One Man’s Abortion Story

It must have been about noon yesterday when they sucked the would-be baby out of Sara. Pressed the stubby end of the clear, fat plastic tube up against her cervix, turned on the machine, and flushed away whoever it was that had started to grow there.

All these days I’ve been thinking that when it was actually done I’d finally be able to let go, to let the big wave of tears rise up and wash me clear. Now it’s already the next morning and the big wave still hasn’t come. I feel suspended, like I’m waiting for the second shoe to fall. I begin to wonder if I will ever let this big wave come. I begin to wonder if I’ve got a big wave inside me at all.

I envy Sara her tears. In fact, there’s a lot that I envy Sara about this abortion. When I start poking into the generalized sadness that I’ve been carrying around for days now (like poking a finger down my throat, hoping to activate the reflex to vomit it all out), what I find first is not something about the baby, not something about the abortion at all. What I find is a wide, empty loneliness. Much care and attention has been devoted, thankfully, to providing emotional support for Sara, for the woman who chooses not to become a mother just now. Not so the father-not-to-be. There are reasons, I’m sure. The woman who came out of the doctor’s waiting room while we were waiting to go in, the woman who came out and made the appointment for her post-op exam, that woman came out alone and walked into the world again alone. The woman who waited with us for her turn inside also waited alone.

I don’t find myself feeling angry or resentful that the medical/emotional system is not set up to deal much with me. But I do feel alone.

It starts, of course, with Sara’s period being late. Thirty days, 31 days, 32 days. Sara thinks she’s just having one of those late periods, but it’s never been this late and I’m worried. When her period is a week late, she begins to be worried too. Still, she says, she doesn’t feel like she’s pregnant. Maybe she just skipped a cycle — but she’s never done that before. On the other hand, it doesn’t make sense for her to be pregnant. We didn’t even make love during her fertile time this month. Sara says that you can’t do a pregnancy test until the 40th day anyway. There’s not much for us to do except wonder and wait.

On the 39th day, Sara calls Planned Parenthood to find out about a pregnancy test. They tell her that the earliest time they can do an accurate test is on the 42nd day. She doesn’t need an appointment, she should just come by the clinic that day with an early morning urine sample. The 42nd day is a Wednesday, when I’ll have to be in San Francisco all day. We decide that we’ll go in for the test Thursday morning.

The Planned Parenthood clinic is a cheerful, comfortable, warmly human place, obviously well-organized. There’s a woman receptionist, several women counselors, maybe half a dozen more women in the waiting room. I’m the only man. While Sara signs the register, I scan the thousands of color-coded medical files that line the walls behind the receptionist. I’m aware that the people in those files are all women too.

Sara and I sit together and admire Planned Parenthood’s new home. A sign explains how much money they’ve raised to get this far, and how much more they need to complete the remodeling and expansion of the upstairs counseling rooms. A sign asserts “A Woman’s Right to Choose.” A picture of Margaret Sanger (one more woman), the patron saint of sexual possibility, hangs on the wall. When I was in college, Margaret Sanger was one of my heroes. I had a smaller version of this very picture tacked to the wall by my desk for years. I think how lucky we are to have this place to come to, and of the long struggle Planned Parenthood has had to become a legitimate part of the social landscape.

After a few minutes, a woman calls out Sara’s name. We stand and follow her into a small office. There’s a desk, a chair for the woman, a chair for Sara. “You can come in,” the woman says to me, “if you don’t mind standing.” I stand.

Sara fills out a form, gives the woman her artichoke hearts jar full of urine. The woman explains to Sara that the pregnancy test is very simple, testing for the presence of a hormone in the urine that is a by-product of pregnancy. If the hormone is there, she’s almost certainly pregnant. If not, she’s probably not pregnant, but if she still don’t get her period, she should come back in a week or so for another test. The woman explains that, since there are several other women ahead of Sara, there will be a wait of about an hour before she can get the results. We look at each other uncertainly, eventually decide to come back at the start of the evening clinic hours, when there should be less of a wait, than hang around being nervous for an hour.

