Part Three

You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Till It’s Gone

35

Tuesday, February 2, 2021, 3:00 PM Eastern Standard Time

Jane sat in the waiting room of the Free Clinic for the second time in about a week, in her mask, and waited for the results of her antibody test. She idly wondered why they had to be presented in person. Maybe it was a privacy thing.

“Jane?” the nurse said, beckoning from the door to the interior of the doctors’ office.

Jane got to her feet and went through the doorway as the nurse held it open for her. “Room 2 again,” the nurse said, pointing. “Doctor will be there in a minute.”

Jane started toward the room in which her blood had been drawn, then quickly asked the nurse, “Bathroom?”

The nurse pointed to a door across the narrow hallway. Jane nodded and ducked quickly into the restroom, just closing the door before she pulled her mask up and vomited, mostly into the toilet.

She was still cleaning the resulting mess two minutes later when she heard the low voice of the doctor speaking in an interrogatory tone to someone else. She used a sanitary wipe on the last bits of her breakfast, flushed the toilet, and got up, steadying herself on the sink. Maybe I really do have the virus, she said to herself.

She washed her hands, rinsed her mouth with mouthwash, toweled off, took in a deep breath, and opened the door.

The doctor was standing there with a slightly confused look, staring at a computer tablet in his hand. He looked up and saw her. She smiled shyly.

“Jane?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Come on in.”

He held the examination room door open for her. She walked in and sat down at the chair to the side.

“No, can you sit on the examination table?” he said.

“Uh, okay,” she said.

The doctor put some latex gloves on and rubbed them with sanitizing gel. He waved his hands while the gel evaporated.

“How do you feel?”

“Uh, okay, except for this stomach bug.”

The doctor felt the glands under her jaw, where, Jane had to admit, she did feel some tenderness. Then he stepped back and looked at her.

“How long have you been feeling ill?”

“Uh, the coughing, maybe a couple of weeks.”

“And the nausea?”

“That’s new. Maybe a couple of days.”

“If I could ask, when is your period due?”

She wracked her brain. She felt logy and slow.

“I’m… I can’t remember exactly,” she said, finally.

“Could you have missed it?”

Suddenly she was completely awake and aware.

“Uh…” she said, desperately trying to calculate.

“Because your blood test came back positive, but for pregnancy, not the virus.”

She froze, trying to process this information.

After a minute she said, “So I don’t have the virus.”

“That’s right.”

“But I am….” She could not make herself finish the sentence.

“Right,” the doctor said. “Pregnant.”

“Are you sure?”

“That, we double-check before we tell you.”

Jane sat on the examination table and examined the doctor. Latex gloves. Mask. How old was he? Not too old. She saw several gray hairs near his temples, and some crow’s feet at the side of his eyes. So, not too young either. So, probably knows what he is talking about. She suddenly felt as though she no longer was inhabiting her own body.

“Do you feel all right?”

She did not feel all right. The doctor, intuiting this, quickly grabbed a sickness bag, shook it open, and brought it to her mouth. She grasped it with both hands. The wave of nausea gradually passed, and she lowered the still-empty sickness bag into her lap, still looking downward. The doctor sat back down on the wheeled round stool in front of her.

“I take it that this was unexpected,” the doctor said.

She merely nodded.

“Do you have a gynecologist?”

She thought for several seconds.

“No, not really,” she said.

“You were not on the pill, then? Or any other form of birth control?”

She shook her head.

“Okay,” the doctor said, exhaling and slapping the front of his thighs with his open palms. “Well, morning sickness usually occurs between the fourth and sixteenth week of pregnancy. So, when do we think this happened?”

Jane thought back to when they thought it had happened.

***

She had gone out for the first time in several months to a Christmas party her father had urged her to attend.

“Come on,” he said. “It will be fun. You need to get out of this house. The virus is on the run. The President says so. He and the First Lady beat it. All the liberals were wrong.”

“What is it again?”

“It’s a conservative event, kind of celebrating both Christmas and the President’s re-election,” he said. “There will be lots of boys.”

She wrinkled her nose in disgust.

“You’re trying to fix me up with some politics nerd now?”

He laughed.

“No,” he said. “I just think you’ll enjoy it.”

Why had I gone to this event, she asked herself? Why this one? Why not any other one?

Her father had taken her to the reception, which was at a downtown hotel, joking about her being his “date.” She’d even gotten a little dressed up for the occasion. She didn’t care much for the opening speaker, Ben or Ban something. He stood in front of a sign that said “Victory Over Socialism/Victory Over the Virus/Victory Against the War on Christmas/Make America Great Again Again.” He went on at length about “European civilization” and our rights to have the kind of toilets and light bulbs we wanted. The crowd, which was almost all white, mostly male, and quite a bit older than her, seemed to lap it up.

“This is what I’m always talking about,” her father said, leaning toward her as he clapped from their seats in the hotel ballroom. “Freedom.”

