Chapter 9 #2
Normally I’d laugh, try to deflate the situation but that feels wrong, too—everything feels wrong.
I think of Evie, how badly she wanted us.
Imagine how she must have whispered that hope into the dark like a spell that might finally take, baby names etched in her heart that never reached her lips and for a second, I do feel bad.
Not about the decision I’m making but for all of the women who break themselves trying to be what the world wants and never quite fitting.
Who ache for something that never takes.
Sometimes I wonder if being a woman is just grief in a million directions, longing for something that never comes, mourning what you choose to lose.
Evie prayed for a child for years while I walk into this building to let one go and somehow we both feel like we failed.
“What’s your name, sweetie?” The nurse asks, leading me to reception where she goes behind one of the gleaming computers, bathed in the blue light. I see the way her eyes crinkle at the edges, her lips slightly chapped. I wish I had the energy to make her life easier.
“Sloane.” She nods at my response typing something into her keyboard.
“Okay, honey. I got you all checked in and you’ll be called back in just a bit to run some tests before the procedure.
Do you have someone who can drive you home today?
” Her eyes meet mine and she must read something because she continues.
“You’ll need to have someone driving you due to the sedation.
It’s very mild, but still—you’ll be groggy. ”
I roll my lips together.
“Yeah, sorry. I have someone coming, they're just a little late.”
She gives me a tight lipped smile that registers something I don’t before nodding to the chairs behind me. I take a seat, the blue plastic cold and hard as I flip through an STD pamphlet, carefully reading about each disease like I’m here for a quiz and not an abortion.
“Sloane Fielder,” a kind voice comes through the door to my left, and I grab my bag, following a young brunette woman in light purple scrubs to one of the many patient rooms. She shuts the door, staring down at my chart. “How many pregnancies have you had?”
“One,” I say, forcing myself to meet her eyes as I settle on the crinkly paper. They’re brown, just brown and heavy. I wonder the toll it takes on her, having to deal with women at peak emotional exhaustion.
“Sorry…how many to completion?”
“Oh um…” She sits on a stool so she’s level with my knees. Her smile is kinder than it should be. This is her job. She doesn’t owe me this.
“Is this your first?”
I just nod because that lump is back in my throat and I don’t want to cry, don’t want to burden her with that. She smiles and it’s like a small pocket of air in the otherwise suffocating room.
“It’s going to be okay. Everything feels hard now but if you’re doing what’s in your heart…it’ll be okay.” She tips her head back at her clipboard. “How many sexual partners do you have?”
“Just one.”
She continues asking questions and then draws three vials of my blood before flicking off the lights.
“Okay honey. Lay back for me.” I do what she says as she wheels over an ultrasound machine.
“Oh. I don’t—” Panic flares in my chest.
“It’s protocol. I’m sorry, but you don’t have to look. Let me just—” Her voice is gentle,
practiced, as she tilts the monitor away so I can’t see and tears flood my eyes because I should see, shouldn’t I? Isn’t that what my instincts should be telling me? To protect, to cling, to see? But my instincts are tangled, at war with my body which feels at war with my mind.
She spreads a warm gooey substance across the base of my stomach and for a moment the room is silent save for the quick clack of the keyboard.
Seconds feel like minutes as I stare at the tiled ceiling, anchoring myself in the lines of grout.
I feel a towel wipe away the goo and then feel a tissue on my arm. “Here,” she says. “For your eyes.”
“Thanks,” I whisper, my voice hoarse.
“You opted for the D&C so we are going to send you back in just a few minutes once the room is prepped.” Her voice falls into the steady rhythm of reciting information.
“The procedure only takes about ten minutes but we’ll monitor you for at least thirty while the sedation wears off.
You’ll have some bleeding, similar to a standard period that will last anywhere from two to three weeks.
You have someone in the waiting room to drive you home? ”
“He’s on his way,” I say, my voice flat and she gives me that same tight lipped smile I saw on the receptionist earlier. Like someone who wants to be kind but isn’t sure how. It says, I see you but only as far as I’m allowed.
Minutes go by until she finally leads me back to the procedure room.
She was right: ten minutes. That was all that separated me from holding life and letting it go, the drugs making it feel even shorter, like seconds, the time it takes to light a candle and blow it out.
The brunette wheels me into the recovery room and says something that the sedative doesn’t allow me to register. I watch her gesture toward the juice box and saltines on a table to my left. I take a small sip which earns me an appreciative smile.
“What name should we call in the waiting room? We want to inform them that you’ll be leaving in the next thirty minutes. Give them a chance to pull their car around.”
“Oh um, Elliot.”
She nods, patting my shoulder gingerly before leaving.
