Chapter 15 Training Station
On Friday morning, Aai calls me on my way to work.
It’s our first day back, so we’re cramming in patients who couldn’t be accommodated elsewhere and are up against gestational limits for various procedures.
I can’t imagine how it must feel to have booked a hotel for an appointment, only for our clinic to be set on fire.
Aai called me last night, too, but I didn’t respond.
I was too busy interfacing with demons, and though I want to tell her everything, I know I can’t.
“What is going on, Nisha?” Aai asks. “You scared me, leaving that way! I know you’re not okay. Do you need me to come get you?”
“I was very rude,” I say. I’d practiced this response. “I did not think you would want me around.”
“You went through something very traumatic,” Aai says. “I understand.”
It sounds like what actually happened is that Aai reached an understanding with Rima Aunty about how much trouble I am, but it’s not like I can be angry about that. I deserve it. And Aai deserves to vent to her friends without me spying on her.
“I appreciate that, but it didn’t feel right to keep burdening you.”
“Burdening me?” Aai asks. “Since when is that something you worry about?”
“I’m sorry. I know I’ve been a bad daughter—”
“Nisha, what are you talking about? Maybe you should come home. I’m not sure you’re in your right mind.”
“I’m good, really!” I sound crazed even to my own ears. “I’m just trying to be self-sufficient.”
“Now is not the time to experiment with self-sufficiency!” Aai snaps. “Have you even been eating?”
I round the corner and am confronted with absolute madness. “Sorry, gotta go. Love you!”
Two groups of protesters, split down a clear dividing line, are fighting with each other.
Jeff is watching with open-mouthed delight.
There’s Catholics for Life on one side, evangelical men’s rights activists on the other, and a group of schoolchildren huddled on the grass who don’t seem to belong to either.
My eyes linger on a large sign featuring an image of a toddler, its mouth open in a rictus of pain, blood gushing from unmarred skin.
It doesn’t make any sense, and is captioned, “What Planned Parenthood Doesn’t Want You to Know. ”
“What is that?” I whisper to Jeff.
“A masterpiece,” Jeff whispers back. “One of the kids saw that sign and asked about it, then that dude with the crazy beard said that’s what they do to little kids inside. Then that kid told the others that they were brought here for…”
I clap my hand over my mouth, because I don’t want video of us laughing to end up on right-wing blogs. The Catholics and the MRAs do fight sometimes, since they prefer different tactics, but I’ve never seen something like this before.
“If your kid is scared of clowns, don’t bring them to the circus,” I say, and Jeff has to turn his back to regain his composure. “So now what, they’re fighting over whether or not clinic protesting is child appropriate?”
Someone shouts, “Heathens!” and gets an immediate, “Fuck you!” The situation only devolves further, since now the children’s ears have been marred by profanity. It’s beautiful, but after a few more minutes I need to go inside. Diane tears her eyes away from the CCTV when I enter.
“Having fun?” she asks.
“Definitely.” I notice some pretty blue flowers at the front desk. “Have a secret admirer?”
“They’re for you,” Diane says with a smirk. “There’s a card.” I frown at her, all enjoyment from the scene outside evaporating. “They won’t bite, sweetie. We’ve looked them over, even used the metal detector in the back.”
At least I know it’s not a hidden bomb. I pluck the white card from the bouquet.
N—
See? I’m using my powers for good. Let’s talk this afternoon. I’ll meet you at the train.
—M
At that moment, Aaron pokes his head out.
“Nice flowers,” he says, eyebrows furrowed. “They’re for you?”
“What, I can’t get flowers?” I ask. It comes out snappier than I intended.
“They’re from an admirer,” Diane stage-whispers, and the line in his brow deepens.
“Nice,” he says, then turns to speak to one of the patients in the waiting room.
Diane snickers. “He’s jealous, honey.”
“What?” I hiss, looking around to make sure nobody can hear her. But she has a well-calibrated whisper, as is needed to work in a clinic, and everyone else is several feet away. “Definitely not.”
“You guys have great chemistry,” she adds. “I can totally see it. I mean, sure, you avoid each other because of your past drama, whatever it is. But I can see it.”
“It’s definitely never happening,” I say.