She shrugged at that. She couldn’t get too worked up about lightbulbs and toilets, and if European civilization was so great, why did he make fun of the French and the EU? But she saw that her dad enjoyed it. She did notice some of the boys that flanked the speaker on the dais at the front of the room. At the end of his speech, Ban pointed to either side of him, to the blazer-wearing clean-cut preppy white boys who sat near him.

“I’m an old guy,” the speaker said. “These guys, right here, they are the future of the movement.” The younger men beamed. Some of them whooped. Jane noticed the two on the extreme right end of the stage. One was darker-complected, but with blondish long hair that looked as though it had been in the sun. The other was tall and cheerfully goofy, with watery blue eyes that seemed sort of unfocused. Jane instantly liked the darker boy.

When the speech ended, and the attendees were all invited to stay for a reception and cash bar, her father told her, “I’m just going to try to talk to Ban.”

She nodded, and as he moved toward the large clump of men who were gathered around the guest of honor, she gravitated toward the group on the right. Eventually she neared the odd couple, as she had come to think of them.

“Hey,” she said to the darker man, who had loosened his tie.

“How are ya,” he responded.

“I’m Jane,” she said.

“I’m Billy,” the tanned man said.

“I’m Jake,” the gawky taller boy said, sticking his hand out to her.

“Jane,” she said, taking the proffered hand. It was damp.

“How’d you like Ban?” Jake said. “Isn’t he amazing?”

“I guess,” Jane said. “So, Billy, are you from around here, or what?”

Billy laughed. “Oh, no,” he said. “I’m from Cali.”

“Colombia?”

Billy laughed again, and Jane wondered if she had stumbled. “Uh, no,” Billy said. “California.”

“Oh, cool,” Jane said, wishing Jake would take a hint and leave.

But Jake did not take a hint. He stuck around and refilled Jane’s glass several times. Jane looked over at her father; he had fought his way to the front of the group surrounding the guest of honor, and he looked as though he was lit from within, actually talking to Ban Wilson. Ban did not seem similarly lit, but neither was he attempting to escape. Jane could tell this night was going to be one that her father would never forget.

She also felt lit, but in a different way. And she was probably not going to remember as much of this night as her father. Other people joined their little group and then melted away. The drinks kept coming. Jane felt pleasantly discombobulated. Suddenly some of Jake’s jokes seemed actually funny. When Billy excused himself to go to the men’s room, she did not feel nearly as distraught as she might have forty minutes earlier. Her father was still in the inner group around the speaker, across the ballroom, in his glory.

“Listen,” Jake said. “A bunch of us are going to go out and get something to eat after this. Do you want to join us?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I came here with my dad. It’s kind of a long drive.”

“I can get you back to wherever you live,” Jake said.

So she had tottered on her heels over toward her dad and tried to get his attention. When that failed, she texted him:

Going out to dinner with some boys here

They say they’ll give me a ride home

He had responded simply:

Okay have fun

So she had gone off with Jake and a couple of other boys, Billy not among them. That was okay. She now thought she liked Jake well enough. Over dinner, he told some funny story about infiltrating liberal organizations with hidden cameras and getting them to say outrageous things. He was also a campus political organizer.

“Where do you go to college?”

“Uh, I never went to college,” Jake said. “American colleges are indoctrination centers for the liberal elite. My dad taught me that. What I do is go to different campuses and give talks about what kind of courses they should be offering, on European civilization, capitalism, entrepreneurialism, that stuff.”

“But you never wanted to go to college?”

“I don’t want to be infected.”

“Sure, because the virus is there.”

“No… that’s a liberal hoax. I don’t want to be infected with liberalism through their biased teaching.”

“But how can you tell them what they should be teaching if you’ve never, like, taken any courses?”

“I don’t have to swallow poison to know it’s bad for me,” Jake said, stiffening.

“Okay,” she said, deciding not to press the point.

Later, Jake was going on about the white working class.

“What does your dad do?” she asked him.

“Oh, he’s a lawyer,” Jake said.

“Where’d you grow up?”

“Outside Chicago,” he said.

“Like, near the steel mills or something?”

Jake laughed. “No, that’s the other side of the city. I grew up on the North Shore.”

“I guess.”

“So how did you learn about the working class?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” she said, “my dad was a machinist. He used to make electric motors. So, I guess I know something about the working class that way. So how do you know about them?”

Jake turned a little red and began stammering.

“Well,” he said, “Ban’s… Ban’s taught me a lot, and I have traveled…”

“Where’s he from?”

“Uh, I think San Diego or Florida or something? His dad was a Navy guy, and so was he.”

“So how does he know about the working class?”

“He’s… he knows lots of those people. …Can we talk more about you?”

“Okay,” she said.

If it had been Billy, and she had had less to drink, she would have regretted more making him uncomfortable. But since it was Jake, she wasn’t really concerned.

They had ended up driving back to the hotel where Jake and the others were staying. For “a nightcap,” as Jake said.

“You’re going to get me home, though, right?” Jane had said.

“Sure,” Jake said.

