Okay

A woman was walking through the parking garage of her office building, leaving work three hours later than she had planned.  She was supposed to meet her boyfriend that night for the first USC football game of the season.  That morning marked the start of the annual meetings and everyone had shown up early taking over the parking lot to the last space.  Of course the parking lot was empty now, the tall lights casting perfect halos on the ground.  She searched for her car keys through her never-ending pit of a purse, hoping that she wasn’t displaying the nervousness she felt flow through her body at an increasing rate.  There was a barely audible rustle behind her, the sounds of fabric rubbing against fabric.  She jumped and tried to walk faster.  She clutched her keys in a fist, readying herself to use them as a weapon.  She had seen it once in a safety video she looked up online. 
He saw his prey falter at the sound of his footstep.  That was the signal he was waiting for.  He pounced, wrapping his right arm around her waist, pulling her against his chest, clutching at her lips with his left hand to silence her.  She didn’t yell, but he felt her body tense up, inhaling for the upcoming scream.  He cried out when her key flashed into his sight, scratching his cheek, drawing up a thin line of blood.  She squirmed in his grip when she felt his grasp slip in pain.  He quickly squeezed her tighter and walked her to her car, whispering commands in her ear as though they were sweet nothings told to a shy lover. 
                                                 ***
         Thirty-three days later, she was staring at the little plus sign on the small screen of the home pregnancy test.  Her sight was blurry, although she wasn’t crying.  Not consciously anyway.  He had left her, cowering in the back seat of her car in a small park off the highway.  She never stopped shaking, even as she entered her apartment and was confronted by her nervous and relieved boyfriend.  She collapsed into his arms.  Once he calmed down, after he put the baseball bat away, her boyfriend held her until she fell into a light sleep, fraught with bright colors and violent images.
         She was afraid to tell her boyfriend about the pregnancy.  She almost refused to believe it herself.  Almost.  She wrapped the test stick in a tissue and placed it on the sink.  How would he react?  He had been so great up until then.  What was his threshold?  Her hand began to shake as she reached for her cell phone.
         She felt so ashamed, a dark ball of hot tar oozing around in her stomach.  She felt it in her heart.  Her heart hurt.  Her boyfriend’s heart hurt too.  He cried and raged at the same time.  He cursed the world.  He cursed at her and then regretted it immediately.  He had not meant it.  He said they would get rid of it and everything would be okay.  She had already reported it.  She also knew the likelihood of retribution.  Her boyfriend told her that everything would be okay.  He would make it okay.  She said okay. 
         At the doctor’s office the test results were verified.  Twenty-three days later.  It was nothing more than a black dot on a television screen that was supposed to be showing her the contents of her belly.  For all she knew it could be one of the sunflower seeds she ate earlier.  The doctor left the couple in the plain examination room to discuss their options.  She marveled at the minuteness of it.  He said that they should get rid of it.  She said just thinking about it made her nervous.  He said that they should get rid of it sooner rather than later.  Just like a band-aid he said and laughed.  She smiled at him and nodded.  Okay.  The doctor knocked lightly on the door and cracked it open bit by bit, waiting for the couple’s okay.  When is your next available appointment doctor, she asked, keeping her head towards the television screen and the black speck. 
         She spent the next week thinking about her appointment.  The appointment had not seemed like such a big deal when she made it.  She wished that it would just happen and she would be done.  Sitting around and thinking about the speck, the appointment, made her paranoid.  What if the appointment was not the right choice?  She had trouble choosing what to eat for dinner, let alone something like this.  But how was she supposed to take care of another thing in her busy life?  When she went to work she felt that everyone in the office was judging her.  She feared that they were each disappointed in her for making the wrong decision, every decision.  She felt as if it were her fault that it had got in her in the first place.  She should have known better.  Everyone in the office would have known the right thing to do.  She felt shame for wanting to go to the appointment and humiliation for wanting to cancel it.  There was even the boss’s secretary, very catholic.  She didn’t know if the secretary knew but they didn’t talk in the lunchroom like they did most days.  She called in sick the next day.
         She had never felt so torn.  She called her mother.  She told her mother about her appointment.  It was the first time that she had cried since that night, now thirty-two days ago.  Her mother told her something that she had been waiting to tell her daughter for a long time.  Her mother too had gone through the paranoia, the fear, the shame.  Her mother knew that there was no right or wrong choice.  There was just the choice.  And the choice was just that, one of many that she would make throughout her life, the outcome unknown.  Her mother told her to sit in her space and wait for the right choice to come to her.  The choice did not define her.  It was just a choice. 
         She sat in her favorite space.  She sat there for two hours, the only light coming from the hallway to the bathroom.  She thought about what she wanted.  She gave up on what was right or wrong.  The two words were just getting mixed in all the bright colors in her head.  She, at one point, got so frustrated and upset that she screamed into the empty house.  Though there was no echo, her screamed faded slowly. 
She reasoned her way through each possible choice.  What would it do to the rest of her life if she were to keep her speck?  What would her boyfriend do?  Did his reaction matter to her?  Can I get rid of it?  It, the black speck, was getting bigger each day.  What would it matter to her if she did get rid of it?  Why was it such a big question anyway?  She did not want a reminder of thirty-four days ago.  She tried to get up, to stop worrying because in the long run getting rid of it would be better for her and her boyfriend and her life.  Could she even give it a good life?  She could not get up.
                                       ***
The doctor saw her out to her car.  It was done.  It was gone.  In the end it did not belong to her and she did not want it.  It should not have been her burden to bear.  She made the decision by herself.  It was hers to make.  As she slowly drove out of the parking lot she passed one women with a sign, standing on the side of the road.  Life is Sacred.  That was what the sign read.  For the first time she smiled.  She thought to herself, yes, my life is sacred.