“It’s a simple story. We dated for a few months when we were in college.
It was fun, we liked each other.” Well, I loved him, but saying so is just embarrassing.
“One day, I went with my friend to Planned Parenthood. She was nervous about getting an IUD. I saw Aaron protesting outside. It was like ice water had been dumped on both of us. Afterward I tried texting him, because I thought—I don’t know, that I could change his mind?
He ghosted me. And then his best friend told me it was wrong to get an abortion without telling Aaron first.”
“That’s awful.” Diane gasps, and immediately gives Aaron the stink eye. “I get it. He’s reformed now, but whatever’s between you…”
“We left it unresolved, that’s all. But it’s never happening.”
What I don’t mention is that less than two months later, I tried to get in contact with Aaron.
But he ghosted my calls, and so I went alone into that same Planned Parenthood to get my mifepristone and misoprostol.
I take a deep breath and push the past aside.
So many things from before my accident feel like they happened to a completely different person, but everything with Aaron still feels like part of me.
“The flowers look nice up here,” I tell Diane, sliding the note into my pocket.
When there’s a brief break in the schedule, I walk the perimeter of the clinic.
There are scorch marks on the building, but nothing else that could be helpful.
I walk around and around, as though something will emerge from the brick and steel to solve my problems. Sometimes protesters walk around the clinic on the public sidewalks, as I’m doing now, every day for six days.
They believe that, like the walls of Jericho, the walls of the clinic will come down.
The building doesn’t give me answers, but being out here reminds me that it is sturdier than the antis would have me believe.
I touch the side and feel myself steady.
Since my usual office is not habitable due to smoke, I enter the small meeting room to check my email.
At the top of my inbox is a message from the police.
They have decided the incident was just a “prank” and had nothing to do with the “political elements of the clinic’s work.
” As such, they will “do their best” to catch the “child” responsible, but more serious crimes take precedence.
They refuse to even look into the Christian terrorist groups that regularly try to bomb clinics like ours.
Disappointing, but expected. As veteran clinic escorts like to joke, someone could grow a whole baby in the time it takes the police to lift a finger for an abortion clinic.
For the last few years, I’ve poured myself into this place.
I came here from my first job out of college working at a start-up nonprofit that was supposed to “shake up” housing on the South Side but actually mostly helped slumlords and refused to work with “undesirable” tenants.
I was alone—my friends had moved away and I hadn’t made any new ones—so when I got into law school, I took myself out to a celebratory dinner in the city instead of going to Aai’s like she had asked.
I stepped off the curb, and I woke up in the hospital.
Aai was sitting at my bedside, looking like she had cried out enough water to fill Lake Michigan.
The hospital had apparently failed to realize that I had broken a rib until it pierced my lung and I almost died.
Medical malpractice. Even though I didn’t remember the details, I was afraid to even leave the hospital room.
My brain felt too fucked up to do anything but stare at the ceiling.
From my bed, I called the law school that had admitted me for the following fall and explained, dry-eyed, that I needed time to recover.
I said that I’d be working at a clinic but would be back next year.
Then Roe fell. The clinic started getting more patients every day.
I’d wanted to go to law school to protect abortion rights for another generation of women, to do something great, something special.
But I learned that the law didn’t protect people.
No one person could stop the endless rollback of civil rights, and certainly not me—a shell of the girl who had applied in the first place.
I would be wasting a seat that somebody with actual drive and passion and courage could fill.
Instead, I spent every iota of energy—not much, admittedly—on the clinic.
I built a robust volunteer program and helped with outreach, even handing out condoms and flyers on Devon Avenue, Chicago’s Little India.
I can’t let anything bad happen to this clinic.
I wonder if I should track down Asmodeus and take the deal.
It occurs to me that I haven’t had time to research him with everything else going on—stupid of me.
Google overflows with hits. Asmodeus is sometimes considered the demon of wrath or lust or revenge, and is sometimes a prince and sometimes a king.
He may or may not hate water and may or may not have once been bound to a rock.
I see a patient’s car approaching, and put my phone in my back pocket. The patient exits with a young child, and I jog over to them. There’s a firm look in her eye, and the child smiles and waves at me.