One.

I watch a nurse climb onto a chair in the second floor waiting room. An emergency light attached to a fire alarm that does not sound has been flashing, brightly, annoyingly, incessantly, since I got up here 20 minutes ago. The kind of flashing that those 50s “duck and cover” videos implied was the sign of an atomic bomb being dropped near you. But less dire. Just an irritant. She tapes a glove box over the light. You can still see it flashing around the edges.

I got separated from my boyfriend right away. So I’m up here alone, twiddling my thumbs and texting him. I take comfort in knowing he’s just downstairs until he tells me that he’s actually a few blocks away. He left the first-floor waiting room to go putz around Bleecker Street. He tells me he’s getting coffee and avocado toast. I tell him I’m jealous, which is true: partially because I didn’t get to eat anything before we left my apartment early this morning, for fear of eliminating the option to go under, and partially jealous of the food itself, the thing currently taking his attention. Before I took the elevator to the second floor, I gave them his number to be my emergency contact.

An ultrasound tech calls my name. I don’t know how far along I am, so I have to get one to determine my options. Fine.

“Do you want to know the sex of the baby?”

No.

“Do you want to know if there are multiples? Twins, or more?”

No.

“Do you want to hear the heartbeat?”

No.

“Do you want to see the sonogram?”

No.

“Do you want to know exactly how far along you are?”

...Yes. (I’m just curious.)

7 weeks and 6 days.

Two.

Back in the waiting room, I count back in my calendar.

Turns out I got pregnant the night of Adam’s wedding — send.

That’s hilarious. I can’t wait to tell him

Lol.

I tongue the vein on the inside of my cheek. We started Officially Dating the weekend of that wedding. And he put a goddamn baby in me. Talk about making it official.

The edges of the glove box taped to the wall still flash. The building is not on fire. The building just feels like it might be. Not to worry. Even as I remember the sound of my school’s fire alarm.

When we had fire drills in high school, we would stand in the parking lot next to the teachers’ cars. There was one Special Ed teacher who had a bumper sticker on the back of his that said, “Abortion stops a beating heart,” with an artist’s crude rendering of a fetus in utero. His car that he drove to work at a public school. I think about how that shouldn’t have been allowed. I think about how that teacher really respected me as of the last time I saw him, and how he might not anymore if he knew where I was right now. Like that matters.

Three.

I sit in a chair in a small beige office next to a woman at a computer and I brace myself for judgment. She rattles through questions.

“Were you using protection?”

No.

I’m ready for a “why not?” Or at least a side-eye. I’m stupid, and I was very reckless in not using protection. I’m not even on birth control. Clearly.

I’m ready to explain that when I was a young teenager, I went to multiple doctors for multiple years, getting ultrasounds and getting my blood drawn and tested constantly to figure out why my period was so irregular, but nothing was ever wrong, huh, that’s so weird, you’re totally healthy, but then it came up with an endocrinologist when I was fifteen that infertility runs in my family on my dad’s side, which I never knew, and oh maybe that’s it, and you shouldn’t worry because there’s all this technology now, so chances are, even if that is the issue, you will probably still be able to have your own children, and, like, what do you even do with that information when you’re a fifteen-year-old virgin, right?

You internalize it and, from when you become sexually active, have protected sex always, because you are cautious by default, until your college boyfriend convinces you to skip the condom once when you both don’t have one, and nothing ever happens. So then, after that, when you have longer term partners, you’re more lax about the protection of it all, and you hardly ever consider that anything even could happen. And you have no issues for, like, two and a half years with that course of action. 

Because you’re probably infertile, right? WRONG.

But no judgment ever comes from the woman at the computer in the small beige office. She just keeps going through the questionnaire, kindly and understandingly. I appreciate that.

If nothing else, at least now I know, for sure, that I’m not infertile, and I guess that’s something. Jury’s out on whether that’s a good or bad something. What if this is just a fluke, you know? What if I am only able to get pregnant once, ever, and it just so happens to be when I’m 22, making minimum wage, two months into a relationship that, despite my best efforts, I do not feel especially confident or comfortable in? Stuck in a situation where, yeah, of course, abortion is the obvious and, frankly, only option? I bury that thought — I already got misty about it briefly on the day I found out, and I don’t want to do that again right now, or ever.

No, I do not want counseling (I want to get out of here as soon as possible and be done with this).

Yes, people support me in my decision. My boyfriend and my mom (even though I probably wouldn’t have told her if I wasn’t still on her insurance).

Yes, the surgical option is the preference (I would much rather this experience last eight minutes than two days).

Yes, I want to go under. All the way. Please knock me the fuck out. You can just hit me over the head with a big cartoon hammer, if that’s easier. Whatever it takes.

Four.

