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After I was released from the jail on my own recognizance, pending Bethany's decision to send me to prison or not, two minutes sitting in front of that plastic fucking stick was torture.
I’d decided to take a home test to see if the nurse had lost her goddamned mind, or if I’d lost mine. I lifted it from Sally’s Corner Store on the way back to Jake’s apartment. But I left the exact amount of money for the test on the shelf where I found it, right after I’d shoved it into the front pocket of my hoodie. I wasn’t ready for the town to know something I wasn’t sure of myself.
After counting down the ticks on the second hand of the old wall clock above the desk, I took a deep breath. I was probably just over reacting. I was sure I was going to laugh about how stupid I was being in just a few more seconds. I knew the universe was cruel, but I didn’t think it could be this ridiculous.
I didn’t think that, after everything I’d already dealt with, I could actually be carrying my rapist’s child, too. I was only seventeen. I prayed to a God I wasn’t sure existed.
Please no... please no... please no.
When the second hand hit the twelve for the second time, I lifted the white stick and gazed into the little window.
I had never seen a more menacing pair of parallel lines.
***
Just a little while longer and it will all be over with…
“Abby Ford?”
It was another nurse in pink scrubs calling my name, measuring me, making me pee in a cup and giving me the once over. Only this time, it wasn’t in the Coral Pines police station.
A doctor with salt-and-pepper hair introduced himself as Doctor Hodges and promptly asked me to lie down and put my feet in the stirrups. He looked to be in his mid-fifties. He was calm and friendly, but wasn’t going to be performing the procedure just yet. He explained that it was just the initial exam before the big show.
My words, not his.
I closed my eyes and took deep breaths as he poked and prodded with cold instruments and intruding fingers. It was so uncomfortable. The burning inside me built to epic proportions. My eyes watered and a tear ran down my cheek. I had to power through. I tried to sing in my head to distract myself from what the doctor was doing.
When that didn’t work, I thought about Jake.
I wonder if Jake would have gone with me if he knew the truth. If he knew that I loved him and hadn’t willingly let Owen do what he did to me. I couldn’t let myself linger on those thoughts. I was pregnant with another man’s baby, and I needed not to be anymore.
“Miss Ford, I know you already spoke to the counselor so forgive the repetition here, but may I ask, what brings you here today?” He gestured for me to sit up.
Relief flooded me instantly.
“I don’t want to be pregnant anymore.” I wondered if that wasn’t the reason every seventeen year old came here.
“How did you get pregnant, Miss Ford?” His voice was steady and professional, but I sensed something else lingered behind his question.
“Is there more than one way?” I faked a laugh to distract him.
He looked at me skeptically. “Miss Ford, I am going to be honest with you. I see scar tissue within you that suggests you’ve been through a traumatic injury recently.” He took a deep breath and flicked his rubber gloves into the trash bin. “Frankly, I am surprised a pregnancy resulted or survived such trauma.”
It was a statement, but he looked as if he wanted me to confirm his suspicion.
“Resulted,” I blurted. I instantly regretted telling this stranger anything that wasn’t his business.
“Have you filed a police report?”
“No.” But, I’m facing some pretty hefty charges myself.
The Doctor didn’t press me on why I hadn’t. He just nodded as he placed a manila file on his knee and started to write with a fountain pen from his lab coat pocket. He shook his head from side to side, like something he was writing was almost unbelievable to him. “Strong fetus you’ve got in there.” He looked up from his file, his embarrassment written all over his face. “I’m sorry. That was entirely insensitive of me. My apologies.”
“It’s fine.” I wanted to silence his rambling. I hated being apologized to. After all, he was right. This thing in me had such a will to be in this world, it had found a way to exist during the worst of the worst of conditions.
It was a survivor, just like me.
And I was going to kill it.
***
I spent the next three days searching for a new job with no luck. Bubba still wasn’t hiring seventeen year olds. Sally’s wasn’t hiring. The bait shop wasn’t hiring.
