Authors: Kristin Hannah
Lauren went back to her seat. David sat down beside her. They held hands but didn’t look at each other. Lauren was afraid she’d cry if she did. She read the pam
phlet that was on the table, obviously left there by another unfortunate girl.
The procedure,
it stated,
should take no more than fifteen minutes.
… recovery enough for work within twenty-four to forty-eight hours …
… minimal discomfort …
She closed the pamphlet, set it aside. She might be young, but she knew that what mattered was not the pain or the recovery or the length of the “procedure.”
What mattered was this: Could she live with it?
She pressed a hand to her still-flat stomach. There was life inside her.
Life.
It was easier not to think about her pregnancy that way, easier to pretend a procedure that lasted fifteen minutes could wash away her problem. But what if it didn’t? What if she mourned this lost baby for the rest of her life? What if she felt forever tarnished by today?
She looked up at David. “Are you sure?”
He paled. “What choice do we have?”
“I don’t know.”
A woman walked into the waiting room. Holding a clipboard, she read off some names. “Lauren. Sally. Justine.”
David squeezed her hand. “I love you.”
Lauren was shaking as she got to her feet. Two other girls also stood. Lauren gave David one last, lingering look, then followed the white-clad nurse down the hallway.
“Justine, exam room two,” the woman said, pausing at a closed door.
A frightened-looking teenage girl went inside, closed the door behind her.
“Lauren. Room three,” the woman said a few seconds later, opening a door. “Put on that gown and cap.”
This time Lauren was the frightened-looking girl who walked into the room. As she disrobed and redressed in the white cotton gown and paper cap, she couldn’t help noticing the irony: cap and gown. As a senior, this was hardly the way she’d imagined it. She sat on the edge of the table.
Bright silver cabinets and countertops made her wince; they were too bright beneath the glare of an overhead light.
The door opened. An elderly man walked in, wearing a cap and a loosened mask that flapped against his throat as he moved. He looked tired, as worn down as an old pencil. “Hello,” he said, looking down at her chart. “Lauren. Go ahead and put your feet in the stirrups and lie back. Get comfortable.”
Another person came in. “Hello, Lauren. I’m Martha. I’ll be assisting the doctor.” She patted Lauren’s hand.
Lauren felt the sting of tears in her eyes; they blurred her vision.
“It’ll all be over in a few minutes,” the nurse said.
Over.
A few minutes.
No baby.
The procedure.
And she knew.
She sat upright. “I can’t do it,” she said, feeling the tears roll down her cheeks. “I can’t live with it.”
The doctor sighed heavily. His sad, downward-tilted eyes told her how often he’d seen this moment played out. “Are you sure?” He consulted her chart. “Your window for having the procedure—”
“Abortion,” Lauren said, saying the word out loud
for the first time. It seemed to cut her tongue with its sharp edges.
“Yes,” he said. “The abortion can’t happen after—”
“I know.” For the first time in days, she was certain of something, and the sureness calmed her. “I won’t change my mind.” She pulled off the cap.
“Okay. Good luck to you,” he said, then left the room.
“Planned Parenthood can help with adoption … if that’s what you’re interested in,” the nurse said. Not waiting for an answer, she, too, left the room.
Lauren sat there, alone now. Her emotions were all tangled up. She felt good about her decision. It was the only thing she could have lived with. She believed absolutely in a woman’s right to choose. But this was her choice.
She slid off the table and began to undress.
She’d done the right thing for her. She
had.
She knew it in her bones.
But what would David say?
Hours later, Lauren sat beside David on the cream-colored sofa in his family’s media room. Upstairs, perhaps, ordinary life was going on; down here, it was eerily quiet. She was holding his hand so tightly her fingers felt numb. She couldn’t seem to stop crying.
“We get married, I guess,” he said in a flat voice.
It hurt her as much as anything had, hearing him sound so defeated. She turned to him then, gathered him into her arms. She felt his tears on her throat; each one scalded her. She drew back a little, just enough to see him. He looked … broken. He was trying so hard to be grown-up, but his eyes betrayed his youth. They were wide with fear; his mouth was trembling. She touched
his damp cheek. “Just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean—”
David yanked away from her. “Mom!”
