It's Complicated

Maria’s knee bounced up and down with anxiety as she nibbled on her lip. The waiting room of the clinic seemed incredibly cold and sterile. She supposed it was somewhat fitting, considering so many women went there to terminate pregnancies, to obliterate life, and a warm, fuzzy atmosphere wouldn’t have been fitting in the least.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Jess whispered, leaning over so her sister could hear her. Her breath was warm and minty, incredibly soothing, just like their mom’s used to be when they still lived with her. “You look really nervous.”

“Of course I’m nervous. Someone’s going to stick something up my vagina,” Maria hissed back. “What if they miss and make me infertile?”

“They’re not going to. It’s a fairly minor procedure.” Jess gave her sister a soft, concerned look. “Honey, if you’re having any doubts about doing this…”

Although Jess had trailed off her statement, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what she meant. The older one’s hand shifted over to her stomach, looking like she was comforting the being(s) that lived just under the surface, and Maria took a deep breath.

“I’m not having doubts,” the younger sister lied haughtily. “I just wish this had never happened. I wish that I hadn’t deluded myself into thinking that I was in love with Harry and had sex with him when he didn’t have a condom.”

Jess sighed and patted her sister’s leg maternally. “Everyone makes mistakes, Maria. And by deluding yourself, you actually mean-?”

Before Jess could finish her accusation or question, Maria couldn’t tell which way it was going, a nurse opened the heavy wooden door in the opposite corner of the waiting room and called out, “Maria McCormack?”

“Good luck!” Jess called after her, making her feel even more anxious than she’d been before.

The hallway was just as cold as the waiting room, and Maria could feel her stomach starting to twist in knots. She hated Harry a million times over for putting her in that position, where she was walking down a hallway to destroy the last piece of evidence that the two of them had ever had a thing to do with one another.

She felt shame, deep down in her stomach, eating away at her insides. It was strange. Since she’d decided she needed to get an abortion, she’d never felt shame. But thinking about what her deeply religious parents would think about what she was about to do made her cheeks fill with an incredibly rare blush and her hands shake with anxiety.

The nurse brought her into a generic-looking doctor’s office and told her to undress, get into the gown already laid out on the bed, and wait for the doctor to arrive. Once her directions were done, she went back into the hallway and pulled the door closed behind her so gently that Maria barely heard the lock catch.

She stared at the gown and sighed before taking off her shirt, folding it, and putting it on one of the chairs that were put in the room for husbands and boyfriends who accompanied their significant others and see how their babies had progressed.

Maria took in a deep breath, pretending that images of Harry’s sweet face weren’t flashing through her mind, and finished undressing.

She waved her feet back and forth as she waited for the doctor. Her stomach was constricting tighter and tighter the longer she had to wait, and she got bouts of nausea that were so severe that she thought she would actually get sick, right there, soiling the white tile floor underneath her.

But soon, the woman arrived. She was a little stern looking, with jet black hair pulled back in an incredibly tight ponytail, slightly stretching her tanned forehead. But when she looked at Maria and glanced down at the clipboard, she smiled, taking away any harsh demeanor. “So you’ve done research on other options, and you’re sure you want an abortion?” she asked.

Abortion. She said it so casually, Maria thought. Oh, I just went to the market and picked myself up an abortion. Maria started to gnaw on her lip, her hands shaking harder, but she nodded. “Yes, I’m sure.”

“No need to be nervous,” she assured the young girl. “It’ll be fast, and you’ll feel a huge weight lifted off your shoulders. I’ll be right back.”

The weight between when the woman walked out the door to when she came back seemed like it lasted a hundred hours. Thoughts flew through Maria’s mind like lightning, scattering her brain and making her shake harder than before. She figured that it was what a panic attack felt like, with her chest closing in, her whole body sweating like crazy, and losing control of her ability to calm herself down. It was scary, and Maria never wanted to feel like it again.

“Honey, are you okay?” the doctor asked when she reentered, putting a number of tools down on the counter that Maria was too afraid to see.

“I’m just nervous,” Maria answered, trying her hardest not to bite off her tongue. “I’ll be better when this was over.”

The other woman looked unconvinced, but she straightened up anyway and readied the procedure.

Maria squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to know what was going on down in the regions that she didn’t even like to think about. She just wanted the process over with, done, and she wanted to feel free.

She could feel the doctor checking the area, and she could tell when the procedure was about to get started. Tears squeezed from between her clenched eyelids, dripping down her cheeks, and she struggled not to vomit on herself.

“God, you’re beautiful.” It seemed like a hundred years ago when Harry had whispered those words to her when they were in bed together, just starting to greet the day. The way he’d reached out and touched her, the twinkle in his eye… He was such a loving man.

Sure, he’d made mistakes. Maria knew very well that everyone could make mistakes. But how could she have deluded herself into thinking that he had no desire to stay with her forever? How could she have actually convinced herself, deep down in her soul, that Harry was just a fling?

They’d been together over a year. If he’d stuck around for that long, putting up with Maria’s continuous bullshit, then it was obvious he was in the relationship for the long haul.

The memory of the moment when she told Harry that she was leaving, that she picked the abortion over him entered her mind. The look of betrayal, shock, and intense hurt that had been present in his eyes hadn’t occurred to her before then. She’d been too blinded by anger.

He loved her. He truly, genuinely loved her, more than he’d loved any girl in his past. Or, if Maria played her cards right, any girl in his future. She’d be the most important one he’d ever had in his life.

But she couldn’t make the biggest mistake of her life. Because some mistakes were understandable, but killing that piece of the two of them, that product of a tiny happy accident, would be something so disgusting and irrevocable that she couldn’t wrap her head around it.

“STOP,” she screamed just in time, the tears readily pouring down her cheeks, her hands reaching down to push the doctor away. “Please stop.”

Her sobs were coming readily, an expression of all the feelings she’d been so long suppressing, not caring in the least that the doctor in front of her was, for all intents and purposes, a complete stranger.

Not that the doctor seemed to care. She reached forward, making a sympathetic clucking noise with her tongue, and pushed a lock of hair behind Maria’s ear. “It’s okay, honey. You can keep the baby. It’s alright.”

Maria buried her head in her hands, trying to quiet her heaving breaths, but she was unable to. Her body was so aching to cry, to relieve the stress, that it was impossible.

She felt a hand smooth her hair for a second before the doctor’s voice broke through her emotions again: “I’ll give you the slip for which prenatal vitamins you should take.”

The young girl nodded and took a deep breath. She knew she made the right choice, picking the baby and her relationship with Harry over her own insecurities. Even though people had used her in her past, it didn’t mean Harry was doing the same. He was new, a clean slate, and she should have treated him like that from the beginning.

While she waited for the slip of paper, she thought about how she could tell him. He’d expect her to be blunt about it. Well, actually, she realized, he wouldn’t expect much of anything at all. He thought she chose abortion, so he wouldn’t plan on seeing her ever again.

She’d figure it out in time. But she needed to do it as soon as possible. Her life was about to change dramatically, and she wanted Harry by her side. Because, as much as she hated to admit it, she loved him.

The word ‘love’ felt strange on her tongue. She’d never said it, besides to her family to appease them, and she hadn’t been aware that she could feel it for another human being the way she was did with Harry. He’d changed her, which irritated the shit out of her, but she couldn’t really go back then. She was too far gone.

But before she could even think of Harry, she had to tell Jess and ask what the fuck she should do.