I woke up on a Monday feeling excessively tired. But I just assumed it was a regular I-don’t-want-to-go-to-work tired. I showered, felt a little better, and left my apartment for my midtown office building.

Later, I sat at my desk eating lunch and was hit with a very intense wave of nausea. I thought I might throw up right there, but it passed. It was the end of October. I started kicking myself for not getting the flu shot sooner. I had been saying that I needed to go get it but never got around to it, and now I was suffering the consequences. Stupid. Eye roll. Sigh.

In the late afternoon, I got a headache so terrible I couldn’t focus my eyes on my computer screen. I left work right at six and went home, riding the subway with my eyes closed and my head leaned up against the wall of the train. The 1 felt especially crowded and rattly.

Heading up the stairs of my six-floor walkup, I started feeling nauseous again, more seriously this time. I ran up the remaining three flights as my mouth filled with saliva. I made it into my apartment just in time to barely throw up into the toilet, then dry-heaved for a few minutes. When it passed, I felt better. Still weird, but better. I wondered if I ate something bad. I wondered if the flu shot was still effective even if you were already feeling it coming on. I wondered how much work I would have to miss.

I started making dinner and texted my boyfriend about how I wasn’t feeling well. About how mad I was at myself for procrastinating getting a flu shot when I could have just swung by a pharmacy and gotten it anytime. What an idiot! I told him my symptoms.

are you pregnant?

I chuckled to myself. No, that’s impossible — send. 

okay

We moved on. We talked about something else.

When I woke up the next day, I felt less sick, but I still felt weird. I’d had mono, the flu, food poisoning, strep throat, stomach bugs… This didn’t feel like any of that. I still went to work.

I pushed through the morning, but by lunchtime, I couldn’t focus on anything except how weird I felt. “are you pregnant?” I told a coworker I was going to grab lunch and left my Times Square office building to go to the Walgreens across the way. I bought a package of 2 ClearBlue Digital Pregnancy Tests — the kind that tell you, point-blank, in words, Pregnant or Not Pregnant. They were expensive.

I went back up to the 37th floor and went straight to the bathroom, the last stall. I took a test and waited. And then I went back to my desk. My boyfriend texted me.

how are you feeling?

Bad.

do u want me to buy a preg test and bring it over later?

Way ahead of you

did you take it?

Yes

what did it say?!

Well it’s not good news!

Five.

The soonest available appointment we could both go to and take off the least amount of work possible was today: Saturday, November 10th, 2018, 8:30am. I count back in my calendar to that day that we scheduled it, the day after I started feeling sick.

I was just over six weeks along. 11 days ago.

The tape has given way on one side of the glove box covering the emergency light. The box hangs limply to the side as the light blindingly flashes in the room again. A nurse gets on a chair to fix it. A futile effort, if you ask me.

They call my name. I text my boyfriend downstairs and tell him I’m going in, should be out within a half hour.

ok! i care about you deeply!

He does not tell me he loves me because he doesn’t, and he won’t.

Six.

As I disrobe to put on a hospital gown, I regret my choice to wear sneakers without socks. On my way into the operating room (is that what they call it?), I caught a glimpse of the stirrups at the end of the table, and it occurred to me that, duh, I’m going to have my disgusting, stinky, sweaty, sockless feet directly in this woman’s face. I want to preemptively apologize to her but also don’t want to draw attention to it (as if she’s not going to notice).

I draw back the curtain in my newly donned gown to reveal three women: the doctor, the anesthesiologist, and another featured player whose job I am unsure of. The doctor smiles at me and kindly asks if I want her to write me a prescription for birth control pills.

Yes please yes thank you yes.

I get up onto the table, put my feet in the stirrups, and stare at the tiled ceiling. The doctor tells me, in a quiet and sweet voice, that I will wake up in the recovery room within 15 minutes. I nod and wait for the anesthesia to kick in, but instead I hear her voice again.

“Sorry, could you just move your hips closer to the edge of the table, towards me?”

I awkwardly shimmy down a little farther until I feel like I’m on the edge of falling off. I rely heavily on the stirrups to keep myself on the table. I wonder if this has made the effect of my feet more terrible, somehow. Did I take a shower this morning? Should I have? Oh God, am I gross?

“Perfect, thank you.”

Seven.

I come to, sitting in a chair in a line of chairs. There’s a small cup of apple juice and a package of graham crackers next to me. I notice that the girl to my right has saltines, and suddenly I feel like I won a prize.

I survey the room: women, girls, all types of recently pregnant people sit in chairs, recovering. Some are escorted out as others are brought in on gurneys. Crackers, juice, water, pamphlets, goodbye. I feel like I am on the outside looking in until a woman kneels next to me and asks how I’m feeling. Right — I’m here, too.

