Alone: without anyone or anything else: not involving or including anyone or anything else: separate from other people or things: without people that you know or that usually are with you: feeling unhappy because of being separated from other people
Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. One, two, three, four, five.
Five minutes had passed and she still hadn't signed her name of the form. She was to be called back any minute now, but the pen was lightly grasped in her hand, touching the paper but not moving, not leaving a permanent stain in the shape of her signature. She couldn't possibly sign that paper could she? She couldn't sign an agreement that yes, it was okay for her three month old baby to get taken out of her body in the most inhumane way possible. Yes, it was okay for a stranger at an anonymous women's clinic to kill something that had become a part of her. Yes, she was agreeing to it.
And the worst part of it all was that she was alone. She had only told one person about her pregnancy, and that one person had been overjoyed, but he had been happy about it, an emotion that she couldn't even force herself to feel when she thought about the embryo inhabiting her stomach, taking away her nutrients and causing her hips to expand in the most disgusting way. She couldn't even fathom how he could be happy about the two of them having a baby when they were so messed up that bringing a child into this world would only end up killing it anyways. So why not just get rid of it now?
She saw the nurse coming over to her and she signed her name quickly and quietly, before she could even think about turning away and getting ready for the concert that she had to play in less than six hours. She had begged the receptionist not to announce her name because if this got out, it would ruin her...forever. And she couldn't have that.
"Are you ready?" the woman was kind of elderly, someone who looked like they had seen a lot of life in only a little bit of time, sort of like her in a way. She pushed the clipboard towards her and stood up, brushing her clammy hands on the familiar fabric of her favorite pair of sweatpants before following the woman to the back where her life would change forever.
"I need you to use these wipes to clean yourself up down there and then put this gown on. You can sit on that table when you're ready and we'll try to make this as quick as possible," the woman instructed. She patted the clothes and took in a shaky breath, tilting her head to the side as she stared at her, as if she was staring through her soul.
"I'll go get the stuff ready," she whispered before turning away, and as the woman walked away, she wondered how many babies she had watched been brutally murdered inside of this room. How many women she had held as they cried and how many times she had told them that it was going to be okay when even she knew that it wasn't.
She shook the thoughts away and quickly cleaned herself up, slipping the gown on and feeling the way that the harsh fabric moved against her body as she shuffled to the table. The long line of that silvery powder that she had taken in the car before she had come in was coursing through her veins, relaxing her in a moment when she knew that every part of her body should've been shaking in fear.
"Are you ready?" the woman came back...her name was Sharon. Sharon brought a doctor with him...he was obviously Latin, and her mind couldn't help but flash to the man who had impregnated her, who had no idea that she was about to kill the life that they had created together.
"We're just gonna numb you up a little bit...is there anyone that you want to call?" she wanted to call him and hear his accent that always comforted her in her darkest moments, but she knew she couldn't have him here. He would only try to change her mind and she didn't want that. She didn't want to hear that she was being selfish because in her mind she wasn't. She was saving her baby in the only way that she knew how.
She shook her head and stared at the ceiling tiles, all white and all arranged in an orderly matter. She tried to count the number of black dots on each tile as the shot was injected into her pelvis area but it only made her dizzy so she placed her arms over her eyes and began to count.
One, two, three, four, five.
"Are you sure that you want to go through this?"
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
"Yes I'm sure."
Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.
Sharon was holding her hand, but she refused to open her eyes. She just couldn't.
Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.
"We'll try to make this go as quickly as possible and whatever happens in this room, stays in this room. Now you'll feel a small pinch..."
She moved her arms away from her eyes. She didn't feel it. Maybe it was because she was so numb to the discordant reality of the world that she just couldn't feel it anymore.
"We should get out all of the remains..." the nurse rubbed her arm but her eyes were focused on the ceiling tiles again. It had only taken twenty seconds for a part of her to be taken out, killed, brutally murdered. Twenty seconds that she couldn't get back.
"Miss, are you okay?" she hadn't realized that she was crying. She wasn't supposed to cry. She had trained herself not to cry, and there she was, lying on the stiff mattress that reeked of cleaning products and dead fetuses, tears running down her cheeks and soaking her hair as she realized what she had done. Twenty seconds was all it took.
"No," she whimpered, shaking her head but sucking in a deep breath, pulling her snot and tears back up with her.
"But I have to be," she didn't have much of a choice if she was being honest. She had to be strong and she had to come up with a reason of why she wasn't pregnant anymore for him.
"I have a concert to go to," she sat up and weakly pushed Sharon's hand off of her.
"Just rest for a little bit and I'll tell you when you can go. Give yourself twenty minutes. Do you realize what you just did?" of course she realized what she just did. Did he realize what he just did?
"Okay," she was numb again, but she felt herself slowly being lowered back on the bed that reeked of cleaning products and dead fetuses. But it wasn't just dead fetuses. It was the smell of lives that had been breathed into people for specific reasons, lives that had been snatched out of them and tossed aside. Some for their own selfish purposes and some because they just couldn't handle it. And she was no different. She had taken away something that God had given her, something that she could never get back.
"Are you sure there isn't anyone that you want us to call?" her eyelids fluttered in the way that they do when you're trying to fight off sleep. She was just trying to fight off her mind taking over.
"No...I just want to be alone," because she was alone in the world...and she had just killed the one person who could take away all of her loneliness.