In the evening, we seem to be the first people there. After a minute or two a young woman counselor comes in and calls Sara’s name. She looks about 25, has a friendly, competent face. She shows us into the counseling room. This time there are three chairs. The woman introduces herself to Sara as Mary and then says quickly that they have the result of the test. It’s positive. She offers Sara the little piece of paper that has “POSITIVE” written in the blank space. Sara’s eyes go wide and she starts to cry. We both stand up and I hold her, standing there in the middle of the room. Mary says something about us perhaps wanting some time alone and scurries out the door. Sara cries and cries. I hold her, make space for her tears, look inside for my own tears, feel divided between comforting Sara and letting go myself, choose for the moment to just be there for Sara. I feel her body shaking next to mine, feel her tears on my neck. I’m surprised that she’s so surprised, if that’s what she is. I look again for my tears, don’t find any right at hand. In fact I find that I feel good in some perverse way, then feel embarrassed. This is no time to feel good, this is a time to feel sad. We don’t want to have a baby. This is going to be a real mess. I should burst into tears, like Sara, but instead I just feel strangely happy and peaceful.

After a couple of minutes we stand apart and look at each other. A grin breaks over my face in spite of my best efforts to keep it down. “What are you laughing about?” Sara asks, suddenly grinning back.

“I don’t know,” I shrug. “For some reason I just feel happy. I mean, I still don’t want to have a baby, but somehow it makes me happy to hear that you’re pregnant, that this thing has happened.”

Sara nods. “Yeah. Actually, I feel that way too.”

We stand there, leaning back, arms around each other’s waists, laughing at how absurd it is to feel happy to find out that you’re pregnant with a child you don’t want. I hand Sara my handkerchief. She blows her nose.

“I guess I should tell her she can come back now,” Sara suggests, thinking of Mary. I nod, and then we both laugh again at how quickly she fled the room when all the feelings came boiling over.

Sara goes out and comes back, a minute later, with Mary who seems both supportive of Sara letting her feelings out and relieved that all the feelings seemed to have passed through so quickly. When we tell her that we want to have an abortion, she explains the options we have — the different types of abortions at different stages of pregnancy, the different doctors in the area who do abortions, what they charge. She talks, finally, to both of us, for which I feel eternally grateful.

She gives us a mimeographed sheet with all the various information. She tells us what she knows about the different doctors. She opens Our Bodies, Our Selves to the page that pictures the various tools used in vacuum abortions, and explains what the procedure is like. It’s tremendously reassuring to have all that information so reliably at hand. Sara is now “six weeks LMP,” as they say, meaning six weeks from the first day of Sara’s last menstrual period. We can do a simple vacuum abortion up to ten weeks LMP. One doctor will even do a vacuum abortion up to twelve weeks LMP, but by then the embryo is too large to fit through the vacuum tube, so they have to go in first and cut it into smaller pieces. I get a graphic picture of a scalpel cutting an embryo into three equal-sized pieces. It sends a shudder up my spine. We’ll have to get this done before ten weeks LMP.

We go out into the warm evening. It’s June and still sunny, and we’ve got time to spare before going out for the evening. We let ourselves be close together in this strange wave of good feeling. We stop at a pay phone to call a close friend and give her the word.

“It’s a girl!” Sara exclaims with a laugh. “No, actually I feel pretty good right now…. Well, I’m sure there’s more to come, but for now I’m just letting myself feel all right…. Ok, thanks…. See you later.”

From the day of the pregnancy test to the day of the abortion was just two weeks — probably the most intense, wrenching, up-and-down-roller-coaster two weeks of my life. To make a very complex situation sound very simple, Sara is 35 and wondering seriously if and when she’s ever going to have any children. I, on the other hand, already have a child, a son who’s eight years old, and am fairly sure that I don’t want to begin that whole cycle again at this point in my life. That difference between Sara and me has been one of the biggest stumbling blocks in our relationship, to the point that Sara has often thought seriously about leaving and finding another partner, someone who shares her desire to have children. Sara and I have talked about this issue over and over again during the two years we’ve been together, always choosing not to have children in the present, but leaving the issue open for the future. Otherwise, I would have had a vasectomy some time ago. But I keep agreeing not to do that, and Sara’s slip of paper came back proclaiming “POSITIVE,” and that has left us with a lot of hard feelings to work through.

