The Color of Destiny (The Color of Heaven Series Book 2) (6 page)

Move?
No, no, absolutely not. That was out of the question. Leave Glenn? I couldn’t imagine it. He was every breath in my body, the very life in my veins. Anything but that.

So we would stay, my father said, as long as I agreed to the abortion, which would solve this problem. Rub it out as if it had never existed. ‘None of us would ever so much as
mention
it again,’ Dad said. We would put it behind us and move forward. Everything would return to normal.

But was any of this normal? I asked myself as I got into the car to drive to the hospital on the day of the procedure. Would it be normal to pretend that something never happened when it did? Would it be normal to spend the rest of my life wondering what my child might have looked like? What he or she might have accomplished?

What if I was purging a genius from my womb? What if this tiny embryo might grow up to discover a cure for cancer?

All these questions spun around in my brain like a tornado, and I could barely think straight. What I needed was time. Time to make a decision, to explore what was important to me, but my parents had convinced me there was no time to think. If I was going to have the abortion, I needed to have it right away, or it would be too late. I was pushed and shoved and pressured into believing that it was the right decision. I was not given the chance to listen to my own heart.

Then, just as we were backing out of the driveway, Mia hopped into the back seat of the car beside me. “I’m coming with you,” she said. She sat next to me in silence, then took my hand and looked me straight in the eye with an intensity I had not seen before.

Chapter Nineteen

Looking back on that day, I will always wish I had been stronger, more decisive, and not so easily influenced by what my parents wanted, for I had allowed them to talk me into something I was not comfortable with. The only reason I have forgiven myself is because I was so young, and I had been brought up in a home where my father set the rules, and we were expected to obey them.

He did not come with us to the clinic that day. I believe as soon as we pulled out of the driveway, he considered the problem dealt with. But he was unaware of the turmoil in my heart, which could not be dealt with so easily.

I sat in the waiting room staring at the posters on the walls. One explained the importance of prenatal vitamins. Another showed a mother in a rocking chair, bottle-feeding her baby and looking wonderfully fulfilled.

Magazines were stacked tidily on the tables, but I couldn’t read because I felt nauseous—especially when my gaze fell upon the pregnant woman sitting across from us. She must have been in her last trimester because she was as big as a barn. I watched her rub her hand in graceful, soothing circles over her belly.

My nausea was mostly a result of morning sickness, but it was intensified by stress and the unthinkable fact that I was about to have my womb scraped clean.

I couldn’t figure out how my mother could sit calmly in the chair next to me, reading a mystery novel, as if we were there for a routine flu shot.

Mia sat on the other side of me, chewing gum. “Are you okay?” she quietly asked.

I swallowed hard, to keep my breakfast down. “Not really.”

“You don’t look so good. Are you going to be sick?”

I didn’t want to open my mouth to speak, so I simply nodded.

With impressive authority, Mia stood. “Come with me. The washroom is this way.”

My mother looked up from her novel.

“She’s not feeling well,” Mia explained. “I’m taking her to the bathroom.”

I felt everyone’s eyes follow me—and judge me—as we hurried down the hall. By now the situation was urgent and I pushed through the door, not even bothering to turn on the lights before I bent over the toilet and retched up the contents of my stomach. Only vaguely was I aware of Mia flicking on the fluorescent lights, closing and locking the door behind us, and holding back my hair.

I hadn’t eaten much for breakfast, so I was cursed with a violent spell of dry heaves. When I finished, Mia pulled a tissue from the box on the back of the toilet and handed it to me. I used it to wipe the tears from my eyes and blow my nose.

“Feel any better?” she asked.

I nodded, then closed the lid on the toilet and sat down. I rested my elbows on my knees, my forehead on the heels of my hands.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” Mia asked.

I looked up at her. “Do I have a choice? I’m sixteen and pregnant.”

“You
do
have a choice,” she said. “It’s your body.”

“But I already agreed to this. I told Dad –”

“It doesn’t matter what you told Dad,” she firmly said. “You can change your mind if you want to. I just don’t want you to have any regrets.”

She backed up against the door while I stood to splash water on my face. I pulled a square of paper towel from the dispenser, and patted my mouth dry.

“What does Glenn think?” she asked.

“He feels the same way I do.”

“And how is that?”

“Lost. Uncertain.” I dried my hands, crumpled up the paper towel, and threw it into the trashcan. “But he said he’d support me, no matter what I decided.”

“Even if you decided to keep the baby?” she asked.

I looked at her directly. “Yes. He said he’d marry me tomorrow if that’s what I wanted.”

“Is it?”

I took a deep breath and let it out. “Part of me does. My heart wants it, but my head tells me it would be a mistake to rush into something like that. I do want to marry him, but we’re too young. I’m afraid of how it could turn out. And Dad is right about one thing. We couldn’t support ourselves, and I don’t want to hold Glenn back. He wants to go to college, and so do I. I don’t want him to be a grocery store clerk for the rest of his life. And when we have a child, I want to bring that child up right.” I laid a hand on my belly. “Maybe I’m too practical, but I don’t believe that love is enough. It might be at first, but I’m afraid all the hardships and money problems will eventually chip away at our love, and we’ll grow to hate each other. Then we’ll get a messy divorce and our kid will be totally screwed up.”

I turned to look at myself in the mirror. “God, I’m a mess.” I was the color of wet cement in a bucket.

“It’s stress,” Mia said. She unzipped her purse. “Here, put on some lip gloss. It’ll make you feel better.”

