Shades of Blue (30 page)

What was she doing? And what about her baby? Was it too late to run from the room, to leave the office and the matter-of-fact woman and Brad and flee the building? The questions came at her like so many razor-sharp arrows, but before she could think of a single answer, the door opened …

The woman stepped in, shut the door behind her, and handed Emma a clipboard.

“Counseling is mandatory before the procedure.” The woman leaned against the door and smiled. “You’ve had your counseling appointment, is that right?”

“Yes.” Emma didn’t recognize her voice. She noted two things about the moment that would stay with her all her life. The woman never called the abortion an abortion. She called it a procedure. And second, her smile never came close to touching her eyes.

Not sure what to do next, Emma stared at the paper on the clipboard. Consent Form, it read. Emma looked up, her teeth clattering. “Is … is it cold in here?”

“You’re just nervous.” The woman came closer and felt Emma’s forehead. “You don’t have a fever. You need to relax, dear. Really.” She took a step back, surveying Emma. “Has anyone gone over your options?”

“Options?” A glimmer of hope fanned through Emma’s heart. “What are my options?”

The woman hesitated. “How old are you?”

“Eighteen.” Emma set the clipboard next to her and hugged herself tight, trying to ward off the cold in her bones. “What options?”

“Well … they should’ve talked about this at the counseling appointment. Those options.”

“Oh.” Emma nodded. The option of having the baby and giving it up for adoption, or raising it herself. “I … think I know about the options.”

“Very good.” She smiled at Emma again. “A lot of girls are scared when they come in here, but I need to tell you. This is very routine. The procedure is performed on hundreds of women each month right here in this clinic.” She looked intently at Emma. “You’re what … twelve weeks along?”

Twelve weeks?
She gulped, not sure what that meant or how she had let so much time go by. “I … think so. My cycle isn’t … I’m not very regular.”

“I’m sure you’re not much further along than that.” She patted Emma’s shoulder. “At twelve weeks we’re not talking about a baby, dear. You have a mass of cells inside you. The procedure removes those cells so that a baby doesn’t grow. Then you can move on and put this whole thing behind you.”

A mass of cells?
Emma clung to the definition, and in a blur of comforting statements and reassurances from the woman, Emma signed the paperwork. She signed her name to a paper promising that this was her choice, her decision, and that no one had forced her into having the abortion, like she’d gone over in her counseling session a few days ago.

She gave her consent.

The temperature on the beach was falling again, and Emma felt as cold now as she had that day in the clinic. She turned to Brad and saw a shame and guilt in his eyes that she’d never seen before. He ran his thumb over the top of her hand. “I should’ve gone to the counseling meeting with you.”

She wanted to believe that if he had, if they’d listened to the woman’s explanation together, then they would’ve decided against the abortion. But she knew better. “It wouldn’t have mattered. We’d made up our minds by then. This wasn’t only your fault, Brad. I walked down that hallway.”

“What … what happened next?”

Emma slipped back to that moment. Once the paperwork was signed, the woman had little else to say. She collected her clipboard and left Emma alone again. In that final minute with her baby, Emma put her hand over her stomach. It was all going to be over soon, right? Wasn’t that what the woman had said? But if this was the last time she would ever be alone with her child, she felt the desperate need to say something. A final good-bye of sorts. Tears spilled onto her cheeks, but the hot streams did nothing to warm her. “Little baby,” she whispered. The shivering made her whispers sound like a series of strange clicks and breaths. “I’m sorry, baby. This isn’t your fault.”

She was still trying to talk, still crying when there was a knock at the door, and a middle-aged man walked inside. The doctor must’ve told her to lay down, because the next thing she remembered, she was on her back and he was easing the heels of her feet into stirrups. Everything started to blur and Emma’s mind began to spin. The woman appeared and stood near the wall, but she seemed to look anywhere but Emma’s eyes.

She squeezed her eyes shut.
I’m sorry little baby … I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. This isn’t your fault.

The doctor gave her a shot. She gasped, and her shivering grew worse. “It’s … it’s s-s-s-so cold.”

“You’ll be warmer in a minute.”

Again the edges blurred and the room seemed to be in constant motion. The woman swaying by the door, the doctor looming over her.

