I considered the little shape on the ultrasound image. It didn’t look like a baby. It looked like a snowman with flippers.
The doctor at Planned Parenthood had been super nice, answering all my questions about the fetus on the screen. She’d been very gentle about not making assumptions with regard to my intentions. Which was great, because I had no idea if my mind would change once I talked things over with Neil.
I’d never had to make a decision like this in my life. I’d never thought I would. When I was in Catholic school, it had been my life’s ambition to go hang out in front of clinics and scare women away. I’d vowed then that no matter what happened in my life, I would never have an abortion. Of course, that all changed when I’d grown up a little and realized how big an impact a baby makes on a woman’s life. I’d consistently used contraceptives with my partners— except for this one, stupid time— and I’d decided that if I got pregnant, I would do the responsible thing for myself: I would have an abortion.
Thinking about abortion in the hypothetical had lulled me into false senses of “never” and “always” at those very different stages of my life. Now, stuck between my devout upbringing and my current state of mind, I was facing a “maybe” I had never prepared to face.
You don’t know what you’re going to do in a situation until faced with it. Life lesson learned. I was going to have to banish “never” from my repertoire.
The doctor figured I was about eight weeks along. Eight weeks. It didn’t seem possible. I really had lost track of time. But there it was, in black and white.
I did the backward math and decided that it had probably been that night Neil had come back from England. In our altered states— him on Klonopin for his flying anxiety, me drunk from celebrating the new job I’d already lost— we’d decided to throw caution to the wind. After all, I’d been on birth control then. And how often did that fail?
“Plenty,” had been the doctor’s answer. And it hadn’t helped that with all the stress of a new job and an unexpected relationship, I hadn’t exactly been religious about my pill taking. This whole thing could have been avoided if I had just been paying more attention.
The car pulled up outside Neil’s pre-war apartment building on Fifth Avenue, and I guiltily stuffed the printout in the back pocket of my jeans. I paid the driver with a wad of bills and didn’t tip him as well as he was probably expecting, given the address.
I didn’t know how I was going to break the news, even as I crossed the lobby. The amount of time I had to figure it out was getting shorter with every step I took. The doorman called up for me, I got in the elevator, and I braced myself for the oncoming awkwardness.
How do you tell the guy who just tried to break up with you that you’re pregnant with his baby?
When the doors opened on his floor and I stepped into the softly lit vestibule, Neil was there already, waiting for me.
When I saw him, my stomach dropped like I was in the backseat of a minivan going over a bad hill. He was pale, he looked tired, and the smile he gave me was worried and forced.
But he was still Neil, so handsome and tall, with his in-between-blonde-and-brown hair and his gorgeous green eyes. My heart flip-flopped, like it always did, since that first moment we’d met at LAX over six years ago.
“Hello, Sophie.”
“Hey,” I responded in a short, friendly monotone as we moved into the inner foyer. His apartment, which I had just begun to feel comfortable in before our near-breakup or breakup-in-progress, whatever was happening between us, suddenly seemed like a stranger’s home. I’d had a difficult enough time getting used to the fact that my boyfriend lived in a Fifth Avenue palace with checkered marble floors and a freaking home movie theatre. Now I felt like I had to be on my very best behavior.
Neil helped me with my coat. “You look very pretty,” he said softly.
I hadn’t changed out of the crème-colored cowl-necked sweater and soft old jeans I’d worn to the doctor’s office. I didn’t feel particularly pretty, but I murmured a thank you all the same. I noted his salmon button down. “It’s not pink, it’s salmon,” he had argued with me a few weeks ago, before we’d tumbled playfully into his bed.
I blinked back my tears at the memory. “You’re not so bad yourself. Did you go to work today?”
“No, I was just so tired of hospital gowns. I needed to get dressed or end up deeply depressed.” His laugh was short.