitated. Even though she’d been told Dr. Randall wouldn’t lecture her, she hadn’t really believed it.
But this was it.
No questions, no arguments.
She nodded her head. “Let’s do it.”
The doctor took her into another room, left her alone while she changed into a hospital gown, and then came back, this time with the nurse. He checked Andrea’s blood pressure and pulse, her respiration and reflexes. He listened to her chest, palpated her stomach, then told her to stretch out on her back and put her feet in stirrups.
“Last chance to change your mind,” he told her.
“Go ahead,” Andrea said. “Let’s just get it over with.”
Fifteen minutes later it was all over. There had been surprisingly little discomfort; the worst had been when he’d dilated her cervix, but even that hadn’t hurt badly. “Is that it?” she asked as the nurse began cleaning up the small operating room.
“That’s all there is,” the doctor replied. “I’d like you to lie down and relax for half an hour or so, and then I’ll take a look to make sure there aren’t any problems, but I can’t really imagine that there are going to be any. It’s a very simple procedure, and I know what I’m doing.”
Forty minutes later Andrea was dressed and back out on the street. It had stopped drizzling. The first thing she did when she was out of the brick building in which she’d at least solved the worst of her problems was to reach into her purse and pull out a cigarette.
A cigarette, and the lighter that Rebecca had given her yesterday.
She squeezed the trigger concealed in the dragon’s throat, lit the cigarette, and sucked the smoke deep into her lungs, at last feeling a loosening of the tension she’d had all day.
Rebecca.
She’d have to apologize to Rebecca for what she’d said this morning.
And thank her for the lighter too. She was still holding it in her hand, and now, as the sun broke through the clouds overhead, it glinted brightly. She held it up, gazed at its red eyes, and once again squeezed its neck.
Click. Its flaming tongue appeared, flickering in the light breeze.
Andrea gazed at the lighter for a long time. Its red eyes glinted at her with a fiery light that seemed to come, not from the sun, but from deep within the dragon’s golden body. Glowing crimson, the eyes held her mesmerized. Then, almost unaware of what she was doing, she held her other hand up too.
Very slowly she moved her hand toward the dragon’s fiery tongue.
When the flame touched her skin, it didn’t hurt.
It didn’t hurt at all.