“Really?” I replied skeptically. Only Mia could suggest that lip gloss could cure the woes of a pregnant teenager.

When we returned to the waiting room, Mom looked up from her book. “What took you so long?”

“What’s the matter?” Mia asked. “Were you afraid she changed her mind and tried to climb out the bathroom window?”

“That’s not funny, Mia.”

Just then, a nurse with a clipboard entered the waiting area. “Kate Worthington?”

“She’s right here,” Mom said, stuffing her book into her purse and rising to her feet.

She followed me toward the door that led to the examination rooms, but I stopped and turned to face her. “I can do this myself.”

“But I should come with you.”

“No. I don’t want you there.” I signalled to Mia, who was just sitting back down. “Will
you
come?”

Her eyebrows lifted in surprise, then she quickly gathered up her purse and moved past our mother.

Chapter Twenty

The nurse took me to a locker and handed me a green johnnie shirt. She told me to wait for the doctor in examination room number six, and warned me that he was slightly behind schedule, so it could be a half hour, or more, before we got started.

Got started
. That seemed, to me, a grim turn of phrase, considering that we were about to bring my short-lived pregnancy to an end.

I felt dizzy as I climbed onto the crinkly paper on the table. I glanced at the shiny stirrups and imagined placing my heels in them. How long would it take? How much pain would there be?

I laid my hand on my stomach where my baby was. He, or she, was alive inside me and growing. Mom kept telling me ‘it’ was no bigger than a walnut, but that didn’t make any difference to me. Not in that moment while I waited for the doctor to arrive.

“You still look like crap,” Mia said.

“I don’t feel so good,” I replied, hopping off the table to stand on my feet.

“Are you going to be sick again?”

All at once, a vivid image of this baby invaded my consciousness, and I could see her as a little girl, five years old and laughing. With red hair just like mine. The sound of her laughter was as real in my mind as any flesh-and-blood human being standing before me, and her joy was contagious. I experienced an immense infusion of love, as if someone had pumped it into my veins, and I knew at once that I had to leave that room.

“I can’t do it,” I said to Mia. “I have to have this baby. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet, but if I have to put her up for adoption, then that’s what I’ll do.”

My sister didn’t question my decision or ask what had changed my mind. She simply nodded—as if she’d already known it would come to this—and rose to her feet.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said.

I couldn’t reach the door fast enough.

o0o

When Mia and I pushed through the doors to the waiting area, my mother turned pale as a sheet. She lowered her novel and frowned at me.

“Are you finished already?”

“Yes, I’m finished,” I replied, not stopping to explain.

Feeling the curious stares of two other pregnant women in the room, I locked eyes with one of them. She smiled at me, as if she knew I was like her... that I, too, had a tiny, special life growing inside of me, and wasn’t it wonderful?

You’re doing the right thing, a voice whispered inside my head. Was this my conscience? My higher self? Or was I reading that woman’s thoughts? Could pregnant women communicate through telepathy? Was there some sort of magic at work here? Or was I going mad?

I walked out of the hospital without waiting for my mother, who learned from Mia that I had changed my mind. They stayed to explain my decision to the nurse at the desk, while I waited by the locked car in the sunny parking lot.

Mia later told me everything she had said to Mom, and I will never forget what she did for me that day, and how she spared me the ordeal of fighting for what I wanted and needed.

Mia told our mother in no uncertain terms that if she or Dad questioned or criticized my decision, they would lose me forever and never know their future grandchildren.

She was my buffer that day, my protector, and my friend.

When Mom arrived at the car and unlocked it, she said, “Well, I suppose we’re going to have to come up with a new plan.”

I climbed into the back seat with no idea what that plan would be. All I knew was that I needed to see Glenn.

Chapter Twenty-one

I rode my bike to the school as soon as we got home. Basketball practice was over, but the coach had the team gathered on the bench for a pep talk.

As soon as they finished, Glenn spotted me, picked up his gear, and jogged to the door where I stood waiting. His hair was tousled and damp with perspiration, and his white cotton T-shirt clung wetly to his skin.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I replied, and immediately burst into a clumsy mixture of laughter and tears.

“What happened?” he asked, confused by my response.

“I couldn’t do it,” I told him. I was crying more than laughing, but they were happy tears, except that I was shaking all over, terrified to imagine what our future held. “Dad’s going to be so angry when he finds out. I don’t know what he’s going to do. What if he was serious about moving away? I can’t do this without you.”

Glenn dropped his bag and pulled me into his arms. He smelled of clean, fresh sweat, and when I pressed my lips to his cheek, I tasted salt.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” he whispered.

“Are you mad at me?”

I wondered if he might have preferred for me to go through with the abortion.

He held me at arm’s length and looked into my eyes. “Mad? Never. I just wish I could have been there with you, and I’m sorry I let your parents pressure us. Deep down I knew it wasn’t right. I knew you’d regret it.”

“Yes, I would have, but now I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

“We’ll get through it,” he said. “I promise. I still want to marry you.”

“Are you sure?”

He took my face in his hands and kissed me hard. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

And on that day, I believed him.

Chapter Twenty-two

I wish I could tell you that we were married a few weeks later and lived happily ever after, but fate was not so kind.

First of all, my father refused to give us permission to marry. He told us that we had to be eighteen. Years later I learned that if you’re pregnant, the parental consent requirement can be waived. Maybe I was naïve, but it didn’t occur to me to doubt what my father told us about the law.