The morning of the pregnancy test we sat in the car and had a long talk about what we would do if the test turned out to be positive. We hadn’t really talked about that much earlier, both of us feeling something like “why worry about this one until we know we’ve got something to worry about.” But that morning, parked outside the Planned Parenthood clinic, we finally did talk. Sara talked about wanting a child, especially a girl. I talked about how it would really be wrong for me to have another child. In the end Sara agreed that she didn’t want to have a child if I didn’t want to have one. So after the test, I felt that the issue was settled. I knew there were lots of feelings of sadness, anger, resentment and guilt that we would have to work through. But I felt that we at least knew what it was we were going to do.

Saturday, two days after the test, I was pouring myself a glass of wine and offered one to Sara. She shook her head. “How come?” I asked, surprised. “You’re not supposed to drink alcohol when you’re pregnant,” she answered.

I looked over at her, eyebrows raised. She looked back at me with something like a sheepish grin flickering over her face.

We were in the middle of something else, so we didn’t get to talk more about it then, but the next day we went for a walk and talk on the beach. Sara announced that she had decided to have the baby after all. That she knew she couldn’t decide for me, but that she did have to decide for her, and that was what she had decided.

I felt all the buts rise up in my chest, and rushed to push them down again. I wanted to hear more of what Sara felt, and I wanted to give myself a chance to see if there wasn’t some way that I might really want to have this baby after all. There was something in the surety with which Sara had announced her decision that was compelling.

I tried hard to conjure up all the attractive images of having a baby. I thought about how much easier an infant would be the second time around. Of how good it would feel to share a child with Sara. Of how it might be a girl this time. I tried to imagine ways of clearing enough personal space for work and writing so that I wouldn’t end up resenting having agreed to something that I knew was really wrong for me. I thought again and again of how much Sara wanted to have a child, of how strongly I wanted her to have what she wanted. I tried to believe that I could have a child without that child completely overturning my life.

I could almost hold all of those thought together there, walking arm in arm on the beach, feeling the glow prospective parents feel when they are thinking dreamily of what life will be like with a new child. But then the other side of the picture started appearing as well. The inevitable time and energy demands of a young child. The conflict between wanting to give a child as much as it wants and needs, and also wanting time of my own, time to develop that aspects of my life that I had neglected during eight years of intense, active, primary parenting. What it would feel like for me, for the child, for Sara, to spend all those years in a situation that I didn’t want, down to my core.

In the end I had to tell Sara yet again that I knew it was the wrong thing for me to do. In the end, no matter how much I might wish that I felt differently, or that I was in a different life situation, I had to admit and to honor who I really was and what I really felt.

For the ten days after that, Sara when up and down a lot, deciding and redeciding what she wanted to do. She tried to imagine herself as a single mother, but in the end gave up on that plan as being just too much to take on. She cried a lot, screamed a lot, hurt a lot. I also cried and screamed and hurt, but less. Her feelings, being the stronger ones, seemed rightfully to take priority over mine. After all, I was getting what I wanted and she wasn’t. And the embryo wasn’t growing inside my body, pulsing with my heartbeat, drawing nourishment from the food I ate. I felt cold and hard, and kept wondering if I wasn’t closing off a chance to enrich my life in an important way. I felt guilty for imposing my choice on Sara, even when I knew that my choice was for me only — that Sara still got to choose what she wanted to do for herself. I felt overwhelmed and exhausted. I would do little or nothing all day and still be exhausted by early evening.

I tried talking about what I felt, with Sara and with friends, but Sara was so overwhelmed with her own feelings that she had little room to really attend to mine, and I discovered that my friends all had pretty strong feelings of their own about abortion, especially the ones with children. The people I talked to, mostly women, identified with Sara for the most part. One friend asked me if Sara had any children. I told her she didn’t. “I think it would be harder to have an abortion if you had already gone through the experience of taking care of a little baby,” she said as if to reassure me, though she knew how important my experience as a father was to me. The only real support I felt was from a man friend who told me some of what he had gone through, accompanying lovers of his through two separate abortions. He was a little flip about it all, but at least he could sympathize with what I was going through.

The day before the abortion, Sara and I went for another walk on the beach, late in the afternoon. I was full of a lot of feelings — all murky, like they were lying just below the surface and refusing to come to where I could see them, name them, express them. The closest I could come was to say I felt sad, in a most general sort of way.

