A Spark of Light(64)

“You first.”

“Do I have your word?” Hugh asked.

There was a long pause. “Yes.”

Proof there’s no sniper. Now that he’d promised it, how did he execute that?

Hugh scrambled out of his command tent, still holding his phone. He ran down the sidewalk away from the clinic, blindly grabbing the first cameraman he could. “Dude,” the guy said, backing up. “Hands off.”

“Who do you broadcast for?”

“WAPT.”

“Film me,” Hugh demanded. “Now.” He lifted the phone to his ear again. “George? You still there?”

“Yeah …”

“Is there a TV?” Please, God, let there be a television. “Turn on channel sixteen.”

He heard a scuffle, and a yell, and the voice of a woman. “George?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

But he could hear his own voice coming from the TV inside the Center now. The cameraman had the black eye of the camera trained on Hugh’s face. “George, it’s me. You can see what’s going on behind me, right?” To the cameraman, he said, “Film that way. Pan around me.”

Hugh kept narrating. “It’s like I promised, George. No snipers. No SWAT team. Just some cops who are controlling the scene.” The camera swung back to focus on his face. “So. We have a deal, right? Who are you going to send out?”

—


GEORGE FOUND HIMSELF TRANSFIXED BY the face on the television screen. Hugh McElroy was one of those men who looked tall, even if you couldn’t see his whole frame. He had black hair that was military short, and eyes that looked like the blue heart of a flame. He was staring into the camera as if he could see right into George’s mind.

If he could, he would know what George was thinking. All those years with Lil that he’d believed himself to be her champion? He wasn’t a hero.

Hugh started speaking as if he could indeed read George’s thoughts. “Whatever you did, George, and why ever you did it—doesn’t matter. That’s over and done with. What matters is what you do now.”

George had given his word. He didn’t believe that it meant anything to Hugh, really. But the fact that he’d asked for it had made George feel … well … respected.

For once.

George stalked toward the nurse, the bitch who kept reminding him that there were people bleeding all over the floor as if he couldn’t see it himself, and hauled her upright by her arm. “Pick one,” he said.

—


IZZY LOOKED AT LOUIE WITH her heart in her eyes. He nodded. Even if it felt like a Sophie’s choice, Bex was the hostage who should be released. The rest of them stuck in this room might die. But Bex, if she stayed, would die. “You’ve got to get her out,” Louie said.

“Bex,” Izzy chose.

The shooter started dragging the couch and chairs and tables away from the front door where he’d stacked them like a barricade.

Louie watched him, his eyes narrowed. He looked like any of a hundred white male antis Louie had seen outside clinics. The vast majority of protesters were men, and it made perfect sense to Louie—the male of the species felt threatened by the biology of women. Even in the Bible, normal female biological functions were made pathological: you were unclean when you had your menses. Childbirth had to occur in pain. And there was the questionable nature of those who bled regularly—but did not die.

There was, of course, the history, too. Women had been property. Their chastity had always belonged to a man, until abortion and contraception put control of women’s sexuality in the women’s hands. If women could have sex without the fear of unwanted pregnancy, then suddenly the man’s role had shrunk to a level somewhere between unnecessary and vestigial. So instead, men vilified women who had abortions. They created the stigma: good women want to be mothers, bad women don’t.

Vonita, God rest her soul, used to say that if men were the ones to get pregnant, abortion would probably be a sacrament. The Super Bowl halftime show would celebrate it. Men who had terminated pregnancies would be asked to stand and be applauded at church for the courage to make that decision. Viagra would be sold with a coupon for three free abortions.

God. Louie missed Vonita already.

Forty years ago, Vonita had had an abortion. It wasn’t legal then, but everyone knew there was a woman in Silver Grove who worked out of her garage. When the woman died in the 1980s and her property got sold and the new people tried to put in a garden, they dug up hundreds of tiny bones, the size of a bird’s.

Vonita told Louie that she herself dreamed of the daughter she didn’t have. She dreamed so vividly of arguing with her lost daughter that she woke up with her throat raw; once, she had dreamed of her daughter braiding her hair and woke up with it in neat cornrows.

She was well aware that although abortion had been legalized, the stigma still existed, even though one in three women would have one. Vonita thought it was her personal calling to create a place where a woman could safely get an abortion if she needed one, a place where a woman could be supported and not judged.

She had opened the clinic and when she couldn’t find a local abortion doctor, she’d tracked Louie down and asked him to fly in to provide services. He had never considered saying no.

“I can’t carry her,” Izzy said, interrupting his thoughts.