She blinked and the memory eased up. The feel of Brad’s hand in hers gave her strength to go on. The worst was yet to come. She took a long breath and told Brad what happened next. Every detail — every single painful, horrific detail about what she felt and heard and the heartbreak she felt.

“The memory is so clear, like it happened yesterday,” Emma squinted toward the horizon, wishing for a way to go back and change the past. “But after a while I began to lose consciousness. Maybe the medicine, or the reality … knowing what was happening.”

She heard bits and pieces of the doctor’s conversation, something about being further along. By then, she didn’t feel like she was on a cold abortion table in a clinic in downtown Wilmington. Rather she was holding her baby in her arms, protecting her baby.
Everything’s okay, little one. No one’s ever going to hurt you again.
Someone touched her shoulder … once and then again. Go away, she wanted to shout. But she was too tired to speak. She didn’t want to be roused awake, not now and maybe not ever.

But eventually she heard the doctor’s voice. “It’s over. You can open your eyes.”

Emma blinked, not sure where she was. She gasped as the realization hit her full force. She was in a clinic having an abortion, and now … “My baby?”

“The pregnancy is terminated.” He looked satisfied with himself. “Your procedure was successful.” He stepped back. “You were a week or so past the twelve-week mark.” He paused, and then almost as an afterthought he said, “It was a girl, by the way.”

They were words that stayed with Emma while the doctor cleaned her up and dismissed himself. Words that haunted her and mocked her while she rested for the next half hour and after she dressed herself and walked — with the help of the older woman — back down the hallway to the place where Brad was waiting. The baby was a girl.

Words that would stay with her forever.

Thunder rumbled in the distance and Emma looked at Brad through dry eyes. The pieces of the story were only just hitting him. He hung his head for a long time, and tears began falling to the sand. He still held her hand, only now his grip was much harder than before. Sobs began to quietly hit him, flexing the muscles in his back.

Emma wanted to do something to help, but there was nothing. Every day since then she’d grieved the loss of their little girl, but for Brad the grieving was only just beginning. He had lost a daughter, something he hadn’t really understood until just now.

He dragged the back of his hands across his cheeks and finally lifted his head and looked at her. “It wasn’t her fault … our baby girl.” He breathed in three quick times through his nose, clearly fighting the heartache. “I’m sorry, Emma. You’ve … carried this loss … all these years.”

“I would’ve told you.” She released his hand and put her arm around his shoulders. Her first love, her best friend. The man she had come to view as an enemy. Her strained voice was barely louder than the crashing surf. “You didn’t ask about any of it. I figured … you didn’t deserve to know about her.” Brad’s face twisted in a mask of unbearable grief. “Our daughter … our little girl.”

“Yes.” Emma removed her arm from his back and covered her face. Her own tears had stopped as she told her story, but now the loss welled up inside her like a bottomless ocean of sorrow. “She … she would be nine.”

A sound, part sob, part guttural cry came from Brad. “We never got to hold her.” Brad slid closer and put both his arms around Emma, cradling her, clinging to her. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

There was nothing more they could say, nothing they could do. Their baby girl was gone, and no amount of tears or pain would bring her back. Still they stayed that way, lost in the moment, unaware of anything but the tragedy they’d shared, the tragedy they’d lived with ever since.

Another clap of thunder sounded, this one closer than before. Brad released his hold on her and helped her to her feet. He sniffed and seemed to try to get a grip on his emotions. “We need to get inside.”

Emma looked at the sky just as a bolt of lightning flashed out over the ocean. There was only one place they could go, whether it was smart to bring Brad Cutler there or not. “My house. We need to hurry.”

With tears still on their faces, they grabbed their sunglasses and jogged along the packed wet sand near the water. The storm was getting closer, and as they neared the pier they saw families packing up in a hurry, grabbing blankets and picnic baskets and children and running for their cars.

“My bag.” Emma pointed ten yards ahead and Brad ran to get it. He snatched the bag and both their shoes. There was no time to put them on.

“I’ll follow you.” Enormous raindrops were beginning to fall, and they both dropped their sunglasses in Emma’s bag.