We had walked a long way down the beach and were sitting on the hard sand, resting. “How are you feeling?” Sara asked.

“I feel sad,” I began, then paused, hoping that something more would come to mind. A second later Sara burst into tears. “God I hope I’m not going to regret doing this,” she wailed, before dissolving into an avalanche of shaking and crying.

I sat behind her, holding her, torn again between wanting to make room for her to express her feelings and wanting a chance to get some of my own confused feelings out into the open. I sat there with my arm around her sobbing body and my mind off in my own world. There really was no one who would hold me as I was holding Sara, I decided, so I’d just have to hold myself. And in my mind a big, protective part of me gathered a little, fragile part of me up in his arms and told me he loved me and cared about me and thought I was beautiful in spite of it all.

After a while Sara’s purging ended and we walked back along the beach. The sun was making everything golden, and the eucalyptus trees were gnarled and beautiful, and in the side of the cliff there was a big green bush with two huge, brilliant, purple flowers, just for me.

That night we came home to find two messages. Both were from friends who had called to say that they would be thinking of Sara the next day, during the abortion. I noticed that no one had called to say they would be thinking of me. I told Sara that I felt pretty alone, and she gave me a hug. I stood there a long time, with Sara holding big me and big me holding little me, still feeling alone, but also feeling that I was ok somehow, despite everything.

The night before the abortion, we both slept well. I woke up feeling sad and subdued. The time before the abortion had turned out to be time for Sara to get out what she was feeling; perhaps my time would come afterwards. Maybe I was holding my feelings in just to be sure that I would really go through with the abortion. Maybe I needed the actual event of the abortion to make what was happening seem real to me. I imagined that seeing the embryo (would I get to see the embryo?) after the abortion would make it all real enough, even as seeing my child’s head emerge during birth had made his existence suddenly quite real indeed.

In an attempt to make the existence of this embryo real to us, we had gone to a bookstore to look at pictures of what an embryo was like at seven weeks. I had been assuming it would be very small and amorphous, maybe the size of a pea. It turned out that the embryo was over an inch long and, while not really looking human, did have eyes, ears, hands, feet, head, and torso. I found myself fixing on the sketch in the book over and over again, trying to visualize what was going on inside Sara. The more I got inside that image, the more I could begin to feel what was going on inside of me as well. I found myself moving very slowly, not wanting to disturb the reluctant process of my emotional opening.

Getting ready for the abortion itself, I had trouble deciding what to wear. At first I was inclined to wear black, but that seemed rather melodramatic. I imagined the people in the doctor’s office wanting to keep everything light and functional, and I found myself subduing my feelings in deference to what I imagined would be their comfort. I only had to go through this once, after all, while they had to do it day after day. Then I caught myself and pulled myself back into focus. This was, after all, my abortion. The medical people would have to make room for how I wanted to be. And what was that? I decided to wear my black knit shirt under a bright, flower-printed one. Black to wrap around me; colors (not too gay) to show the world. Sara wore her favorite shirt for special occasions, and a long black skirt with colorful brown trim around the hem. As she stood ironing her shirt, she started to cry, silently this time, tears running down her face. She looked up at me watching her.

“I just feel sad,” she said.

I nodded. She nodded. We hugged each other yet again.

It’s a ten-minute drive from our house to the doctor’s office. Driving along, we’re both silent. I find myself wondering what I should do for Sara during the abortion.

“What would you like from me during all this?” I ask finally. Sara thinks a minute.

“Just hold my hand,” she answers.

We get there ten minutes early. We go in and wait. There are two women ahead of us. The day before, the doctor had inserted a thin stick of compressed seaweed into Sara’s cervix. Over the course of the day, the seaweed has absorbed water and expanded, gradually dilating the cervix. We sit on the beautifully embroidered couch in the reception room while Sara fills out forms. The receptionist is friendly and efficient, as are the nurses. It is another office with all women, and me. The doctor, too, will be a woman.

They give Sara an information sheet on abortions to read and sign. It tells how the abortion is done, and details honestly the complications the occasionally occur. Sara signs the slip at the bottom, acknowledging that she has read the information and that she is authorizing them to do the abortion and whatever may be necessary afterwards. I witness her signature. I have taken $230 cash out of the bank, a help in making this whole process seem real. The money sits, expectant, in my pocket.

