Chapter 1

The Waiting Room

I wish I could forget the feelings I had while sitting in that place. It’s funny because I do not remember walking in, or even driving there. I do remember sitting in the waiting room. It was a room the size of my bedroom. I remember thinking there were so many girls there. Were they all there for the same reason? I looked around at their faces and tried to see if they were feeling like I was. Some looked scared, others nervous, most looked numb. Yes, I thought, we were there for the same reason.

That momentous day at work flashed back in my mind, the cold, mid-January day, when I realized I was late. It was early into my shift at a local pharmacy when I registered this very important detail. My breasts had been sore, but that didn’t mean anything special. Ok sure, I had been eating more at lunch. Some girls experienced that with their normal cycles, maybe mine was just evolving. I noticed my chest looked bigger, too. But come on, other girls talked about that, too. Normally, you could set a clock to my cycle. It always came on time. I always had the same symptoms. This was different, “So, am I . . .?”

A customer momentarily interrupted my thoughts, but a few minutes later, I revisited. I tried to shake the feeling, tried to shake the thoughts that were now swirling in my head at a thousand miles a minute. I needed to take a test immediately. Finally, it was time for me to take my lunch break. I grabbed two pregnancy tests on my way to the employee lounge. Straight into the bathroom I went with a cold sweat now breaking out. Hands slightly shaking as I, for the first time ever, administered a pregnancy test to myself.

I’m in high school; I can’t be pregnant! This is just to make myself feel better; it’s not going to be positive. But it was. They both were, and in that moment, everything that I knew in my life went spiraling into a dark abyss. I needed to return to my shift, but in my head, I was already talking to my best friend about what the heck I was supposed to do now.

The remaining hours of my shift saw me moving on autopilot, the whole time having a large internal debate about how I was going to deal with this. How was I going to tell Kris? What was he going to say? The only reason I had slept with him to begin with was because I didn’t want him to slip away. I loved him, for sure. I had not been ready for the step of sleeping together. I knew it would have been a risk if I didn’t sleep with him. He could have easily found other girls at college who would. How was I supposed to compete with that? Now look, look at what happened! My mind continued to spin with thoughts spiraling faster than I could process. The result of it all was sheer panic. Finally, my shift ended, and I went to the only person I thought I could talk to.

Sitting across from my best friend, I blurted, “I’m pregnant!”

“You have to get rid of it,” was the very first thing out of her mouth. During the next few minutes, she was very much in charge. “I know what to do. We just call the abortion clinic, and we will get it all taken care of.” And she did. In just a few minutes, I had handed over the control of this giant situation to her. Oh, thank goodness, someone knows what to do, I thought.

The hours seemed to tick by the remainder of that day. My brain continued in overdrive as I tried to swallow the fact that there was a baby inside of me. It was easily the most emotionally terrifying thing I had ever felt so far in my life. I guessed it was good that my best friend knew what to do. She was making the calls to gather information, taking care of things. She even took care of that call to Kris. The one I could not quite seem to get myself to make, the one I was dreading and putting off, the one I could not handle.

“You don’t want to keep it, do you?” Kris asked by way of my best friend.

“I guess . . . not,” I murmured. Did I mean that? Was that just the fear talking? I never allowed myself the time to think it through. I knew what we were planning to do was wrong. The whole thing was filled with so many levels of wrong, but I did not let myself think over it. I had a life to live. I had a future to figure out. I was in no position to birth a baby. This was the only option; there was nothing else to be done. My best friend, Kris, and I had made this plan. Now, we just had to stick with it. No one else needed to know.

My best friend had tracked down the appropriate place for me to go and had given me the number. Calling to make the appointment had been an interesting experience. After the details were taken by the kind woman on the other end of the phone, a date was set. Before we hung up, the same kind lady said, “Now when we call back to confirm your appointment, we will be using a different name. That name is our code word to you, so you will know it’s us and know what it is regarding, but your parents will not.” Wow, I thought. This was so incredibly kind of them. They are keeping my secret, working with me.

I tried to think of another time or situation where another adult would have helped me keep such a big secret from my parents, especially a medical-related secret. I came up short and felt intense relief that these people were on my side. Six days, I had to wait six whole days before my appointment.

A few days later, I stood in front of the refrigerator, looking for a snack. I could hear the chatter of my family in the living room. I wish I could tell them what was going on, but I knew it would disappoint them. All the usual things were going on, the usual conversations, the usual sounds, and voices. I looked down at my stomach, again realizing that there was something growing inside me. It hit me then that their lives were unchanged by this gigantic event happening right before them. All their lives continued as they always had, completely untouched. Here I was, and it felt like the walls in my young life were crashing all around me. Everything I had worked for was teetering on the verge of collapsing.

It was strange to realize that as I stood in that moment with them, the realities were incredibly different. They were on one side, and I was on the much darker, other side: My parents were thinking that their good little girl was about to graduate high school with a wonderful future ahead of her. They would be in shock to find out my choices had led me on a path that “troubled” teens have found themselves in. I couldn’t help but think of the fact that I was pregnant and needed not to be.

They were probably thinking I would never do anything to screw my future up. I knew I just had. I felt frozen and panicked to the point that my best friend had to step in and do the plans.

I wanted to shout, “There is a MAJOR life event happening right now.” But I held silent, shut the refrigerator, and walked quietly to my bedroom, closing the door between our realities.

From that point forward, I played a polite, balancing act with myself. I juggled between the reality around me and the real one inside of me. My appointment seemed a lifetime away. I was keeping a secret. I was deceiving the people I loved. This felt like the opposite of who I was, but it would be ok soon. Soon, it would all be over, and my life would continue like it had been. Everything was going to be just fine, right? It seemed as though I asked myself this question every hour over those days.

Knowing that Kris was going to come with me made me feel lucky. I felt a weird sense of support at the time, though looking back on it I am not so sure that was his motivation. At the moment, I thought we were really in it together. He loved me enough to be a part of this with me. Relief washed over me in those moments when I thought about his support. He was with me, which made me feel very fortunate.

Finally, it was time. My best friend, Kris, and I loaded into her car to make the evening drive to my appointment. The sun was setting as we drove, and I couldn’t help but draw a morbid connection to this moment in my own life. I knew what we were going to do; I had made that decision already. All I wanted was for my life to go back to normal without anybody finding out I had gotten pregnant. Now I was on autopilot, a disconnected robot moving myself toward the only thing I thought reasonable to do at this time.

I walked into the back of the building on shaky legs. My best friend sat by my side, and Kris sat across from me. I was shaking so badly Kris kept reaching over to try to calm my legs down. Or maybe he just wanted to touch me, to offer comfort. No, Kris never showed affection in public. He was just trying to get me to calm down. I looked around and saw all those other girls sitting there with blank expressions on their faces. We were all numb, I realized. All of us were just pushing through it to do what we thought had to be done.

The abortion facility felt empty, devoid of any sort of comforting or happy emotions. There was a stale stench in the air mingled with cleaning products. I realized there was no life here. It was as if the spirit of death had come to live in this place. I’d never felt so inherently cold, sad, or numb when visiting a doctor before. I did not let myself settle into these thoughts, though.

“Toni Davis,” I heard the nurse call through my foggy contemplation. I stood and began walking toward her. Halfway to the doorway, I registered that Kris had not moved. My heart sank to the floor. He had not gotten up to come with me. I looked back at him; I wanted to see...