Mrs. Haynes stood in the doorway, dressed in an impeccable black suit with a snowy blouse. She held a pizza box out in front of her. “Your dad called me. He thought you guys might like a pizza,” she said dully, staring at David. Then she started to cry.
Lauren had thought she couldn’t feel any worse. That evening, sitting in an elegant white chair in the living room, beside a fire that should have warmed her, she realized how wrong she’d been. Seeing Mrs. Haynes cry was almost unbearable. David’s reaction to his mother’s tears was worse. Through all of it—the yelling, the arguing, the talking, the weeping—Lauren tried to say as little as possible.
It felt as if it were all her fault.
In her head, she knew that wasn’t true. It had taken both of them to make this baby, but how many times had Mom told Lauren to keep condoms in her purse?
No man thinks straight with a hard-on,
she’d said more than once,
and it’s you who’ll get knocked up.
It had been the sum total of her advice on sex. Lauren should have listened.
“I have contacts in Los Angeles and San Francisco,” Mr. Haynes said, running a hand through his ruined hair. “Excellent doctors. And discreet. No one would ever have to know.”
They’d been on this subject for at least ten minutes. After a lot of chest pounding and how-could-you-have-been-so-careless, they’d finally come around to the superstar of questions. What now?
“She tried,” David said.
“In Vancouver,” Lauren said. She could hardly hear herself.
Mrs. Haynes was staring at her. Slowly, slowly, she sat down. It was more of a crumpling, really. “We’re Catholic,” she said.
Lauren was grateful for even that small bit. “Yes,” she answered. “And … there was more than that.” She didn’t want to say the word aloud—
baby
or
life
—but it was there anyway, as much a presence as the furniture or the music coming from another room.
“I asked Lauren to marry me,” David said.
She could see how hard he was trying to be strong and she loved him for it; she also saw how close he was to breaking and she hated herself for that. He was realizing all of it now, piece by piece, the things he would have to give up. How could love demand so many sacrifices and survive?
“You’re too young to get married, for God’s sake. Tell them, Anita.”
“We’re too young to have a baby, too,” David said. That sent everyone into silence again.
“There’s adoption,” Mrs. Haynes said.
David looked up. “That’s right, Lauren. There are people who would love this baby.”
The hope in his voice was her undoing. Tears stung her eyes. She wanted to disagree, to say that she could love this baby. Her baby. Their baby. But her voice had gone missing.
“I’ll call Bill Talbot,” Mr. Haynes said. “He’s sure to give me a good contact. We’ll find a couple who would provide a good home.”
He made it sound like they were giving away a puppy.
Mrs. Haynes watched her husband walk out of the room, then she sighed and bowed her head.
Lauren frowned. They acted like a decision had been made.
David came over to her. She’d never known his eyes could be so sad. He took her hand, squeezed it. She waited for him to say something; her need to hear
I love you
was near desperate. But he said nothing.
What was there to say? There was no A answer out of this situation, no road that didn’t lead someone—mostly Lauren—to heartache. She wasn’t ready to make this decision yet.
“Let’s go, Lauren,” Mrs. Haynes finally said, standing.
“I can drive her home, Mom.”
“I’ll do it,” Mrs. Haynes said in a voice that, even in its ragged state, brooked no disagreement.
“Then we’ll all go,” David said, taking Lauren’s hand.
They turned and followed Mrs. Haynes out to the garage, where the glossy black Cadillac Escalade waited.
The scene of the crime.
David opened the front passenger side door. Lauren wanted to protest at sitting up front, but she didn’t want to appear rude. With a sigh, she climbed into the seat. The CD player immediately came on. The lonely, haunting strains of “Hotel California” filled the car.
David told his mother to take the highway west; other than that, they didn’t speak. With every second that passed in silence, Lauren felt her stomach tightening. She had a terrifying feeling that Mrs. Haynes wanted to see Lauren’s mother, that it was the whole reason for this drive home.
What could Lauren say to that? It would be almost midnight by the time they reached the apartment.
“My mom is out of town on business.” Lauren said the lie in a rush, hating how it made her feel.