They call Sara’s name. She goes in, asking that I be allowed to come in too. The nurse becomes wary, says she will have to ask the doctor’s permission. The door closes behind them. I wait. Three women wait with me. I write in my journal to keep busy.

I have many times resolved that if someone I had slept with got pregnant we would, of course, have an abortion. After all that, and all the soul-searching of the past two weeks, then, why do I still feel guilty about being here? Images of the dark, dreary days of secret, illegal, dangerous abortions run across my mind. There are scenes from a movie I once saw where the young couple meets the sleazy doctor on a deserted street. The boy forks over the money, which the doctor carefully counts, and then the doctor and his assistant take the girl to a dirty, deserted room where they nervously and hurriedly prepare the scene. The boy is told to wait in the hall where he paces up and down, growing more and more agitated. Finally he can’t stand it any more and bursts in, just before the abortion is about to begin, grabs the girl away over the startled and angry objections of the other two.

A young woman emerges from behind the door to the examination rooms, whistling to herself as she goes out into the street. She seems nervous, tight, brave. Or maybe she’s not having an abortion at all. Maybe she’s just having a yeast infection treated. I wonder if they do a full range of gynecology in this office, or only abortions.

After what seems like much too long, Sara comes back out. I give her the money and she pays the receptionist. I ask why they insist on cash. The receptionist says too many checks bounce. I wonder if people are more likely to bounce checks for abortions than for other medical work. Perhaps so. The receptionist gives Sara a sheet of instructions. No food or drink after midnight. No sex once the seaweed has been inserted. No tub baths. Shower well in the morning, and take a valium before the appointment. Move your bowels, or give yourself an enema.

Sara likes the doctor — a gentle, competent woman who explains everything she does before she does it. She has agreed to my being present for the abortion, although we were told that they prefer for the men not to be there, supposedly because they tend to get sick or faint when they see blood. Sara says it hurt a bunch when they put the seaweed in, but she couldn’t feel it once it was in place.

That was the day before. Now we are waiting quite a long time, not knowing what to do with our growing anticipation. We read a National Geographic Magazine about a million and a half Moslems pilgrimming to Mecca. Finally they call Sara’s name. We go in.

The nurse shows us into a small room. Examining table with stirrups, sink, cabinets, and the shiny, stainless steel machine with its long, fat, clear-plastic tube. Sara looks scared. I find myself getting fascinated by the process despite, or right alongside, my sadness and fear.

The nurse comes in, explains carefully to Sara that she should take off her clothes below the waist, and lie on the examining table. She looks at me a little uncomfortably. I pull the chair around from behind the head of the examining table to where I can sit next to Sara and hold her hand. But I’ve got the chair blocking the door and the nurse can’t get out. We shuffle around awkwardly, and finally she’s gone. Sara undresses and lies down. I offer her my hand and she takes it softly. I ask her how she’s doing. “All right,” she answers.

After a minute, the doctor comes in. She is about 45, calm, polite, clear-eyed, reassuring. She introduces herself to me, and I’m glad that at least she doesn’t feel uncomfortable about my being there.

She gets right down to the job at hand, gets Sara adjusted in the stirrups (“these may be a little cold at first”), puts on her sterile gloves. Sara grips my hand more tightly. Two women assistants appear magically, just as they’re needed. They wheel the machine over. Everything is happening very fast, somehow.

“Now I’m going to wash you out,” the doctor explains. “This won’t hurt at all, though it may feel a little strange to be getting washed inside.”

They pour some brown antiseptic on a cotton swab, the same stuff as they dressed my wife with when my son was being born. They fill a long needle with what seems like a lot of local anesthetic. I hear them say something about five cc’s. “Now this is a long needle because I’ve got a long way to reach. I’m not going to stick this very far into you. It does sting a little, however.”

I glance at the doctor efficiently doing her part, but mostly I’m looking at Sara, She is staring at the ceiling, eyes wide. She grips my hand tightly. The doctor is saying something about a cold speculum, then she puts a metal tube into Sara’s vagina. It hurts. Sara squeezes hard on my hand, opens her mouth wide to the pain without making any sound. I feel riveted to her eyes. I hear the machine go on, glance away from Sara because I want to see the embryo go by in the plastic tube. All I see is a little blood. The nurse tells Sara to try and breathe slowly and regularly. Sara is not breathing at all. I put my hand on her belly and massage her slowly. She starts to breathe again. There’s a sudden loud gurgling sound, then they’ve taken the tube out. Sara’s body is rigid, and she’s crying.