She tells me I got a good laugh from the folks who brought me in here, because as I was first waking up, someone asked me if I was okay. I wasn’t conscious enough yet to speak, but I did flash an emphatic thumbs-up, which everyone thought was very funny. I tell her I don’t remember that happening, but that sounds like me. I notice that at this moment I feel more like myself than I have in months. More like I’m in my own body again. Ain’t that something.

She runs through her spiel and I only catch pieces of it. Cramping in a few days, sure, potential lemon-sized clots, okay, birth control prescription, got it, you can have sex again whenever you’re comfortable, understood. I feel too tired to listen attentively, but I try to make it seem like I am. I would like to go home and lay down.

Eventually, I get up and gather my things from the locker I stowed them in. I take the elevator back down and meet my boyfriend in the first floor waiting room. We walk out onto Bleecker Street. He asks me if I want to go get food, go get coffee, go do something. I tell him I would like to go home and lay down. He calls an Uber. I stare at the second floor windows of the building, trying to see if I can still see the emergency light flashing until I remember it was covered. I bet it’s still flashing under the box. But it’s too sunny out to see much of anything anyways. My eyes are tired and have not yet adjusted.

In the backseat of the Uber, I ask my boyfriend to text my mom that I’m okay. He pulls out his phone to do so, referencing the number I gave him this morning. He does not save her contact.

We ride up the east side back to my apartment. I lean my head back on the headrest. It feels heavy, like my neck can hardly bear its weight. The sun glints brightly off the East River. I close my eyes to block the light but I can still kind of see it through my eyelids.

Soon, we will get back to my apartment and say hello to my roommates, who do not know where we were this morning. They won’t ask, and that will be fine. I will text the one friend who I told about this, because she had also had an abortion before, and I will let her know I’m okay. I’ll answer a text from my mom.

My boyfriend and I will go to the grocery store and buy some stuff to eat,  and he will carry everything back so I don’t have to. I will cook for both of us.

We will watch the Great British Bake-Off for the rest of our Saturday off together.

We will have sex later that night, and afterwards he will jokingly remark, “I love abortion sex,” and I will cry.

I will go back to work on Monday, but have to call out on Tuesday and Wednesday because the cramping I am experiencing as my body realizes it is no longer pregnant and adjusts accordingly will make it too painful to stand up.

Over the next several weeks, I will tell some of my friends what happened. I will be very blasé about it, in an effort to prevent further questioning. I will feel less and less like myself, for reasons both related and unrelated to my abortion.

In January, to my surprise, a bill for $900 will arrive at my parents’ house. Despite the hours I spent on the phone with Empire Blue Cross prior to the procedure to confirm that both the doctor and facility would be covered in full. Despite humiliatingly and tearily admitting to my mother that I got pregnant in hopes of avoiding this exact situation. My mom will be forced to tell my father about the abortion I had two months ago. He, like my mom was, will be supportive, kind, and gentle, and I will feel guilty about not telling him in the first place. He will tell me he gets it. I will feel like my parents really have my back. I will fight the bill and prevail.

In the following months, various states will present and pass six-week and heartbeat abortion bills. I will read article upon article upon article about the bans and think almost incessantly about how if I lived in any of these states, I would still be pregnant, and I would have to have a baby, and my life would be completely different. I will scroll all the way to the bottom of each article and read the comments, where, among any number of expected anti-abortion zealots, I will also find people saying things like, “No exceptions for rape or incest?! This is crazy!” I will read take upon take upon take about the need for abortion access in the wake of tragedies. I will read nothing about the need for abortion access in the wake of simply unwanted pregnancies. I will let the information and discourse wash over me, consume me, eat me from the inside, but I will never talk to anybody about it.

In April, my boyfriend will break up with me and I will be devastated, for reasons both related and unrelated to my abortion.

After the breakup, I will feel like such a shell of myself that I will start going to therapy. After weeks of looking, I will finally find someone who takes my insurance and has availability that works with my job. I will talk about how sad I am about the relationship, and about how I ignored my feelings about my abortion for six months. I will have several moments where I feel very judged by this therapist, but will shake it off, assuming it’s just me — I am just uncomfortable with the vulnerability associated with being honest about your feelings. After a few months of continued talking about it, she will imply that the reason I am sad about the abortion is because I feel guilty about killing a baby. I will cry and tell her that’s not fair. I will continue to see her for four more months after that because I feel I have no other options, and I wager that some therapy is better than none. I will be more careful about what I say to her. I will feel glad to get some things off my chest but I won’t feel helped.

More time will pass.

I will find a better therapist.

I will move on from the relationship.

I will make peace with it all and feel okay.

But right now — I can only notice how sunny it is.

When we get out of the Uber outside of my building, I take note of what a nice day it is for all of this to be over. It is unseasonably warm for early November, and it feels like a celebration of the end of a miserable seven weeks and six days. This type of day would typically make me want to go for a walk. But I would just like to go home and lay down.