My Remedy (Open Door Love Story Book 3) (13 page)

It’s 3 am.

I’m up.

And Cera is texting me to tell me that Duncan is in jail.

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M
y first inclination is to get dressed, get in the pickup, and go to Duncan, but as soon as I swing my legs over the side of the bed, I get a nausea beat down.

I lie back in on the bed and call Cera. I can talk with my eyes closed, but not text, and I really need for my eyes to be closed as the room spins worse when they’re open.

Being pregnant is so much like being hungover.

Cera answers on the first ring. “Hey. Duncan’s about to be released. Hold on a sec.” She tells Hector she’s going outside to talk to me and he grunts.

Guess I know what his opinion of me is right about now.

“Okay,” she says sighing, the background noise diminished. “First, tell me how you’re doing.”

“I’m fine.”

“Uh-huh. That’s not true.” She doesn’t say anything else.

Duncan is right. I can’t stand an uncomfortable silence. “I’m pregnant and it’s awful and I’m getting it taken care of tomor— later today. What’s going on with Duncan?”

Cera snorts. “And what are your feelings about this? Are you sad? Relieved that it will be over soon? Scared?”

“I’m ... I’m mostly relieved that it will be over soon and I want to forget about it.” I take in a deep breath. “Please tell me what Duncan did. Why is he in jail? If I’ve caused him to relapse...”

“You didn’t ‘cause him’ to do shit, so get that notion out of your head.”

“But he did, he relapsed.” If I had anything in my stomach, I would for sure be losing it now.

“Not exactly,” Cera says, sighing again. “He got drunk and beat the fuck out of Ricky for knocking you up.”

“I thought Duncan didn’t drink,” I say, choosing to chase after a moot point because I’m afraid to hear what he did to poor, stupid loser boy.

“He doesn’t. Not since high school Hector said. But ... I always thought it wasn’t ... I always thought it must be hard for him to be surrounded by other people using, whether it is his drug of choice or not. Here they come. Do you want to talk to him?”

Do I?

“Are you talking to Izzy?” I can hear Duncan shout.

“Yes,” Cera answers and then says to me, “do you want to talk to him? He’s mostly sober.”

“Oka—”

There is a muffling sound. “Please don’t do what I think you’re going to Izzy,” Duncan pleads, ripping my freaking heart out.

“Nope!” I hear Cera say, and then the muffling sound and the phone dropping onto the concrete.

“I can help you, Iz,” Duncan shouts. “Please, baby, let me help you.”

“You’ve helped enough,” Hector says. “Get your dumb ass in the car, Dunc.”

“Fuck,” Cera mutters, the curse getting louder as she picks up the phone. “Don’t listen to him, Izzy. Do what you gotta do. This decision isn’t his to make. It’s not even his ... I actually really fucking hesitate to even call it a baby. You’re gonna be fine. I am. Call me if you need me.”

Cera ends the call and I let my phone drop from my hand onto the pillow. I roll over to my side and it slides off the bed and onto the carpet. The selfie I took of me and Duncan at the gym a week ago, all smiling and sweaty and happy – so cute I made it the wall paper on my phone – mocks me.

We’re over before we even got started.

~

I
wake up to Aunt Nina standing over me, gently shaking my shoulder.

“Is it time to get up?” I ask through the fog. “Do chores?”

She smiles kindly down at me. “It’s eight. You’ve got to get ready for your appointment.”

My appointment. Oh, right.

I stagger to the bathroom, pee, brush my teeth, take a quick shower, and stagger back to my room. Aunt Nina has laid out some clothes for me on the bed. Normally, I would find that sort of thing smothering, but now it causes tears to well up in my eyes. She’s taking care of me. She’s doing what she can to make my life easier. She loves me.

Duncan’s words, his pleas, ring in my ears, but I put them out of my mind and get dressed.

The car ride to Planned Parenthood is mostly quiet. Some NPR news show about how gentrification is pushing African Americans out of North Portland neighborhoods is on the radio. I’m half paying attention, half just reminding myself to breathe.

The clinic is in downtown Beaverton, near the gym and Ringo’s, and it doesn’t have much of a parking lot, so Aunt Nina parks on the street.

