Was Our Marriage Your Revenge? novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Wait

Claire books a termination for the same afternoon, then hears the heartbeat on the ultrasound and whispers wait. As she walks out keeping the baby, Gretchen is across the street filming the clinic door.

I called the clinic from a bathroom stall in the lobby of Quentin's building.

"I need to end a pregnancy," I told the woman who answered. "Today, if you have anything."

She had a four o'clock.

I took it.

Then I called Rhiannon, because there was nobody else I trusted to hear it.

She picked up on the second ring with a monitor beeping behind her.

"Claire? You sound awful."

"He gave me a check and a divorce, and I'm pregnant, and I have a four o'clock," I said. "Can you drive me?"

The beeping stopped, and a door clicked shut on her end.

"I'm in the parking lot in nine minutes," Rhiannon said. "Don't you dare get in a cab."

She was there in seven.

She pulled up in her scratched green hatchback with her scrubs still on and a half-eaten granola bar in her teeth.

I got in and told her everything between the lobby and the clinic's front door.

Rhiannon didn't interrupt once.

When I finished, she turned off the engine and looked at me.

"Do you want this?" she asked.

"No."

"Okay."

"I can't have his baby, Rhiannon. Every time I looked at it, I'd see him. I'd see the boardroom."

"Okay," she said again. "Then I'm coming in with you, and I'm holding your hand, and afterward we're eating something with cheese on it."

I laughed, and it came out wet.

The clinic waiting room had beige chairs and a fish tank.

I filled out the form with the same hand that had signed the divorce that morning.

I wrote Holloway on the line for my last name, and then crossed it out and wrote Corr.

A nurse called me back.

Rhiannon came with me, in her sneakers, holding my bag in both arms.

I lay on the table and looked at the ceiling tiles.

The doctor was a calm woman with gray in her braid.

"I'm going to do an ultrasound first," she said. "It tells me exactly how far along you are. Then we'll talk about what comes next."

The gel was cold.

The screen was angled away from me, and I was glad.

She moved the wand around, and then she turned the monitor an inch toward me.

"You don't have to look," she said.

I looked.

A tiny curved shape sat on the gray screen.

It had a head, and it had two arms bent at the elbows.

One of them lifted and waved at nothing.

Then a sound filled the room, a fast soft flutter, quicker than any heartbeat I had ever heard.

"That's the heartbeat," the doctor said. "One hundred sixty-two beats a minute. Strong."

Rhiannon's fingers tightened around mine.

I didn't breathe.

"Twelve weeks and one day," the doctor said. "Everything looks healthy."

She set the wand down on its tray.

She rolled her stool back and pulled on a fresh pair of gloves.

"Whenever you're ready, Claire. It's quick, and I'll be with you the whole time."

A nurse laid out the tray at my feet.

I stared at the screen.

The baby's hand lifted again.

It was the size of a grape, and it was reaching for the edge of the picture.

I thought of Quentin's hand on the back of my neck on a hundred ordinary mornings.

I thought of every lie that hand had told me.

Then the baby turned, and I saw a nose, and a forehead, and a chin that was nobody's but its own.

The doctor's voice came from far away. "Claire? Are you ready?"

I opened my mouth to say yes.

I heard myself say something else.

"Wait."

It came out as a whisper.

The doctor went still.

"I'm sorry," I said. "Please. Wait."

Nobody hurried me.

The doctor pushed the tray back with her foot, quietly, and stripped off her gloves.

Rhiannon was crying with her whole face and trying to hide it behind my bag.

"I don't want to end it," I said. My voice cracked. "I thought I did. I walked in here sure."

"You can change your mind at any point," the doctor said. "Right up to this second. That's what this room is for."

"I'm keeping it."

I said it to the ceiling, and to the screen, and to the grape-sized hand.

"I'm keeping my baby."

The doctor smiled for the first time.

She printed the picture and put it in my palm, and she wrote the due date on the corner in blue pen.

I walked out into the late sun with the picture pressed to my chest and Rhiannon's arm around my shoulders.

Rhiannon was already saying, "We're eating cheese on everything," when I stopped dead on the sidewalk.

Across the street, a black sedan sat at the curb with its engine running.

Gretchen VanDerzee was in the driver's seat with her phone raised.

Its camera was pointed at the clinic door, and at me.

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