Chapter 11 Train Wreck #2
“Is there a problem, officers?” Aaron asks from behind me.
It takes everything in me not to whip around, but I’m careful not to make sudden movements.
When he reaches my peripheral vision, I see he’s wearing his lab coat.
His posture has changed. I used to tease him about it, the way he would put on an authoritative white-man persona when it suited him.
I can see it work, too. Officer Davis relaxes a little bit.
“We got a complaint that this woman was shouting obscenities and threatening the people gathered outside. Flipped one of them off.”
“Her?” Aaron asks with a little laugh. He gives me an extremely condescending look, as though I’m barely capable of saying my own name.
“There’s definitely been some mistake. She’s quiet as a mouse.
Must have been a passerby. A lot of people walk past here, and not everyone is friendly.
Maybe one of the nearby store owners saw something? ”
To my amazement, Officer Davis asks Aaron a couple more softball questions, shakes his hand, and then the officers just… leave.
“Thanks for the rescue,” I say, sincerely. “Those fuckers.”
“So that’s not normal?” Aaron asks.
I shake my head. “We all usually have an understanding not to involve the cops. They’re getting bolder.
” I play back today’s events, and it strikes me then that Aaron and the demons threatening me appeared on the same day.
Still, I sense nothing out of the ordinary about him.
A chill runs down my spine at the coincidence, and I try to shake it off.
“Well, I should give Diane the details so she can send it up the chain. Don’t you have patients? ”
He makes a slight move as if to touch my arm, then thinks better of it. We walk back into the clinic in awkward silence.
I spend my workday Googling demons, wondering if I could possibly identify the one who is after me on my own.
Unfortunately, human possession and murderous rage seem par for the course for most demons.
I’m deep into medieval history when I hear a knock on the open doorframe of my office.
I look up to find Aaron, a brown paper bag in hand.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” he says, his mouth twisting in an awkward expression. “I hope what I said to the cop didn’t offend you.”
“It was necessary,” I say. My voice is flat.
“Yes, but… I felt bad. I got you lunch.” He holds up the bag. “I know you get sucked into your work sometimes and forget to eat.”
“You don’t know me anymore,” I say, even though he’s right. If anything, the depression has made it even harder for me to feed myself.
“If you don’t like Saigon Sisters…” I stand up, and he takes a step back.
We both laugh awkwardly before he hands over the package.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I just want to apologize again properly for ghosting you, for being an anti, for making assumptions. Even if you were having an abortion, I shouldn’t have reacted that way. ”
He gave me an almost identical spiel at the museum, and the goodwill his gesture earned him instantly dissipates into suspicion.
“Thanks for the food. I appreciate it. But if you’re hoping to buy my forgiveness…”
“I know,” he says immediately. “I know I can’t do that. I’m so, so sorry. What I did to you—”
“Forget what you did to me!” I interrupt. “I mean, it was pretty horrible, but who hasn’t been in a shitty relationship with someone who hides their shitty beliefs and then ghosts you?”
“Sorr—”
“The worst part is you were out there actively harming other people. Harassing women. You hurt them. What if you helped turn away a woman who needed care? How can I forgive that?”
Aaron hangs his head. “You can’t. You’re right. After I saw you that day, I talked to Michelle, and—”
“Michelle? Our Michelle?”
One of my good friends in college also remains one of the only genuinely pro-life people I’ve met.
Of course god exists. He commands us to be pro-life, she once said to me.
I thought the friendship was probably not going to last if she intended to bring up religious politics unprompted, but then she followed it up with, That’s why we need gun control, and my jaw dropped.
Michelle was against abortion, but she was for gun control, expanded healthcare, and free childcare.
And she never said a word to me about the abortion Aaron assumed I had.
She simply continued being a good friend to me until she moved back home to North Carolina to organize against the death penalty and we naturally drifted apart.
“Is there another Michelle?” Aaron asks.
“I thought maybe she would understand my side. But she told me that at the end of the day, there is no true proof that life begins when she and I believe it does, only faith. She said that you never tried to push your religious beliefs on me, so it wasn’t fair for me to punish you for not adhering to mine. ”
“Damn.”
“She said that people should be able to decide for themselves until we had more proof and that if I really cared about saving lives, I wouldn’t be protesting outside a clinic, I’d be protesting outside a prison.”
“I had no idea she was that badass.” I’m filled with a surge of affection for Michelle.
If the antis who claimed to be pro-life were anything like her, there would actually be fewer abortions—people who wanted children but couldn’t afford them, needed to flee abusive partners, or didn’t have access to birth control would all have the resources they needed.
“Yeah, she pretty much chewed me out, but in that nice way of hers. And then she said that I shouldn’t have broken your trust by telling her at all.
Our conversation got me thinking about what being pro-life actually meant.
She said all I was doing was hurting people.
She asked me what I would think if I had succeeded in turning away a woman who needed a Pap smear and later died of cervical cancer.
I wonder every day what might have happened to the people I convinced to leave.
I’ve read The Turnaway Study. I’ll never stop thinking about it.
” Listening to him speak, I’m realizing that for all my righteous anger, I’m still just personally hurt, too.
I don’t know what to say, because he’s giving me a perfect explanation.
The perfect apology. But my heart can’t let it go.
Unfortunately for me, Aaron seems to have retained his ability to read me like a picture book.
“I can’t un-be there, and I can’t un-ghost you.
So I’m just… trying. I hope you like your food. ”
I squint at him. “Did you practice that?”
“Several times,” he admits.
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes.
I keep finding myself oddly charmed by his presence, but my anger stubbornly remains.
“I’m keeping my eye on you, but until I find evidence otherwise, we can probably be respectful colleagues, for the sake of the clinic.
” Aaron raises an eyebrow, and I avoid looking into his eyes, instead focusing on the smell of the pho.
I hope he got bánh bao, too. “I can’t… I don’t know if I can forgive you.
If you’re really in here saving lives, then I don’t want to be causing problems. But if you do something out of line, don’t think I won’t get you removed from the clinic. ”
I don’t actually know if I could convince Dr. Levy to fire him, but I think she would listen.
For now, though, he’s performing abortions and treating ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages and helping women safely carry to term.
Saving lives. “You’ve seen now, the risk of the work.
So if you’re in it, I can respect that. But we’re not friends.
” There’s no way that the hurt Aaron caused—in that moment, when he ghosted me after seeing me at an abortion clinic and weeks later, after what he had feared actually came to pass—can be undone.
But it’s in the past. I have bigger problems, I remind myself.
Aaron leaves, and I enjoy my Saigon Sisters takeout in peace, staring at the clock and waiting to go home.
I need a better strategy, and more information.
The moment five p.m. arrives, I bolt home, tie my hair back into the worst messy bun I’ve ever made, and guide myself through a namaskar, tatkar, and todas.
My brain is too frazzled to truly get into it.
I keep thinking about the sensation of the car mirror brushing my back.
I take a break to stretch and slow my breathing, but it doesn’t help.
My heart is still thudding far too hard in my chest. I’m going to have to break out the good stuff.
I scroll through my dance playlist and pick one of my favorites, “O Re Piya,” letting the flute’s music sweep over me.
The moment Rahat Fateh Ali Khan’s transcendent voice starts singing, my body moves.
The mix of classical beats and soaring melody takes over my body.
I bend and sway, my feet keeping time with the sound of the bells in the song.
I spin, lifting my arms to the ceiling, and release myself.
I’m dancing. I’m falling in love. I know it cannot last, but I would leave everything behind for this feeling.
I am consumed.