Abortion, adoption, or motherhood. These words became a mantra inside my head for the next few days, played over and over. I heard them, thought about them when I laid in bed, unable to sleep. They were a refrain repeated as I tried to focus in lectures. I found myself typing the words as I wrote notes, as I worked to complete essays, forced to scrub them out before I submitted my assignments, but they didn’t go away. Sophie seemed to hover around me, waiting, waiting for a response.
“What do you want—?” she started to say one evening when we got in from classes.
“I don’t know!” I snapped, and she recoiled visibly, her mouth thinning down. She wrapped her hand around the edge of the kitchenette bench to prevent herself from coming over. I’d started pushing her away when she tried to comfort me, something I knew I’d regret, but I just couldn’t seem to stop. Because every hug, it felt like it came with a price.Deal with this situation, Lily, it said.Work out what the hell you want to give everyone some peace.
But I didn’t want to. Because secretly, I think part of me hoped there was another choice. The more reading I’d done, the more likely another involuntary option would eventuate. Miscarriage.
I felt so damn guilty. There were women all over the world using all of their financial, physical, and emotional resources, trying to have a much wanted, much loved baby and here was I … what? Wishing a baby away. Despite what Carmen had said, Ben’s words seemed to resonate more deeply with me. Betas didn’t get pregnant to alphas and, when they did, they didn’t carry them to term, so every time I went to the toilet, I scanned my knickers, waiting, waiting for the blood to come.
But by the time I had my next appointment with Carmen, it hadn’t.
“I don’t want to put pressure on you, Lily,” she said as she sat me down, forcing Sophie to sit outside and wait. “But the longer we leave it, the less options we have.” She looked at me meaningfully and I knew what she meant. I had only a week or two before that option would be off the table altogether, and I resented that knowledge with everything I had.
It wasn’t Carmen’s fault or Sophie’s fault or anyone’s fault in particular. Obviously, it was mine for getting myself in this situation in the first place, but… I stared at my hands, my fingers tangling in each other, then pulling free, only to get tangled again.
“I…” My voice sounded rusty with disuse. I spoke only when I had to, finding that I sank into this strange kind of nothingness when I wasn’t prompted to, and that greyness felt soft, right to me. “I’ve been…”
“Yes?”
She was trying to be gentle, to help me to get the words out, but somehow, something had made me exquisitely sensitive to subtext. I looked up, staring into Carmen’s sea blue eyes, just like her daughter’s. I took in all the different aspects of her picture-perfect face, framed by a long fall of blonde hair and a white doctor’s coat, a stethoscope hanging around her neck.
“I don’t sleep very well,” I forced out. “But when I do…”
As my voice fell away, the dream rose again, vibrant and throbbing with more life than anything that existed in reality.
I’d have a daughter, somehow I knew that. No alpha boy to follow on in his father’s footsteps. She would be mine, all mine. A weird, selfish kind of love swelled every time I thought about it, one that felt like I pulled the tiny form of my daughter into my chest and held her there, cradled safe in my arms.
“I see her,” I said, the words spilling out. “A daughter.”
“But Lily, if you have this child, it’ll almost definitely be a little boy. You’ll have a son, if that’s what you choose to do, but we need to be sure…”
I jerked myself to my feet and then turned to leave, which was terribly rude. Carmen was an in-demand OBGYN. People waited for months to get on her waiting list and she was seeing me for free because I was friends with Sophie. But once my feet were moving, I couldn’t seem to stop. I rushed past the receptionist who went to ask me if I needed an appointment, past Sophie who jumped up and raced after me.
“Jesus, Lily!” she said when she caught up with me, on the curb of the hospital car park. “What the hell is going on?”
“Can you take me to the beach?” I asked, jerking my head up to stare into her eyes, trying to inject all of my desperation there.
“But we have…” She registered my expression, the need there softening her own features, and then she nodded. “To the jetty?”
“Please.”
When we arrived,the sky was grey and overcast and somehow that seemed fitting. We got out of the car and instantly started to shiver. Summer was turning into autumn and that meant dead leaves scudded over the concrete footpath until we got to the sea itself.
I didn’t pull my shoes off this time, nor roll up my cuffs. I just went and sat on the stone wall and Sophie took the spot next to me.
“What do you want to do?” she asked me, soft enough that her question was whisked away by the wind moments later.
“I have to—”
“No,” she said. “What do you want to do?”
“Mum and Dad will kill me if they find out,” I said, biting off each word. “They’ll stop paying for my accommodation and force me to move home, no matter what I do.” I let out a sigh, deflating then. “You should look for another flatmate.”
“What do you want to do?”
Her persistence was a gentle, throbbing presence between us, nudging me slowly towards a conclusion.
“I have to have a termination. Get it done before they even find out. If they never know, they can’t take anything out on me. I get my degree and then move out, just like we planned.”