I lay back in the hospital recliner, closing my eyes and letting my hand find that spot on my belly, the one strange comfort in this entire ordeal and it feels the same, flat, soft, empty.
I watch the sun shift in the blinds, letting my eyes close and reopen as I fight the endless sleep the painkillers brought on.
I’m awoken by the receptionist, her crinkled eyes worried as she gently rubs my arm.
“Sloane, we thought maybe he ran to grab a snack or something but it’s been about thirty minutes and we still haven’t seen him in the waiting area. Do you have a good number we can call for him?”
I blink the sleep away, letting what she’s saying filter into my cloudy mind.
“Oh, I might have given him the wrong time. Could I use my phone to—” The nurse interrupts, rushing to grab my bag from the table on the farther end of the room.
“Yes of course.” She hands me the bag and I find my phone flicking through it until I get to Elliot's name. It goes straight to voicemail. I smile to ease the worry in the woman's eyes and call again. Voicemail.
“He’s probably on his way. Let me just text.” I type out a quick message and stare at the blue screen, waiting.
“We’ll give him a little more time, sweetie.” The nurse looks uncomfortable, like maybe this isn’t protocol but her pity outweighs the rules. Still she leaves me, staring at my phone. More time passes and finally my phone chimes.
Elliot
Sorry, running late. Be there soon. Xx
The brunette pops her head in. “Anything?”
I know she must need the room.
“He’s almost here,” I lie. A full hour passes before the receptionist comes in with a wheel chair to bring me out, which feels a bit ridiculous now that the sedation has completely worn off.
Still, I abide by her rules, settling in the chair.
I see him, in the reception area, hands in his pockets, a grin that feels out of place plastered on his face and I sense the nurse’s displeasure.
Normally, I would assume it was because of the age gap, but it’s likely due to him being two hours late to his girlfriend's abortion.
“Sloane, if you need anything or have any questions at all, please give us a call.” The nurse eyes me and it's obvious she wants to say more, wants to warn me of something I’m already aware of.
Elliot grabs the chair, not bothering to make eye contact with the woman and something about the slight makes me hate him.
Not all of him—not yet. Just enough to fold into that little pocket of my heart that I refuse to fully open up and examine.
We reach Delilah, her red paint glistening in the California sun and I wish I didn’t let him drive her as I watch his fingers curl around her large steering wheel, sitting in the passenger seat of my own car.
“Well, you look fine.” His voice is chipper and so at odds with the tone of my day. “I’m surprised they made you get a ride home,” he chuckles at the hospital's ridiculous rules, unlatching the roof of the car. I don’t have the fight in me to tell him I want the roof up as he pulls onto I-80.
I reach over, grasping his hand, letting myself feel a shred of comfort from the one person I think can understand. He glances over at me, his jaw hardening. “Why are you doing that?”
“What?” I blink, confusion rattling my mind.
“Holding my hand.” He glances down where my hand covers his on the stick.
I blink, nausea rising in the back of my throat before releasing him.
“We’re not doing that anymore, Sloane.” His words tangle in the wind that blows from the car's open roof and I feel stunned and then mortified and I wish there was a button I could press to eject myself from this situation, let the passenger seat hurtle me into the ocean.
He pulls off the exit leading back to the student housing.
I thought we were going to his place. His apartment that has all my stuff, my paints, my clothes.
He silently pulls into a space just outside the duplex I share with a few girls in the program.
Girls I barely have taken the time to know, so consumed by every moment with him.
“Look, Sloane…” His voice is imbued with the inevitable fade of an ending, the final notes of a song I’m not ready to be over.
I search his eyes but there's nothing. No recognition of what I was to him and I wonder if I was ever anything at all, or just a means to an end, a muse to stroke his ego. Disposable, not serious.
“I think we should take some time. I need to focus right now with the new series I’m doing and with the whole—” He gestures at me, his hand smearing the air before me like a mess he wants to brush away.
I sniff a breath and before I can open my mouth he opens the driver door, pulling my bags out of Delilah's trunk. The life I had with him in two duffles. “There may be some paint left behind. If I find them I’ll bring them to class.” He nods, wrapping my hand around the cold car keys.
I reach in every direction trying to grasp anything, a word, a plea, even an accusation but my thoughts crash in on themselves and I can’t decide if I want to scream or cry, to push him away or pull him back.
“This isn’t goodbye, Sloane. It’s a see you later.” He cocks his head at the Uber that seems to have materialized out of thin air before squeezing my shoulder and just like that, he’s gone, so quick that I wonder if he ever existed.
Ten minutes, that’s what the nurse said. Ten minutes. That’s all that separates us from holding life and letting it go.