Page 51 of Counting Backwards

“We’ll make an appointment for about eight weeks from now for the first ultrasound.” Dr. LaRusso stood and closed the folder that held my information. “You’ll want to bring Vance so he can hear the heartbeat.”

It all seemed like magic, sorcery, the idea that there could soon be a second heart beating inside my body. I was already wondering whether the baby would be a girl or a boy. I thought of my parents. Would it be a baby boy with a cleft in his chin, just like my dad’s? Or would it be a girl, maybe with my mother’s singing voice? My mom would have made the best grandma, the kind with a signature cookie recipe and a never-ending supply of exuberant hugs. I wished all over again that they were still alive so I could share the joy of this moment with them. If only I wanted to share it with Vance too.

As Dr. LaRusso prepared to leave the room, I realized I still had so many questions.

“When you say avoid stress,” I asked, “could you elaborate on that?”

He waved a hand in the air dismissively.

“There’s no conclusive data really linking stress to miscarriage, but many of us in the medical community believe stress can impactpregnancy, or a mother’s health overall. That said, a fetus is generally hardier than a lot of people give it credit for. I wouldn’t worry too much. It’s the nature of being pregnant, I think. Worrying about worrying,” he joked, patting my elbow.

After the doctor excused himself, I used the paper sheet that had been covering me to wipe the gel from myself. I got back into my yoga pants and shoved both the sheet and paper gown into the aluminum trash bin beside the exam table. Eight weeks seemed like an awfully long time to wait to confirm a baby was still growing inside me. And the doctor wanted me to avoid stress? Laughable. The only time I could imagine being calm about the pregnancy would be in about nine months, when—if!—I had an actual living, breathing baby in my arms.

As I slipped my feet back into my sneakers, I tried to push away my panic and focus on other things. I had meetings lined up over the next few days with four different women whom Fern had sent my way, two still at Hydeford and two who’d been released. I had to finish prepping for those appointments, and I also wanted to start drafting a complaint, even though there was still much information to collect. If I wanted to help save the current and future women at Hydeford, as well as my position at Dillney, I really had no time to waste.

I made my way out of the doctor’s office with an unfamiliar feeling in my chest, as if an electrical current were pulsating inside me. It was part excitement, part dread, and so much more that I couldn’t put a name to. I knew I had to share the news with Vance. I was also entirely confident that he would be thrilled—which was why I had to keep asking myself why I was so reluctant to tell him.

***

Hours later, I sat cross-legged on our living room carpet with my back against the sofa and my computer open in my lap. I was surrounded by the different file folders I’d created for each distinct legal issue in the immigration case, as well as folders of information pertaining to each different witness. Even though my method was old-school, I always preferred having hard copies of important documents on hand as I did my work. This was proving especially useful as I typed out page after page of the draft complaint.

At the sound of keys in the door, I stiffened. I was in the zone with my work and had a million tasks I still wanted to finish, so it really wasn’t the best time for a pregnancy announcement. Vance and I had spent the last two days passing like ships in the night, barely interacting since our last argument. In all likelihood, he was about to storm into the apartment and march right past me again, just to make some sort of point about my unreasonable behavior.Allegedlyunreasonable.

Even so, as he pushed the door open, I pasted a smile onto my face.

“Still at it, huh?” he asked, without any of the obvious rancor I’d expected. He dropped his messenger bag near the door and came to sit beside me on the floor, mimicking my cross-legged position as he sat against the sofa next to me. I figured he’d finally come to terms with the fact that I was moving forward with the class action, whether he was on board or not.

“Yup.” I leaned over on one hip and kissed him lightly on the cheek, just as I normally would to reconnect after a long day apart. “Just working on the complaint.”

“Wow,” he said, glancing at the computer screen. “I didn’t realize you had enough information to be at the drafting stage already.”

“I don’t, really,” I confessed. I made a few clicks to save the document and then shut my laptop. “But I wanted to start on it anyway to help clarify my thoughts. I thought writing it down would highlight which areas need more attention and which information I should still be trying to collect. It’s helping me to seethe case from more of a legal perspective and not just through the lens of my moral outrage. Does that make sense?”

I looked at him for confirmation that he was following along.

He nodded. “Yeah, sure.” Then he rocked to the side so his knee bumped mine in a gesture of solidarity. “What else are you thinking about it?”

“I mean, it’s crazy, the case law and history that I’m finding about similar situations. Ever heard of the ‘Mississippi appendectomy’?”

Vance shook his head.

“Yeah, I hadn’t either. Apparently it was the name given to unnecessary hysterectomies at teaching hospitals in the South in the 1970s. Women were misled to believe they were having procedures like appendectomies and then were sterilized instead. The victims were mostly poor women of color, many of whom were never told what had really been done to them. It was training for the med students. A practice so prevalent it got a name, Vance.”

He shook his head slightly, as if stunned by the thought.

“And then there’s California,” I continued. “They banned coerced sterilization as a form of birth control in prisons in 2014 after detained women came forward about what was happening to them. In 2014!” I still couldn’t believe it myself. “It’s so recent, like... I can still smell the flagrancy of it. And that doesn’t even take into account the twenty thousand people in the state who were sterilized between 1920 and 1979 because they were deemed unfit to reproduce. It’s everywhere. Virginia sterilized at least eight thousand people during that time period for the same reasons. North Carolina sterilized over seven thousand. The list goes on and on. Oh, and guess what percentage ofthosevictims were women of color?”

“It’s hard to believe it could happen in our country,” Vance said, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “But isn’t it illegal?”

“If only it were that simple,” I scoffed. “In the 1970s, a judge in one case acknowledged that the US was sterilizing somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 people a year, all of them with lower incomes.” I started flipping through my folders to find the printout of the case. “Relf,” I mumbled as I rummaged through the folders. “Relf, Relf. Aha!” I held it high in the air like a bloodstained weapon at a crime scene. “They threatened to take away their welfare benefits if they didn’t comply. It says so right here.” I waved the paper again. “The judge in that case prohibited federally funded sterilization without ‘informed consent.’ But it doesn’t say anything about state funding. It doesn’t stop the states from doing the exact same thing.”

“Yeesh.” Vance shook his head. “And nothing has changed in the fifty years since that case? How can that be?”

“In Tennessee in 2017,” I told him, “a judge offered reduced sentences to any inmates willing to use Nexplanon, a birth control implant that prevents pregnancy for four years. At least that dude was an equal opportunist because he offered men the option of reduced sentences too, but only in exchange for vasectomies. But 2017! And that California prison? That was also less than a decade ago. It’s not over, not even remotely, Vance.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t sound like it,” he said. “I just...” He hesitated, but I nodded to encourage him to speak freely.

“Look,” he said, “I agree one thousand percent that if this shit is happening at Hydeford, it has to be stopped. But I really wish you’d bring this case back to the firm, let them handle it.”