“I thought she was a hairdresser,” his mother said.
“She is. It’s a convention. One of those things where they show them all the new products.” Lauren remembered that her mother’s boss had sometimes gone to conventions like that.
“I see.”
“You can let me off here,” Lauren said. “There’s no point—”
“At the Safeway?” Mrs. Haynes frowned at her. “I don’t think so.”
Lauren swallowed hard. She couldn’t find her voice. From the backseat, David gave directions to the apartment.
They pulled up in front of the dilapidated building. In the moonlight, it looked like something out of a Roald Dahl novel, one of those
a poor, pathetic child lives here
kind of places.
David climbed out of the car and walked around to the passenger door.
Mrs. Haynes hit the door locks, then turned, frowning.
Lauren flinched at the loud click.
“This is where you live?”
“Yes.”
Amazingly, Mrs. Haynes’s face seemed to soften. She sighed heavily.
David tried to open the door.
“David’s the only child I could have,” Mrs. Haynes said. “He was a miracle, really. Maybe I loved him too much. Motherhood … changes who you are somehow. All I wanted was for him to be happy, to have all the choices I didn’t have.” She looked at Lauren. “If you and David get married and keep this baby …” Her voice broke. “Life with a baby is hard. Without money or education, it’s worse than hard. I know how much you love David. I can see that. And he loves you. Enough
to walk away from his future. I guess I should be proud about that.” She said this last part softly, as if she wanted to feel it but couldn’t.
David pounded on the glass. “Open the door, Mom!”
Lauren understood what Mrs. Haynes wasn’t saying as clearly as what she was.
If you really love David, you won’t make him ruin his life.
It was the same thing Lauren had thought on her own. If he loved her enough to give it all up, didn’t she need to love him enough not to let him?
“If you need to talk about any of this, anytime, you come to me,” Mrs. Haynes said.
It surprised Lauren, that offer. “Thank you.”
“Tell your mother I’ll call her tomorrow.”
Lauren didn’t even want to think about
that
conversation. “Okay.”
She didn’t know what else to say, so she hit the door lock button and climbed out of the car.
“What the hell did she say to you?” David said, slamming the car door shut behind her.
Lauren stared at him, remembering how his mother had cried, so quietly and yet so deeply; as if her insides were breaking. “She said she loves you.”
His face crumpled at that. “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
They stood there a long time, staring at each other. Then, finally, he said, “I better go.”
She nodded. When he kissed her good night, it was all she could do not to cling to him. It took pure willpower to let him walk away.
Lauren found her mother in the living room, sitting on the sofa, smoking a cigarette. She looked jittery and nervous.
Mom put her drink on the floor. “I meant to go with you today.”
“Yeah. What happened?”
Mom reached for the drink again. There was a noticeable trembling in her hand. “I went to the mini-mart for smokes. On the way home, I ran into Neddie. The Tides was open. I thought I’d have a quick drink. I needed one to … you know … but when I looked up again it was too late.” She took a drag off her cigarette, looked at Lauren through the gray haze. “You look bad. Maybe you should sit. You want an aspirin? I’ll get you one.”
“I’m fine.”
“I’m sorry, Lauren,” she said softly.
For once, Lauren heard real regret in her mother’s voice. “It’s okay.” She bent down and started picking up pizza boxes and empty cigarette packs from the floor. “It looks like you and Jake had quite a party last night.” When Lauren looked up, her mother was crying. It warmed her heart, that simple proof of emotion.
Lauren went to her, knelt beside the sofa. “I’m okay, Mom. You don’t have to cry.”
“He’s going to leave me.”
“What?”
“My whole life is nothing. And I’m getting old.” Mom put out her cigarette and lit up another.
This hurt more than the slap. Even now, on this terrible day, her mother’s thoughts were on herself. Lauren swallowed hard, moved away. Very slowly she went back to picking up the apartment. She had to hold back tears with every breath. “I didn’t go through with it,” she said quietly.
Her mother looked up. Her eyes were bloodshot and rimmed in blurred mascara. “What?” It took her a minute to figure out the meaning of Lauren’s words. “Tell me you’re kidding.”