anna!
Bluelight Crew
I haven't changed the names. Sorry dudes.
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We’re sitting in the car and it’s taking forever to find the place. Secretly I hope that it doesn’t actually exist, and that’s why it doesn’t seem to be anywhere. That all of this is a horrible dream, that we weren’t ever really going to the abortion clinic. Maybe we were actually just going to get ice cream instead.
Eventually I have to pull over and call Michael, which is horrific. In his voice is a bemused sympathy; a feeling he’s not sure how to place, a conversation he never expected to have.
“Hey, can you look up directions to get to the abortion clinic so I can go there with the man who isn’t my husband and kill our child conceived out of furious lust and deceit?”
I don’t say that, but my tone does.
He’s helpful and we do a u-turn and cross the intersection we’d missed.
There’s another couple getting out of the car in front of us, and I am immediately filled with shame. The building itself is non-descript, as you might imagine. It’s called a Family Planning Clinic, and I’m struck by the horrific thought that that’s actually what I’m doing. I’m planning my family – lack thereof. I can feel panic rising in my throat but I don’t let it through.
The girl at the desk is cheerful in a way that’s misplaced and unwelcome. We take a seat in the waiting room, and wait.
There’s a woman who looks a bit older than me, sitting with her mother on a red couch. They are talking, and I’m eavesdropping because it makes this their story, and not mine. I infer that some guy promised her the world and then left when he found out that she was pregnant. I also conclude that she’s not too happy about her visit here today.
Across the room are a couple wearing wedding rings. The woman looks quite pregnant, and my chest hurts to think about what that might mean. Whether it means that they’ve come here to let go of a much wanted child.
… like I have.
Eventually the room begins to empty. Probably an hour later, the girl with the mother comes back and they go home.
My name is called, the nurse is very nice. She takes my blood pressure and we talk about contraception. I tell her about my little girls, but that’s all she needs to know. She has me lie down on a bed for an ultrasound. She doesn’t show me the screen. She tells me I’m about 8 weeks along. She prints the last picture anyone will have of my baby and staples it to my file. She puts a patient identification band around my wrist. I feel it around my neck, I am suffocating.
I’m taken to a smaller room with a chair and a table. The nurse puts my file on the table when she leaves, and I open it against my better judgement. There’s my baby. Tiny and blurry, but immediately recognisable.
“Hi, baby.” I whisper to the piece of paper. “It’ll be okay.” I know it won’t. “I love you.” That bit is true and tears prick at my eyes. When the doctor comes in, I am sobbing into my hands and he asks if I’m sure this is the right thing for me.
No no no no don’t ask me that I only just made it here without anyone asking me if I was sure. He didn’t ask me if I was sure, he just knew that he was sure. I’m not sure. Please don’t ask me.
“Yes,” I say meekly instead, and he offers me a tissue. I take about a hundred and blow my nose and cry as if the world is ending (and it is).
“So you’ll be put to sleep, but it’s not like a general. We call it a twilight anaesthetic. You’ll be asleep while we do it, then you’ll wake up and lie down in the recovery room for a bit, and then you can go home.” I don’t know what he’s saying.
“Can my –“ I choke on overwhelming terror. “Can my partner come into the recovery room?”
“No, no one is allowed in the recovery room.”
“Oh.”
A few minutes later I’m wearing a blue hospital gown and pre-emptive underpants complete with maternity pad (the irony is not lost on me). I’m sitting and crying and pacing and crying and wondering what Gaz is doing out in the waiting room, whether he’s reading or thinking about what I’m doing in here.
The doctor takes me into an operating theatre. The bed – the bed is a metal contraption with an open part at the end that I’m supposed to put my butt in to allow access to my cervix. Apparently I don’t sit in it the way I should and a nurse yells at me. I am in hell. I lie down. I have an IV inserted. The doctor administers something and doesn’t tell me what it is. The room spins and spins, I can’t focus on anything and I try desperately to get up, screaming that I don’t want to do this anymore
or ever
but then there is nothing.
*
The doctor looks at me tenderly as if I might break, and tells me it’s all over.
Oh, but it’s just beginning.
I have the underpants on. I try to sit but the world slips away from underneath me and I am falling. They offer me a wheelchair.
My clothes are folded at the end of the recovery bed, but I can’t see them through the curtains of despair. I lie down, I can’t lift my head. The nurse brings in a tray with ‘help, my head isn’t working’ remedies: cordial, biscuits, lollies. I look at them and feel foolish when my mind runs away with thoughts about how my baby will never have cordial, biscuits or lollies. I send Gaz a text message:
So I am officially off my face and without child. I love you.
I close my eyes and think about how much nicer the world was before I knew he was in it.
I love you so much. See you soon.
He doesn’t mean it. He’s just glad the baby is gone.
*
Sometime after that I’m able to stand up and get dressed. I check the pad – I’m surprised to see that I’m not bleeding and for an infinitesimally small moment I hope they’ve botched it. Or worse, seen how sad I was and decided not to do it.