Jake’s home was no longer my home so I was back to sleeping in Nan’s old Chevy, the same one Jake had caught me in all those weeks ago. I’d put his keys on the counter, locked the door, and shut it behind me.
I didn’t want to live there anymore anyway. Just being there long enough to grab some of my shit and lock the door was painful enough. A few times I could’ve sworn I’d heard his bike pulling into the drive. I had to remind myself it wasn’t him.
He was gone.
The Chevy couldn’t be home forever, but it was all I had for now. I’d made a little money working at Jake’s shop, but the hotels on the island were tourist traps, and a single night’s stay was more than half of what I had to my name. I tried to rent a room, but being seventeen and jobless wasn’t exactly an attractive mix to potential landlords.
I lay in the Chevy, tossing and turning.
It wasn’t just the stagnant heat of the night air that kept me restless.
Has it really been only days since I had last seen him, since I let him walk away? Where is he? What is he doing?
Jake had assumed the worst of me, and with that assumption he revealed that we didn’t have what I thought we did. He didn’t love me the way I loved him. As far as he was concerned, it was all or nothing.
I promised myself I’d push all thoughts of Jake out of my mind, in hopes of pushing him from my heart.
Yeah, right.
Even I didn’t think that was going to happen. In time, I hoped he would become just a distant memory. Now, though, his memory was so strong, if I allowed it just a moment to occupy my mind, it consumed me. I closed my eyes and could still feel his breath on my cheek, his skin on my skin. I would never again be able to let myself be as free as I was with him. That girl was gone.
Survivor Abby had returned, boundaries and walls firmly back in place.
Choosing the comfort of being numb over the pain of heartbreak.
On what was to be my third night of sleeping in the Chevy, I climbed in through the driver’s side door and plopped myself down on the bench seat to get some much-needed sleep. I’d spent the entire day walking up and down the island looking for work and was just drifting off when I heard something jingle. There in front of me, reflecting the light of the full moon, was a key ring with two small gold keys and a large silver Ford emblem key chain hanging from it. The keys were attached to the steering wheel by a large janitor-style hook. A Dunn’s Auto Repair sticky note was attached to the center of the wheel. The note on it appeared to be written by a child:
abby
the apartment is urs fer as long as you need. yu can use the truck too it needs to be run ery once in a while and settin in the lot aint doin it no good. I dont no what happened with jake and I dont care but I know he dont want you sleeping in the fucking truck like a dam hobo. reggie is pissed you aint showed up fer work so be there in the morn. sorry about the punching ur face thing. Im a drunk asshole most of the time.
sorry again.
frank dunn
Tears stung the back of my eyes. Despite the fact that he’d called me a hobo, it was by far the greatest note I had ever received. I held the necklace Jake gave me in between my fingers, as it had become my nature to do when I was thinking. It would be my constant reminder he wasn’t just a dream.
It had certainly felt like one, though.
I hadn’t even been sure that Frank remembered who I was, especially under the circumstances of our first encounter. But there I was, reading his offer of salvation.
The Dunn men may have seen themselves as being worlds apart in every way, but when it really came down to it, both men were deeply troubled by pasts they’d rather forget, and they both had laid themselves on the line for me when I really needed it.
Selflessly. Easily.
It was in these acts of kindness that I saw the similarities in them for the first time.
I laughed to myself because Jake would shit a brick if I ever told him that he and the man he hated most were in any way similar.
Mr. Dunn had just offered me the chance to save money and have a place to stay when the baby came.
The baby...
I didn’t know if I would be a good mom, or if I would even be able to be one at all under the circumstances. But when it came right down to it, I couldn’t bring myself to kill someone who didn’t even know they were the product of a hateful act, especially after he or she had been created despite the horrible condition my body was in. This baby was a fighter, a survivor like me.
We were already kindred spirits.
It was because of, not in spite of, the life growing inside me that I was able to move forward, a little at a time.
I had the chance to have a real family, for the first time in my life.
I was going to try my damnedest to protect it.
