A Spark of Light(40)
He hesitated, then shook his head. “It was a racist. A woman came in and saw me and said she preferred a white doctor. Problem was, I was the only person doing procedures that day, and she couldn’t wait any longer to have it done.”
Izzy sat back on her heels. “What happened?”
“I have no idea. Even after she decided my skin color mattered less than her getting that abortion, I said no. I was self-aware enough to know that I had to treat myself like an impaired physician. I was intoxicated with anger, the same way I would have been if I had swigged a fifth of gin. I couldn’t touch her any more than I would have touched a patient if I were drunk. What if she was uncomfortable during the procedure? She might think I was intentionally trying to cause her pain because of what she’d said. And what if there was a complication, and it reinforced her beliefs that I was less than qualified because of my skin color?” He shook his head. “Like Dr. King said: It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”
“I would think that when it comes to abortion, race is the last thing on anyone’s mind.”
Dr. Ward glanced up, surprised. “Why, Miss Izzy. When it comes to abortion, race is first and foremost in everyone’s minds.” He nodded toward Janine. “She’s the anomaly, you know. The average anti-choice protester is”—he lowered his voice—“a middle-aged Caucasian male.”
Izzy looked at George Goddard. He was polishing the shaft of his gun with the hem of his shirt. They’d heard him talk about his daughter; they knew he had some personal connection to this clinic. But surely that wasn’t true of every protester who fit that profile. “Why?”
“Because they’re trying to make America white again.”
“But more women of color have abortions than white women—”
“Doesn’t matter. They don’t care about the fertility of black women. They’re using them, the way black women have been used for centuries, to further a white agenda. You’ve seen those black genocide billboards?”
Izzy had. They sprouted on the highways in the Deep South. They showed a picture of a beautiful little black baby and a slogan: THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACE FOR AN AFRICAN AMERICAN IS IN THE WOMB. A picture of President Obama and the words EVERY 21 MINUTES OUR NEXT POTENTIAL LEADER IS ABORTED.
“White people are the ones who put up those up. Race isn’t exactly a walk in the park in this country,” Dr. Ward said. “If the antis frame their opposition to choice as antiracism, it looks like they’re trying to help black women. But a law that keeps black women from having abortions also keeps white women from having them. The only person who can give birth to a white baby is a white woman. Those same white women are working outside the home and bucking traditional family values, and by 2050 whites will be in the minority. When you look at it like that, it’s a little clearer who those billboards are really benefiting.” He looked at Izzy’s expression and smiled a little. “You think I’ve lost too much blood.”
“No. No. I just never thought of that before.”
Dr. Ward leaned back against the frame of the couch. “It’s all I think about.” He glanced at her tourniquet. “You are one damn fine nurse.”
“Stop flirting now.”
“You’re a little skinny and pale for my tastes,” he joked.
“Well, too bad. You’re a unicorn—a smart guy who isn’t threatened by women. I think you might be the biggest feminist I’ve ever met.”
“You bet I am. I love women. All women.”
Izzy cut a glance toward Janine, still passed out on the floor. “All women?”
“All women,” Dr. Ward repeated. “And you should, too.” He turned to Izzy. “Like it or not, you’re in this fight together.”
—
WREN HADN’T COME HERE FOR an abortion. The numbing relief Hugh felt knowing that was eclipsed by the truth that she was still being held hostage, because she wanted to get birth control.
But she hadn’t wanted him to know.
Hugh would have taken her, if she had just asked.
Why hadn’t she asked? Why had she gone to Bex? Why hadn’t his sister confided in him?
He knew Bex had been looking for mercy, for Hugh to say, This wasn’t your fault. But he hadn’t been able to do it. Because if it wasn’t Bex’s fault that Wren was in there, then Hugh had to admit that it might be his own.
He wouldn’t have flown off the handle, if Wren had come to him. It wasn’t in his DNA. In fact he was so good at plastering his emotions with a thick layer of calm that it took someone who had known him all his life to know there were cracks beneath the surface. When Annabelle left Hugh, she had slapped him to see if she could get a rise out of him. Hugh had told Bex, afterward. She said no one could blame her for leaving me for someone with human emotions, he’d said. He had rested his elbows on his knees and buried the heels of his hands in his eyes. The thing is, if you saw the stuff I do every day on the job, you’d do anything to not feel.
Bex. How the hell could Bex have brought his daughter here?
He knew the answer to that. What his sister had envisioned was a free clinic, a half-hour appointment, and a prescription for the Pill. The only person who would get hurt in this scenario was Hugh, for not being in the know. Bex hadn’t thought about protesters or gunmen. She wouldn’t have, swimming in the back of her consciousness, statistics of violence at other women’s health clinics. Only someone who had been doing what Hugh had been doing for years would assume the worst could happen.