Crashing Down (11 page)

‘When?'

‘Let's take it back a few steps. All ova are considered “human”; they contain human DNA. Yet a woman — unless fertilisation happens — sheds one a month, and this isn't cause for concern. A man produces millions of sperm a day also containing human DNA; most are lost, very few fertilise an egg. Again, no real cause for concern. But once an egg is fertilised, people agree it is now a life, but this is where it gets complicated. If a woman has an IUD, that doesn't prevent fertilisation, it prevents implantation. Most women with IUDs can expel fertilised eggs if conception takes place — again, no cause for concern. IUDs are not under scrutiny
by the pro-lifers. And if a fertilised egg is a person, with all the rights that a person is entitled to, then a woman who miscarries could be charged with murder. So “personhood” must be defined the same way “death” is.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘When we declare someone dead, it is due to a lack of brain activity. The brain has flatlined. By this definition, the uniqueness of humans is the developed brain — that allows for an awareness of its surroundings, the ability to feel pain, that sort of thing. It's not until the fifth month that this development takes place, in a primitive neurological way. So, applying the same logic as “death of a person”, then “life of a person” begins around twenty to twenty-two weeks.'

‘About five months?'

‘Correct.'

‘That's a bit of space to think,' Lucy says. ‘But I guess the sooner the better?'

‘Yes, but it gives you the chance to consider all the options. Adoption is a consideration — but of course the pregnancy and birth may be difficult.'

‘And then there is a baby out there in the world.
My baby.' Lucy shrugs. ‘That sounds so selfish and horrible, doesn't it? It's all about me. What I want. How it will affect my life in the future. I don't like the idea of my baby growing up without me in its life, so I'm thinking about ending its life. I'm some sort of monster.' She starts crying again.

‘Hang on,' her dad says, putting a hand on her leg. ‘It
is
about you. It's your life and the decision you make fundamentally affects you more than anyone else. If we use the logic that it's not a person yet, then we are not ending a life. Just the potential for one.'

‘Sounds like semantics.' Lucy wipes her eyes.

‘Philosophy and law are both based on semantics.' After a pause, Dad says, ‘And there is the other option.'

‘Having it?'

‘Yes. What do you think about that?'

She exhales loudly. To become a mother — could she do it? She's only just turned seventeen; what does she know about raising a child? What does she know about teaching someone how to become a person? She's barely qualified. And the resources? How would she afford a baby? Would she have to go
to work? Would she have to give up on the idea of uni?

‘It's unimaginable,' she says finally, realising that everything is leading her to one solution. An abortion. The thought makes her feel sick. How can that be a solution? She sighs and looks down. ‘What's the right choice?'

‘It may not even be about the right choice, Rabbit; it may come down to the least worst one,' her dad says finally. ‘A decision of this nature isn't going to be easy, but we will get through it together. You, me and Mum. Have you thought about telling Emma?'

‘Yes.' She nods. ‘But I wanted to tell you first.'

‘And Carl? With his violence and aggression, he might not handle the news,' Dad says.

‘I was going to tell him today. But you're right, he's in such a bad place — I don't know what the right thing to do is. There are so many decisions to make and all of them feel wrong.'

‘It's not a great situation,' her dad concedes. ‘You don't have to tell him.'

‘I thought about that, too — but that seems so wrong. Even though he can't make me have it — and
I know he'll want to do that. At least, the Carl before the accident would have wanted that — who knows what this one will want? He might surprise me and ask me not to have it.'

‘And if he does?' her dad asks.

‘I guess I'd feel better, knowing that we were both in agreement. And that he knew. It feels deceitful, doing it without his knowledge.'

‘Okay,' her dad nods. ‘Have you heard of RU486?'

‘The abortion pill?' Lucy asks. ‘Is it better than the surgical option?' She shudders; both options are hideous.

‘I think so,' her dad says. ‘It creates a type of miscarriage, cramping and bleeding, like a heavy period. The surgical procedure requires anaesthetic — a twilight one, but in a clinic. This way it can be done at home, or here. Whatever you want.'

‘I don't want any of this,' Lucy says.