She raced up the sand with Brad close behind, toward the path between the houses and straight up Dolphin Street, up her front porch steps and safely inside her house, both of them out of breath and soaking wet. The screen door slammed shut, but Emma didn’t close the other one. The sound of the storm raging outside mixed with their jagged breathing.

Brad set the bag down and he came closer, his eyes locked on hers. Rain dripped from his dark blond hair and hung in his eyelashes, but only then did Emma realize that the water on his face wasn’t only from the rain. He stared at her, studied her. “It’s still hitting me. That you’ve lived with this,” his sides heaved from the run up the beach, from the news he’d just learned. “All these years you’ve lived with it.”

“Who was I going to tell?” Her chin quivered, and she brushed her wet hair off her face. She was still catching her breath too. “You left, Brad. You wanted to get on with your life.”

At first it looked like he might say something, try to explain himself. But then he looked at her for a long moment, and he did the only thing either of them could do. He came to her and wrapped his arms around her, holding her close the way two parents might hold each other at the funeral of their only child. “If there was a way back …” he breathed the words into her hair, holding tight to her. “I’m sorry, Emma. Our little girl … our baby.”

The lightning was closer now, the crack of thunder more pronounced. As if all of heaven and earth were grieving right alongside them. In all her life she never expected to share the details of that awful day. But Brad had come back to her and he was sorry. He wanted to know, and she was glad she’d told him. But there remained a question for both of them. The question that consumed Emma as she stood lost in the moment, locked in Brad’s tormented embrace. She’d told him everything there was to say.

So … where did they go from here?

B
RAD COULDN’T BRING HIMSELF TO LET
go of her. His sweet Emma, the girl he’d harmed so greatly. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected by coming here, but now he knew the whole story. Emma’s fear and doubts, her terrifying experience at the clinic, and the most difficult truth of all.

The baby was a girl.

Like the toddler in the photograph in his office. All along he’d wondered if maybe he and Emma would’ve had a daughter. And now that she was real, the pain of losing her was more than he could bear. For several minutes they stayed in each other’s arms, a few feet away from the screen door of her small house, the storm raging outside.

He stroked her back, holding her, as if by doing so they could find their way to the moment before, as if they could run back to the car and life would be completely different. They could change their mind and today there would be a precious nine-year-old girl in place of the guilt and sorrow and regret. But there was no way back, and a decade of tears flooded out any other thought in Brad’s mind. All along he’d told himself he was coming here to make things right with Emma, to apologize. But he knew better now. This trip was about his own healing as much as it was about hers. It was about acknowledging a life that never had a chance because of the choices they made.

This trip was about their daughter.

Emma pulled away first, wiping at her eyes. “I need water.”

He let her go, but he followed her into the kitchen. Neither of them said anything as she poured two glasses and they drank them. Every thirty seconds or so lightning flashed around them and sharp thunder crackled outside. Emma set her glass down and stepped into an adjacent utility room. She grabbed two towels, one for each of them. They dried off and then Emma walked slowly back into her front room. She sat on a threadbare floral sofa, and Brad took the spot beside her.

Her eyes met his and she looked eighteen again. “I miss her.” She wasn’t crying anymore, but her lip quivered and her soft voice broke. She looked weary and worn out. “You don’t know how much I miss her.” Thunder rattled the house, and Emma’s eyes searched his. “Stay with me, Brad. For a little while more.”

She took a pillow from the far side of the sofa and set it on his knees. Then as if she couldn’t bear to sit up another minute, she curled onto her side and set her head on the pillow. Brad stroked her hair, and it occurred to him that the thing he’d come here to do wasn’t possible. He couldn’t make things right with Emma. Only God could do that — for either of them.

Without taking this loss to Him, they would only find a never-ending, exhaustive source of grief and sorrow. There would be no healing short of the miraculous healing that would come from Christ alone. Brad was suddenly glad they still had tomorrow. If Emma was willing, he wanted to take her to church. Maybe stay afterward and talk to the pastor. What they’d shared today was important and it was a first step. But rather than healed and whole, both their hearts were ripped open, the loss of their daughter too overwhelming and crippling to move beyond. Now or ever.