A Spark of Light(31)

Janine opened her mouth as if to argue the point, but then snapped it shut.

Izzy tried to turn the conversation back to a safer spot. “Well, whoever she is—wife or daughter—maybe she can convince him to let us go.”

From the couch further away came the voice of the girl, Wren, who could not have been much older than the child Louie had been remembering. Had she come here to get an abortion? Would they, in other circumstances, have met on the exam table?

“If he was my father,” she muttered, “I sure as hell wouldn’t talk to him.”

—


FOR A MOMENT, THE ONLY sound in the hospital room was the intravenous pump. Beth lay on her side, her face turned away from her public defender. “I wrapped it up,” Beth whispered. “I put it in the garbage. I didn’t know what else to do.”

She had bought misoprostal and mifepristone, the pills used in a medication abortion, off the Internet. That was illegal in the United States, which Beth hadn’t known at the time. Abortion clinics offered medication abortions to women who were up to ten weeks pregnant, but they had to be administered in the clinic. Beth had been sixteen weeks along, and had taken the pills at home. The medication had done its job, but it had also caused enough hemorrhaging to land her in the ER.

Tears slipped down the bridge of Beth’s nose. For the first time since she had started talking, she looked at Mandy. “Miz DuVille? It wasn’t a baby yet … was it?”

Mandy’s mouth tightened.

“When I went to the clinic,” Beth said, “there was a woman outside who said my baby could feel pain.”

The lawyer actually recoiled, and that only made Beth feel even worse. Mandy was an attorney, not a shrink. For all Beth knew, Mandy was against abortion, and was only here to do her job. Didn’t lawyers have to defend horrible people—murderers, rapists—all the time, no matter what they felt about them personally?

“I’m sorry,” Beth whispered. “I just … I haven’t had anyone to talk to.”

“It’s not true,” Mandy said flatly. “The pain thing.”

Beth came up on an elbow. “How do you know?”

“Science doesn’t support it. I’ve done the research.”

Beth frowned, confused. “But you said you didn’t even know anything about me before the arraignment.”

“I did the research,” the lawyer repeated, “for me.” She leaned forward, her head bent, propped against the heels of her hands. “I was thirteen weeks pregnant. Just at the point where you can tell people you’re having a baby, without tempting fate. My husband and I were at the ultrasound,” she said. “I wanted to name her Millicent, if she was a girl. Steve said no little Black girl is named Millicent. He wanted a boy named Obediah.”

“Obediah?” Beth repeated.

“Knock, knock,” Mandy said.

“Who’s there?”

“Obediah.”

“Obediah who?” Beth played along.

“Obediah-dore you.” Mandy closed her eyes. “Steve told me that joke, and then after that, everything went to hell. The technician came in and turned on the machine and started the ultrasound and just went white as a sheet.” She shook her head. “The doctor who came in wasn’t my usual doctor. I remember exactly what he said. This fetus has a genetic abnormality inconsistent with life.”

Beth sucked in her breath.

“It was called holoprosencephaly. It happens when two sperm fertilize one egg at the exact same moment. There was a heartbeat and a brain stem, but the forebrain had never developed. If it survived birth, it would die within a year.” Mandy looked up. “I didn’t want to terminate. I was raised Catholic.”

“What did you do?” Beth asked.

“I went online and looked up pictures of the babies who had it. It was … it was horrible.” She looked up at Beth. “I know there are mothers who have kids with profound disabilities, and who see that as a blessing. It was kind of a wake-up call to admit to myself I wasn’t one of them.”

“What about your husband?”

Mandy looked up. “He said it was a no-brainer.”

A laugh burst out of Beth; she clapped her hand over her mouth. “No he didn’t.”

“He did.” Mandy nodded, smiling faintly. “He did and we laughed. We laughed, and we laughed, until we cried.”

“Did you … do you have children now?”

Mandy met her gaze. “I stopped trying after the third miscarriage.”

Silence fell between them. Beth spun through another scenario, one in which she had been brave enough to tell her father she was pregnant, one in which she had carried the baby to term, and given it to someone like Mandy. “You must hate me,” Beth whispered.

For a long moment Mandy didn’t speak. Then she lifted her chin. “I don’t hate you,” she said carefully. “If you and I both told people our stories, even the most pro-life advocates would see mine as a tragedy. Yours is a crime.” She thought for a moment. “It’s funny. The logic goes that as a minor, you can’t exercise free will to consent, because you don’t have the mental capacity to do so. But in your case, the fetus is getting the protection you’re not, as if its rights are worth more than your own.”