‘I wish I could make that an option, but I can't,' her dad says sadly. ‘It's late, let's talk about it tomorrow.'

When she wakes in the morning, she feels more convinced that a medical abortion is the least worst
option. Her dad is making coffee when she walks into the kitchen. He nods at the machine.

‘Yes, please.' She sits on the stool and gets straight to the point. ‘I think I want the drug.'

He nods. ‘Do you want me to ring around?'

‘Yes.'

And suddenly there it is. A decision.

She can't bear to go to the hospital first thing in the morning. She needs some space. She needs a chance to consolidate everything in her head before she tells Carl.

She phones Mr K and says she'll be in later if she can.

He doesn't sound happy. ‘Carl needs you.'

‘I know, but there are things that I have to do. I'll try and come this evening.'

‘I'll tell Carl you'll come later.'

She doesn't want to argue and so she says goodbye and hangs up. Now what to do? She needs to talk to her sister, but it's about midnight there.
She'll have to wait until later. She organises to meet Lydia and Georgia.

‘I'm not having it,' she tells them as they sit on the grassed area overlooking the ocean. The wind is strong and flings sharp needles of sand at them.

‘Ouch, I just got bitten by something,' Lydia says, rubbing her face.

‘It's sand, Lydia,' Georgia says.

‘Sand can bite?' Lydia says.

Georgia doesn't even bother to reply. She looks at Lucy. ‘You've made a decision?'

‘Yes.' Lucy tells them the logic that her dad applied to the situation, and both girls nod in agreement.

‘What about Carl?' Lydia says.

‘I'll tell him before I do it. You're right: he should know.'

Lydia persists. ‘But what if he wants it?'

Lucy shrugs. It seems heartless and cruel, but it's really too bad. It's not his decision and, besides, she thinks angrily, if he'd read the instructions he'd know how to put a condom on properly. She shakes her head — blaming him isn't going to make things better.

‘It's not his decision.'

‘But …' Lydia begins.

Georgia holds her hand up. ‘Lydia, Lucy has made a choice and we have to respect it. If you badger her with your ideas you'll undermine her, and she'll feel judged. It's not fair.'

Lydia shrugs. ‘Thought I was playing devil's avocado.'

‘It's
advocate,'
Georgia says.

‘Whatever.' Lydia rubs her face again. ‘I won't say another thing. Man, that sand bite is bad.'

‘I'll see him this evening,' Lucy tells them. ‘And then I'll do it and this mess will be over.'

‘We're here for you,' Georgia says. ‘Let me know what I can do.'

‘And me,' Lydia adds.

‘Thanks, guys.'

When Lucy gets home she logs on to Skype. Her sister answers just before it rings out. She's been sleeping, her hair is a mess and she hasn't taken off her makeup.

‘Big night?' Lucy says.

‘Yeah — drank way too much. Feel pretty average. How's Carl? Mum said he was pretty messed up.'

Lucy spends the next fifteen minutes outlining what's been happening.

‘Man, that is screwed up. You okay?'

Lucy shakes her head. ‘There's more.'

‘Really?'

‘I'm pregnant.' She watches her sister's mouth drop open.

‘No way.'

Lucy nods. ‘Wish I wasn't, but there you go.'

‘Shit, when is it due?'

‘I don't know.' Lucy realises that during all these conversations she's never considered its due date — only how many weeks it is now.
That's because you've always considered an abortion as the number one choice,
she thinks. How telling.

‘I'm about six and a half weeks or so,' she says.

Her sister quickly calculates. ‘About May next year — a couple of months before you're eighteen. Guess your eighteenth will be a bit different.'

And Lucy realises with horror: her sister thinks she is going ahead with it.

‘I'm not having it,' she says.

Emma's mouth drops open again. ‘Are you for serious?'

Lucy nods. She can't believe this — never expected it. She thought her sister would force her into an abortion, whether she wanted one or not.

‘What does Dad think?'

‘He says to do whatever I choose. My decision. He's pro-choice.'

‘No, Lucy,' Emma's voice is sad. ‘You'd kill your baby?'

‘It's not a baby,' Lucy says. Tears well up in her throat again. ‘It's not a person until it has brain activity.'