So, they had drunk more, and before she knew it, the others were gone from Jake’s room, and she was left alone with Jake, and she had lapsed mostly into drowsy silence as Jake talked more about Jake and what Jake was going to do and what Jake had done already and how well-regarded Jake was, and just to shut him up, she had kissed him.

When the bus dropped her off, she pulled her phone out and saw the series of messages from her parents.

Where are you?

Are you okay

You should be home right now – call us

Please call

She looked at the time. It was almost one in the morning. She decided she had to call.

“Hello?”

“Hey Dad. Sorry to wake you.”

“Nobody’s asleep here. Are you okay?”

She decided to lie.

“I’m fine. I just went out with some of the boys from that organization.”

“Did you have a good time?”

“Uh, yeah. But I had to take the bus back. Can someone pick me up?”

Groaning. Then, “Okay, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

When she had gotten into the car, her father asked her if she had had a good time.

“It was okay.”

“Just okay?”

“Yeah.”

“I had a great time,” her dad said. “I got to talk to Ban Wilson for like twenty minutes myself. That guy is a genius.”

“Did he give you light bulbs?”

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

Jane felt suddenly hot and took her coat off.

“Is that a bruise?”

“What?”

“On your arm.”

Jane looked at her left arm. There were several bruises that made a distinct pattern of finger and thumb tips on the outside and inside of her upper arm. She quickly pulled her coat back over them.

“I fell and someone caught me.”

For a second, she thought that her father looked suspicious and would demand more of an explanation. But then he looked away and snorted, and the rest of the drive took place in silence.

As they approached their house, Jeff said, “Goddammit, it’s back up. Thugs.”

She looked where his gaze was, and saw that a new “Black Lives Matter” sign was up on the neighbors’ lawn. They parked in the driveway and headed into the house.

***

“Any guess as to when?” the doctor asked again.

Jane snapped awake from her reverie. “Uh, early December,” she said.

“Okay, the doctor said. “We should start you on some prenatal vitamins and make an appointment for an OB/GYN.”

“Doctor,” Jane said.

“Yes?”

“Uh…” Jane did not know how to begin.

“What do you want to know?”

“Uh…”

“Would you be more comfortable talking to a nurse, or a female doctor?”

“Maybe,” she said. “I don’t mean…”

“It’s perfectly okay,” the doctor said. “This is a surprise. It’s natural for you to want to talk to a woman about it. I can make an appointment with Dr. Lambros. She’s a great doctor. If you want to talk to the nurse right now, I’m sure she can answer most questions you have.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Jane said, miserably.

“Okay, I’ll get the nurse and make you some appointments. You can use them or not. And I’ll send in the nurse.”

“Thanks.”

The door closed behind the doctor, leaving Jane alone. She sat as if fastened to the examination table. She leaned forward, staring at her shoes with unfocused eyes. Then her hand went almost unconsciously to her stomach. The door opened suddenly, startling her.

“Sorry,” the nurse said. “Didn’t mean to surprise you.”

“No,” Jane said.

“The doc said you might have some questions.”

“Yeah,” Jane said.

“Okay,” the nurse said.

“Um, I heard about this Morning After pill.”

“Oh,” the nurse said. “Honey, it’s too late for that. That’s why they call it the Morning After pill.”

“Oh,” Jane said.

“It’s too bad you didn’t come in right away,” she said. “Now things are a little more complicated.”

“Complicated?”

“Do you know about the legislation that was passed last month?”

Jane thought she had a vague recollection of something on the news to which she now wished she had paid more attention.

“What was it?”

“A fairly total ban on abortion,” the nurse said.

An unexpected tear sprang to Jane’s eyes as her mind tried to comprehend this news.

“Total?”

“Pretty much.”

Jane sat stunned for a moment. Then something occurred to her.

“What if… what if it wasn’t voluntary?”

“What if what…?” the nurse began, then straightened up. “Are you saying you were raped?”

The word shocked Jane. I was raped, she thought, for the first time. I was raped.

“What if I was?”

“Did you report it to the police?”

Jane stared at her. “No,” she said finally.

“Then I don’t think they’ll allow an exception,” the nurse said. “Actually, this probably won’t make you feel better, but even if you had reported it, I don’t think under this law there would be an exception anyway.”

Jane sat there, slumped forward, looking at the floor between them.

“If you are serious about this… this option,” the nurse said quietly, “I would try to get to a state where this procedure is legal. You’ll probably need some money and some transportation.”

“Yes,” Jane said, hopelessly. Money and transportation… two things that we have so much of in our family.

“But until you make up your mind, I think you need to be taking your vitamins. For your own health. I can give you the prescription. I want you to come back in a week to meet Dr. Lambros. She can give you more information. You can make the appointment at the front desk.”

Jane nodded mutely. The nurse opened the door and exited; the door shut behind her.

Jane gathered her things and stood up. She had a long walk ahead of her.

She was not looking forward to it as much as she had the last time.

© 2020 Nolan O’Brian