“Is it gone?” she squeaks.

“Just a little more,” someone answers, meaning a little more suction. But the doctor is already doing the curetage — this suction will be for the last scrapings. I bend over Sara on the table.

“Yes, it’s gone,” I say as she starts to cry, and I hold her, thinking to myself: “You can let go now.” I hear the gurgling noise again, and then they take the tube out and turn off the machine.

“Yes, let the tears flow,” the doctor says, somewhere behind me, “it will make you feel better.” And Sara cries and cries. I hold her and cry some too — not enough, but some. I’m not really thinking, not really feeling, just trying to do what needs to be done. I hear people leaving the room, one by one, leaving us to be alone. When they come back, a few minutes later, Sara is still crying and I’m still holding her, and they quietly go out again. After a little more time, an assistant comes back in again and suggests tactfully that they have another room we can go to “to be more comfortable,” and that Sara should get down from the table gently. They will bring her clothes.

So we move to a nice room with a little bed and a heating pad and a blanket, and a chair for me. They offer Sara something to drink — coffee, tea, orange juice, or water. She asks for water, which comes in a little plastic cup with flowers that says “marjoram.” I think to myself that marjoram will never be the same again. Then they leave and Sara cries some more and some more and asks me not to hold my own feelings back. I hold her and try to let myself go, and yet I know that as long as I’m taking care of Sara I’m not going to be able to let myself relax enough to just let the feelings surface. For a minute I remember the drawing of the embryo in the book and picture it whooshing by in that fat plastic tube, and a voice way down inside me gasps “Oh my God” and then the embryo disappears into the machine and I go back to holding Sara.

She’s lying on her back, and I’m kneeling next to the bed on the floor. Each time someone comes into the room, I feel myself pull back from Sara a little, embarrassed somehow that we’re still there, still needing more time to release all the feelings that have gathered inside.

The assistant comes in to get something out of a cabinet. “I’ll have to interrupt you for a minute,” she says, holding a blood pressure meter in her hand. She looks at Sara. “Are you feeling a little better?” The correct answer is yes. She takes Sara’s blood pressure. I watch the needle slide slowly down over the numbers.

“How is it?” Sara asks.

“It’s 106 over 76, just where we want it,” the woman answers reassuringly. She gives Sara a blue instruction sheet, tells her to be sure to make an appointment for four or five days later for a check-up. In the meantime, Sara may have a little bleeding or a lot, a little cramping or a lot.

“Whatever happens is normal,” the nurse says. “What would not be normal would be more bleeding than a heavy period, or more cramping than you have with your period over several days.” If that happens, Sara should call them. She encourages Sara to call, even if she’s just a little unsure. She’s really very nice, and the procedure is well-designed to give women reassurance. She asks if Sara has any other questions. She doesn’t. The woman leaves.

A few minutes later the doctor comes in to ask how Sara is doing. I tell her that it would be a big help for me to be able to see the embryo, that I need something to make all this real to me. She is reluctant, as if I am being rather morbid, but she agrees.

“Yes, you can see it, if you’d like.” She goes back and comes back with a small jar. In it is water and a little cotton sock that catches all the material from the suction tube. She reaches in and turns it inside out. I don’t see any embryo at all, just a lot of gooey stuff. Sara is sitting up, and we’re all peering into the sock keenly, as if we’re medical students or something.

“Oh, there it is,” I say, looking at a darker, defined part, but the doctor says that’s just a blood clot.

“Actually,” she explains, “there’s not much to the embryo at this stage. It doesn’t have any bones, not even any cartilage yet. If you look in a book you’ll see that the only feature it has is a little bit of an eye spot.”

I become confused. “How far from conception did you say the embryo was?” I ask.

“About eight weeks.”

“Well,” I pursue, “we looked in a book last night and it seemed to say that at eight weeks there are eyes and ears and arms and legs and all that.”