We get out of the car and walk toward the main entrance, which is around the back of the building. In the front, there are two older ladies and one middle aged man pacing back and forth on the sidewalk, their mouths covered in red tape, holding signs that say Life is the Only Choice. They stare at me and I look away as Aunt Nina hurries me past them.

Duncan is standing by the main entrance, leaning against the brick building, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his workout pants. He stands up straighter when he sees me.

I stop in my tracks.

“Duncan,” Aunt Nina says, “you called in sick for a reason. You should be at home, resting.” She pulls me along.

Duncan ignores her and looks directly at me. “I wanted to apologize to you face-to-face, Iz. I made a bad situation worse, and I’m sorry.”

“What’s he talking about?” Aunt Nina asks.

“Nothing,” I say, my voice weak.

Now Duncan acknowledges my aunt. “No, it’s not nothing. I got drunk at work and then beat up the guy who got Izzy pregnant. Cera and Hector convinced him to not press charges against me, but I’ve lost my job at the bar and I will understand completely if you also don’t want me to work for you anymore, Nina.”

Aunt Nina shakes her head. “Duncan ... go to a meeting. Call your sponsor, son. We’ll worry about you tomorrow. Right now, Izzy has an appointment she needs to get to and you’re blocking her way.”

Instead of stepping aside, Duncan comes toward me. I brace myself for his final plea not to go through with this, but instead he kisses me on the forehead.

“I told you I loved you and I meant it,” he says firmly. “I’m going to a meeting like your aunt suggested, but I’ll be here when you’re done.”

“Okay,” I say, forcing myself to remain neutral. I feel like he’s all over the place and I don’t know what he’s going to say from one moment to the next.

Duncan gives me a quick hug, and I feebly hug him back, and then he walks away.

We go inside the clinic and come to a locked door. I push the intercom button.

“Hello,” says a cheerful voice over the intercom. “Name please.”

“Isabelle Sundall,” I answer, looking around for a camera to see if they can see me. “My Aunt Nina is with me. She made the appointment.”

“Come on in, Isabelle.” The door buzzes and unlocks. We step into a nearly empty waiting room, save for a guy about my age with a scraggly beard and his Blazers hat on backward sitting by the drinking fountain, bouncing his foot up and down, and a woman dressed in a chef’s uniform sitting on the opposite side of the room, casually flipping through a Parents magazine.

I go up to the counter while Aunt Nina takes a seat.

“Hi, Isabelle,” the woman at the counter says.

“Izzy, actually,” I say. Which is stupid. Like we’re going to meet again and be future friends or something.

She smiles. “Izzy, then. Leeanne is going to come through that door over there and take you to your room. You can fill out all the paperwork in there while you’re having a chat with the doctor.”

A blond woman with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing dark purple scrubs, opens the door that leads to the examination rooms. She smiles at me. “We’re ready for you.”

I follow her through the same things as yesterday when I thought I had the flu – weight, height, temperature, blood pressure.

She takes the blood pressure cuff off my arm and turns my arm so that she can inspect my veins. “I’m going to do a blood draw. We need to test your Rh factor to protect future pregnancies if it turns out you’re Rh-negative. There is information about why we do this in the mega packet you’ll be going through with Dr. Foley.”

Leeanne finds a vein she likes, pulls the little cart with her blood draw stuff set up on it over to the table I’m sitting on, and gets to work. I don’t really mind having my blood drawn, as long as I don’t watch when the needle goes in. I swear that makes it hurt more.

She puts the cotton ball and Band-Aid combo on my arm. “I’m going to test this,” she says, holding up the tube of blood. “Dr. Foley will be in shortly. Go ahead and get completely undressed and put on the gown on the chair. It opens in the back.”

As soon as she’s gone, I strip and get the gown on. Anything to expedite this business.

I lie on the table and stare at the butterfly mobile hanging from the ceiling, willing my nausea away. Or maybe a different kind of butterflies, I don’t know. As long as I don’t think about anything, as long as I can be outside of myself.

It occurs to me that now would be an excellent time for a drink.

It also occurs to me that I haven’t thought about drinking nearly as much as I would’ve had I been presented with my current predicament two months ago.

Look at all the progress I’m making! She says while lying on the table at Planned Parenthood about to get a mistake sucked out of her.