‘Oh, Lucy.' Emma sighs and has tears in her own eyes. ‘That's just Dad Logic. His way of constructing the facts to suit an outcome.'

Lucy recoils at Emma's words. ‘Dad's made sense of plenty of messes you've been in,' she snaps, thinking of the time Emma had gone to Graham's place and hidden prawns in the curtain rod. ‘The smell will drive him bonkers,' she'd said madly at the time — and then had a nervous breakdown. Dad had counselled her through it all — made her see that she'd been driven to uncharacteristic behaviour by Graham's betrayal, that she wasn't a deranged lunatic. And wasn't it Dad who had coughed up for her airline ticket so she could travel and
find herself?
If this is who she'd found, Lucy wishes she'd lose her. She wants
her
Emma back. ‘I thought you'd support me,' she says sadly.

‘I do support you'— Emma leans in closer to the camera — ‘but I don't support your decision. I love you, Luce, but what you're talking about is murder.'

Lucy shakes her head. Such emotionally charged
words —
murder, baby,
the two collide.

‘Why can't you have it?' Emma says desperately.

‘Because …' Lucy pauses. ‘I don't want it. I don't want to be a mother. I want to be a teenager. I want to finish school. Have a life — go to uni.' There, said out loud again it still sounds awful.

‘Sounds selfish, doesn't it?' Emma says gently.

Lucy nods. But that's the big dilemma. What real reason does she have? And aren't the reasons she does have real enough?

‘You wouldn't be doing it alone,' Emma says. ‘I'll come back and help you. Mum and Dad will, too. We'll get through it, make it work.'

As much as Lucy knows Emma means what she says, the undeniable truth is that the responsibility will ultimately be all hers. And Carl's. Carl. She shudders.

‘I don't want to be with Carl anymore. And as soon as he's better, or well enough to handle the truth, I'm breaking up with him.' Lucy suddenly blurts the truth she's been keeping to herself. That wasn't something she'd really thought about saying — but there it was. Lurking in the recesses of her mind, all this time — affecting her thinking about the
pregnancy. ‘I don't want to have his baby and raise it as a single parent. I don't want that life.'

Emma purses her lips thoughtfully. ‘I hear what you're saying. But heaps of people do it every day of the week. Look at Aunty Liv — she did it.'

‘Look at Aunty Liv,' Lucy agrees, ‘she's a case in point.' Aunty Liv had had a child when she was seventeen and single. She never said who the father was. She raised Jonas as best she could but struggled with money — state housing, poor areas. Sure, they managed, and Jonas was a nice kid, but he hung out with a rough crowd and drove Aunty Liv demented with worry. And Aunty Liv would often comment on how she wished she'd done things, gone places — but had to work a day job and a night shift to make ends meet. That was exactly the future that terrified Lucy.

‘She's not a bad example,' Emma says. ‘Look at the bond, the friendship between them. Look at Jonas — he wouldn't exist, wouldn't have a life at all, if she'd done what you're thinking of.'

‘I know, Emma. Please stop.' More messages, more thoughts, more opinions. She feels hammered. ‘I've got to go. I have to see Carl.'

‘Okay.' Emma reaches up and touches the screen.
‘I love you, Luce. You know that. I am here for you and I'll fly back on the next plane if you need me. I just don't want you to make a dreadful mistake.'

Lucy reaches out too, so their fingertips are virtually touching.

‘That seems like the only outcome,' she says. ‘Every choice looks like a dreadful mistake.'

‘Please, please, give this more thought,' Emma begs her.

Lucy nods. ‘Gotta go. Love you.'

She watches her sister wave as she logs off.

For a moment, she stares at the screensaver. Her conviction wavering again.
What to do? What to do?
She looks at her watch. Carl now.

Wearily she drags herself out the door.

Carl is propped up in bed against the pillows while a nurse takes his blood pressure.

‘So, how about it?' he asks the nurse.

Lucy frowns as the nurse — Molly, her name tag reads — turns red and shuffles things on the cart, obviously uncomfortable, wanting to leave. But Carl is tethered to the blood pressure monitor, which is wheezing and tightening as it inflates.