The doctor shakes her head. “No, it really isn’t that human yet. Later on it develops organs and all, but at eight weeks it looks pretty much like any mammal embryo. My own philosophy is that up to about 14 weeks it’s really not a person. After that it’s different. Of course,” she adds, “that’s something each person has to work out for themselves. She has poured herself a cup of coffee and is looking thoughtfully out the window. After a minute she leaves.

“I wonder if she’s telling us the truth,” I say to Sara. I can feel a part of me wanting very much to believe that it was a vaguely-shaped blob we had just removed, rather than something more human. But I also don’t want to be protected from the reality of what we had decided to do; I want to look it directly in the eye, as hard as that is to do. I decide that the suction must pretty much dismember the embryo, and that the embryo must be pretty fragile to begin with. In any case, I wasn’t going to get to see an intact organism to catalyze my emotional release. The best I had was my mental image of the drawing in the book sweeping down the tube.

Sara asks for her glasses. I lick off the dried tears, clean them, and hand them to her. We look at each other a while without saying anything. “Thanks for being here,” Sara says, starting to cry again.

“Oh, yes,” I answer, crying a little myself. We hold each other some more. I begin to wonder if they need the room, then decide not to worry about that. I’m feeling pretty full up myself, and we seem to have come to a resting place, at least for the moment. I ask Sara if she’s ready to go.

“I guess so,” she answers. I give her her skirt and her shoes. She puts them on and we go out.

Sara makes her check-up appointment. She looks and sounds remarkably steady. I still feel pretty dazed. As we go out into the street, the inner door opens and one of the assistants sticks her head out. “Goodbye, Sara,” she calls. She doesn’t say goodbye to me.

We go home. I feel myself moving very slowly, almost carefully, as if I’ve opened up to a big vulnerable place and I don’t want anything sudden to happen to me. Sara moves around more briskly, almost cheerfully. She goes to lie down and put a heating pad on her belly. I fix a salad for lunch. At the dining table Sara is, again, almost cheerful.

“I feel pretty good,” she says when I ask, “remarkably good in fact. I don’t feel much cramping, and emotionally I feel good too.”

I nod.

“How are you doing?” she asks.

I shrug. “I’m all right,” I say. “I feel sad and quiet. Feels right somehow, for now.”

Then all day I wait and wonder when and if the wave will break. I thought it would break on seeing the embryo, but there was no embryo to see.

I nap in the afternoon. My parents call long distance. They ask what’s wrong.

“Well, today was the day of the abortion, so I’m feeling pretty shook up, I guess.”

“How’s Sara?”

I tell them. We talk about Sara for a long time and I find myself feeling more and more alone. I want them to ask about me, to talk about how I’m feeling, but even though they’re my parents all their attention goes to Sara. Finally I just start to talk about my own feelings anyway. Thankfully they listen and hear me. No, I don’t regret the decision. Yes, I do feel sad. My father remembers looking at the foetus from one of my mother’s seven miscarriages, fingers distinguished but still webbed, he says. His voice is all soft, and my mother’s too. We talk for a long time, soft like that. At the end they say that they wish there was something more they could do for me. I tell them that it’s been really good just to get to talk it all through with them. We say goodbye.

At night, Sara and I go to see a movie, an old film, all about the horrors of war. Afterwards Sara cries a bunch more, but I just feel sad and detached. Waiting. I sleep well at night, then wake early in the morning and go to write all this down, writing faster and faster the closer I get to the day of the abortion itself. I can feel it building, a little at a time. It’s when I get to the part about visualizing the embryo whizzing by in the tube that it hits, the wave, all the held-in feeling rising up at once to be let free. I get up and go to find Sara. She’s still in bed, the picture of peace, reading. I rush into her arms and blissfully let everything go — crying, sobbing, feeling every part of my body break down at last. Sara doesn’t say a word, just holds me and lets me cry, and I’m half crying and half watching myself cry, big me and Sara both encouraging little me to just flow and flow. And several minutes later I can feel that it’s all gone, at least for the moment, cleansed, purged. I’m pleased at the efficiency of it all.

“Good for you,” Sara says at the end, stroking my hair.

I look at Sara’s face looking right at me. I nod. I think, “Yes, good for me. Good for me to be sad. Good for me to let my sadness out. And good for me to have the courage to take charge of life, even when what that sometimes requires is difficult, confusing, and full of great pain.