There is a knock on the door and I start to sit up, but the doctor coming into the room waves for me to lie back down. “Stay where you are,” she says. “We’re going to do a quick ultrasound.”

I start to pull the gown to the side so she can see my stomach.

“Unfortunately, you’re early enough along that that type of ultrasound won’t work.” She brandishes this plastic dildo-wand thing and covers it with what looks like a loose fitting condom made out of a shower cap. “This is an intravaginal ultrasound and it looks a lot scarier than it actually is, I promise.” She smiles and squirts a healthy dose of lube onto it.

Leeanne comes into the room and helps me put my feet up in the stirrups. She sits in a chair next to the table, up near my head. “Your blood isn’t Rh-negative, so that’s good. Less to deal with after your procedure.” Leeanne turns around and flips on a machine.

Dr. Foley aims the wand at my crotch while looking at the screen behind Leeanne’s head. I can’t see the screen and there is no sound.

It dawns on me they don’t want me to see the fetus or hear the heartbeat. Tears rush to my eyes, but then Leeanne’s right there in my field of vision giving me a soothing smile. “You’re doing well, Izzy.”

“I’m going to insert the wand now,” Dr. Foley says. “It will feel more slippery than anything. There will be some slight pressure.”

She slides it in – it feels like when you’ve left a tampon in an hour too long – moves it around a bit, nods her head, and pulls it out.

“All done.” She takes the condom-y thing off the wand and tosses it into the trash along with her gloves. “Now for the paperwork.”

Leeanne helps me sit up slowly and I take my feet out of the stirrups.

Dr. Foley asks me all of the regular medical history questions – who died from this, who had that and when. I answer as best I can, grateful that my family is small, and angry that my mom isn’t around for me to know everything about myself.

“Your history of alcohol abuse is why we’re doing what is called an aspiration abortion today instead of giving you the abortion pill. Normally in someone only seven weeks into their pregnancy, we’d want to use the pill, but it can be taxing on your liver and we want to avoid any complications. The pill is less invasive, but the aspiration procedure will be over more quickly. Both are good options.”

I nod. I don’t have much to say, and I get the feeling that most women don’t because Dr. Foley gets me through the paperwork as quickly and thoroughly as she can.

“The next step is to give you some medicine to make you calm, and then over the course of an hour I will be inserting a series of dilators into your cervix to open it up so that the tube we use to empty the uterus will slide in more easily.”

I think about Duncan getting drunk last night, even though he swore alcohol isn’t his drug of choice. “Is there any chance I could become addicted to the pain meds you’re giving me?”

Dr. Foley smiles. “Good question. In short, no. You will only be administered this medication here at the office today. Otherwise, you’re prescribed antibiotics to stave off infection and ibuprofen for the pain – which will be similar to menstrual cramps and should not last for more than a couple days.”

I nod again and take in a deep breath.

“Okay, then Izzy. We’ve come to the point where I need to ask you if you want to go ahead with this procedure and if so, you will sign right here.” Dr. Foley points to the last page of the packet we’ve filled out.

She doesn’t hand it to me or set it next to me on the exam table or anything. She waits for me. I meet her eyes.

“Isabelle, do you want to go ahead with this procedure today?” she asks.

I barely remember my mother. I can hear her wild laugh and see her fingernails painted in a deep purple color, and that’s about it. Dad has an album of photos that I was allowed to look at whenever I wanted to growing up ... and I never wanted to. My mom didn’t have it in her to be a mother and neither do I. Not at twenty. Not with an addiction. Not when I’m still learning how to take care of myself. Even without these reasons, the decision is as simple as I don’t want to be pregnant at this time and I don’t have to be.

“I would like to go ahead with the procedure.” I hold my hand out for the packet of papers.

Dr. Foley gives them to me. “Let’s get started.”

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L
eeanne looks at the readout on the thermometer. “You’re at 98.1, Izzy. I’m going to say you’re good to go.”

I start to stand up from the exam table and get a dull ache just below my belly button.

“Whoa, hold on a second. I’ll help you get your clothes on and then walk you out and get you into your aunt’s car, which she should be bringing around right now.”

“You talked to Aunt Nina?” I ask, even though that’s not what I want to know. Did she talk to Duncan? Was he waiting for me like he said he’d be?