She took it, no reluctance whatsoever, and that bolstered me to say what I had to say next.
She came in between my legs and leaned into me, looking up at me with her heart in her eyes.
I leaned my head against hers for a long moment before pulling back and looking up at the stars.
“That was the first time my parents realized something was wrong with me. I didn’t try to kill myself, per se, I just knew that something was wrong, and pain made it feel better,” I explained, not looking down into her eyes. “That was when I was diagnosed with depression. Three weeks after that, I was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. Bi polar two, to be exact. By the time I was fourteen, I was diagnosed with ADD. Right now I’m on medication for my bi-polar disorder and ADD since they believe that those are the two causing most of my problems.”
When I finally got the courage to look down at her, it wasn’t horror that I saw, but understanding.
So I felt like I should continue.
“Surprisingly, none of that affected my schooling. The manic side of my bi-polar disorder kept me from falling behind with the other things affecting me. I always strove to be the best. The depression kicked in when I wasn’t the best,” I explained.
“My youngest sister is bi-polar,” she said, surprising the fuck out of me enough to look down at her again.
And the understanding in her eyes about killed me once again.
“When I turned eighteen, I got a job in a tattoo shop to help fund my schooling. My parents paid for nearly all of it, I only had to cover the books,” I explained. “That’s when I found that the pain of the needle fed that need for pain in less destructive ways, and I haven’t looked back since.”
“Schooling? I thought you were in the Navy,” she said.
I curled a sliver of her hair that’d fallen free of her bun behind her ear, cupping her neck once I did.
“I went to school for my medical degree when I was seventeen. Graduated with that when I was twenty five. Joined the Navy when I was twenty three, while finishing that up. Then realized that I hated being a doctor, so I just…quit.”
I knew the next thing out of her mouth before she even said it.
“And what made you not want to be a doctor anymore? Seems like a lot of schooling on your part for you to just give it up,” she whispered, laying her head against my chest and looping her arms around my waist.
I held my breath, and tried to hold the pain in, yet it didn’t want to be held anymore.
“I witnessed an abortion that changed the course of my life and also ruined me for the medical field,” I said woodenly. “If someone could just kill an unborn child in that way, one that had fingers and toes, and clearly defined features, then how could they say they were an upholder for human life? Wasn’t what they were doing the exact opposite?”
“Oh, Michael,” Nikki breathed. “Do you want to tell me about it?”
I knew Nikki was catholic.
She went to church religiously every Sunday.
In fact, as a way to get closer to her, I’d started going to conversion classes, and attending Sunday mass at the very church that she went to just so I could breach some of the gap between her and me.
The fact that abortion would never be uttered from her lips really held great appeal to me.
Because abortion had been a determining factor in how I’d live my life from the moment I turned twenty three.
Even now, twelve years later, I can still remember what that baby looked like.
I looked at it every day in the mirror.
“It’s gory. And not a good story,” I warned her.
She pressed further into my arms, and said what I needed to hear. “Tell me.”