We pay our money and leave. I die as we walk to the car. Actually die.
------
We’re sitting in the car and it’s taking forever to find the place. Secretly I hope that it doesn’t actually exist, and that’s why it doesn’t seem to be anywhere. That all of this is a horrible dream, that we weren’t ever really going to the abortion clinic. Maybe we were actually just going to get ice cream instead.
Eventually I have to pull over and call Michael, which is horrific. In his voice is a bemused sympathy; a feeling he’s not sure how to place, a conversation he never expected to have.
“Hey, can you look up directions to get to the abortion clinic so I can go there with the man who isn’t my husband and kill our child conceived out of furious lust and deceit?”
I don’t say that, but my tone does.
He’s helpful and we do a u-turn and cross the intersection we’d missed.
There’s another couple getting out of the car in front of us, and I am immediately filled with shame. The building itself is non-descript, as you might imagine. It’s called a Family Planning Clinic, and I’m struck by the horrific thought that that’s actually what I’m doing. I’m planning my family – lack thereof. I can feel panic rising in my throat but I don’t let it through.
The girl at the desk is cheerful in a way that’s misplaced and unwelcome. We take a seat in the waiting room, and wait.
There’s a woman who looks a bit older than me, sitting with her mother on a red couch. They are talking, and I’m eavesdropping because it makes this their story, and not mine. I infer that some guy promised her the world and then left when he found out that she was pregnant. I also conclude that she’s not too happy about her visit here today.
Across the room are a couple wearing wedding rings. The woman looks quite pregnant, and my chest hurts to think about what that might mean. Whether it means that they’ve come here to let go of a much wanted child.
… like I have.
Eventually the room begins to empty. Probably an hour later, the girl with the mother comes back and they go home.
My name is called, the nurse is very nice. She takes my blood pressure and we talk about contraception. I tell her about my little girls, but that’s all she needs to know. She has me lie down on a bed for an ultrasound. She doesn’t show me the screen. She tells me I’m about 8 weeks along. She prints the last picture anyone will have of my baby and staples it to my file. She puts a patient identification band around my wrist. I feel it around my neck, I am suffocating.
I’m taken to a smaller room with a chair and a table. The nurse puts my file on the table when she leaves, and I open it against my better judgement. There’s my baby. Tiny and blurry, but immediately recognisable.
“Hi, baby.” I whisper to the piece of paper. “It’ll be okay.” I know it won’t. “I love you.” That bit is true and tears prick at my eyes. When the doctor comes in, I am sobbing into my hands and he asks if I’m sure this is the right thing for me.
No no no no don’t ask me that I only just made it here without anyone asking me if I was sure. He didn’t ask me if I was sure, he just knew that he was sure. I’m not sure. Please don’t ask me.
“Yes,” I say meekly instead, and he offers me a tissue. I take about a hundred and blow my nose and cry as if the world is ending (and it is).
“So you’ll be put to sleep, but it’s not like a general. We call it a twilight anaesthetic. You’ll be asleep while we do it, then you’ll wake up and lie down in the recovery room for a bit, and then you can go home.” I don’t know what he’s saying.
“Can my –“ I choke on overwhelming terror. “Can my partner come into the recovery room?”
“No, no one is allowed in the recovery room.”
“Oh.”
A few minutes later I’m wearing a blue hospital gown and pre-emptive underpants complete with maternity pad (the irony is not lost on me). I’m sitting and crying and pacing and crying and wondering what Gaz is doing out in the waiting room, whether he’s reading or thinking about what I’m doing in here.
The doctor takes me into an operating theatre. The bed – the bed is a metal contraption with an open part at the end that I’m supposed to put my butt in to allow access to my cervix. Apparently I don’t sit in it the way I should and a nurse yells at me. I am in hell. I lie down. I have an IV inserted. The doctor administers something and doesn’t tell me what it is. The room spins and spins, I can’t focus on anything and I try desperately to get up, screaming that I don’t want to do this anymore
or ever
but then there is nothing.
*
The doctor looks at me tenderly as if I might break, and tells me it’s all over.
Oh, but it’s just beginning.
I have the underpants on. I try to sit but the world slips away from underneath me and I am falling. They offer me a wheelchair.
My clothes are folded at the end of the recovery bed, but I can’t see them through the curtains of despair. I lie down, I can’t lift my head. The nurse brings in a tray with ‘help, my head isn’t working’ remedies: cordial, biscuits, lollies. I look at them and feel foolish when my mind runs away with thoughts about how my baby will never have cordial, biscuits or lollies. I send Gaz a text message:
So I am officially off my face and without child. I love you.
I close my eyes and think about how much nicer the world was before I knew he was in it.
I love you so much. See you soon.
He doesn’t mean it. He’s just glad the baby is gone.
*
Sometime after that I’m able to stand up and get dressed. I check the pad – I’m surprised to see that I’m not bleeding and for an infinitesimally small moment I hope they’ve botched it. Or worse, seen how sad I was and decided not to do it.
We pay our money and leave. I die as we walk to the car. Actually die.
