A Supreme Court justice gets unexpectedly pregnant.
Ever since my sister and I were old enough to listen, our grandmother drilled into us that any woman who got herself pregnant had to have her baby. It didn’t matter whether the baby was wanted or not, she had to have it. It was God’s will, she would emphatically add, just to make sure we fully understood the importance of what she was telling us. So, imagine how distraught I was when I found myself unexpectedly pregnant. And how shocked I was, since I am – in fact – a biological man. Although it’s not unheard of now, back then, in the year 2053 to be exact, no man had ever been with child. That was almost eleven years ago, now; but I still find myself remembering back to it like it was yesterday.
***
I sat in my doctor’s office tapping the arm of the skinny chair I was waiting in – a mere skeleton compared with the near-obese chair sitting empty behind his desk. My agitation was increasing with each passing minute because, first of all, one would think a Supreme Court Justice could be exempted from the chronic tardiness the medical profession inflicts on the common man. Especially since this particular member of the medical profession was an old friend. Did he not remember how important I was, goddamnit? And, second of all, my agitation was increasing because I’d been feeling miserable since my appendectomy three weeks ago; in fact, I felt like running from his office and throwing up right then. But I didn’t. I just sat there, tapping, tapping, tapping.
Finally, the door behind me burst open and a man the exact opposite of his chair – lean and taut, like I used to be before packing on a few pounds over the years – barreled through it. “Bert, old man, so sorry I’m late. Had a bit of an emergency. A kid thought he was Superman and almost killed himself jumping off a roof.” He’d called me old man ever since our Yale days, because I was so serious all the time, he’d once told me.
“It’s okay, Doc,” I said through gritted teeth. “Is the boy okay?”
“Yeah, he’ll be okay.” Doc made his way around to his large chair – it fit him better than you would have thought – and woke up his computer. He spent half a minute looking at his screen. And then looking at it again. And then again. “So, old man, I believe we’ve figured out what’s been going on with you. It hasn’t been easy. It’s, um, well, it’s very unexpected.”
“Okay, well, what the hell is it? Come on!”
“Well, you’re pregnant.” He tried to say that with a straight face, but there was a smile in his eyes.
I wasn’t amused. “That’s really funny, Doc. Good one.”
He laughed a nervous laugh and shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m not kidding.”
“That’s crazy,” I said, still not amused. “There’s no physical way. How?”
“Well, there’s almost no physical way. The best we can figure is that an already-impregnated uterus was transplanted into you when you had your appendix removed. There’s only one doctor I know of who could possibly have done that surgery. She’s tried a few times before, but unsuccessfully as far as I know. Until now, apparently. I called her office but she’s out of the office indefinitely. Not surprising, given what she did to you.” He paused for a moment. “Hey, you want to lie down, old man? You’re not looking so great.”
I was gripping the thin arms of my chair, but I couldn’t otherwise let him know I was feeling faint; never show weakness! “No,” I said as forcefully as I could, “I’m okay. But, wasn’t there an operating room full of people?”
“Yes, there was. But nobody’s willing to talk about what happened during your surgery. I think it’s fair to say that not many people around here like you as much as I do.”
I was at an odd intersection of numb disbelief that this could even be happening and intense anger that it was. I sat, going back to my tapping, looking toward Doc but not really seeing. Many thoughts swirled through me, but at the forefront stood my father, straight and stern. “Whatever you do in your life, be a man!” he’d continually beat into me, sometimes literally.
“Okay, well, this is crazy,” I finally said to Doc, achieving some semblance of calmness. “You have to fix it.”
“What do you mean, fix it?”
“You have to get rid of it. I can’t be pregnant. I’m a man. I have obligations. You know how hard I’ve worked to get where I am. I can’t sacrifice it for a goddamned baby. And my family. I have to think of my family. We can’t have another baby.”
“Hmm, it does seem like you’ve gotten yourself into quite a predicament.” The smile was back in his eyes.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
His smile spread to his lips. “Well, I can’t say I’m not.”
“And what do you mean, I’ve gotten myself into it? I had nothing to do with this! I surely didn’t want it.”
He looked at me, rocking in his chair.
My face was flushing, the anger rising again. “Anyway, you need to fix this. Now! Nobody needs to know. It’ll be our little secret.”
“You know I can’t do that, old man. I need to do the opposite. I need to prescribe you some hormones and other supplements for the health of your pregnancy. It’s actually remarkable the fetus has survived in your male body as long as it has. It’s almost like somebody upstairs wants you to be fruitful and multiply.”
Oh, that was a low blow, even from him, my old college buddy. “There’s no way I’m taking those. I’ll just let the thing expire in my ‘male body.’”
“Wow, that little being within you made a rapid transition from baby who’s going to die to thing that’s going to expire. In any case, you don’t have a choice. You know better than most people that anyone who terminates a pregnancy or allows a pregnancy to terminate, either by action or inaction, can be accused and subsequently convicted of murder.”
“Of course I know that! I wrote the Court’s opinion finding that law constitutional, as you are very well aware. But that was for a woman’s pregnancy! A natural pregnancy! And I’m a man, goddamnit!”
He sat, rocking and shaking his head at me. “Do you want to see it?” he finally asked.
“See what?”
“Your fetus. Depending on how far along it was when it was transplanted into you, we might even be able to hear its heartbeat. If not now, then soon.”
“No! Give me the goddamned prescription.” I had to go throw up.
***
I found my wife right where she should have been, standing at the kitchen island in our large Beaux Arts home. Such an extravagant house, my detractors often said. Hey, I deserve it, I invariably responded.
“What’s the matter?” my wife asked when she saw me, putting down the knife she was slicing tomatoes with, wiping her hand on her apron, and pushing a few strands of errant brunette hair behind her ear.
“You better sit down.”
She did, at our chrome and glass kitchen table. “What’s the matter?” she asked again. “Is it your mother?”
“No.” I didn’t know how to say it, so I blurted it out: “There’s a baby in me.”
She crinkled her brow. “If that’s some odd attempt at humor, it’s not –”
“I wish it was, but it isn’t. I saw Doc. He told me the reason I’ve been feeling so terrible lately is that during my appendectomy a surgeon transplanted an impregnated uterus into me.”
She made a noise somewhere between a snort and a chuckle and started randomly streaming: “And it can come to term? What are you going to do? I mean, what are we going to do? You have to have it. I guess that explains why your appendectomy took so long; I was getting worried at the time. But we agreed we weren’t going to have any more children? Who’s going to nurse the baby? You? Is that even possible? We’re in our fifties for goodness’ sake. What about your career? What are we going to do?”
“Allie, slow down. I don’t know. This is very unexpected.”
“Unexpected? That’s the understatement of the decade.” She paused and pointed toward the island. “Would you please hand me my wine? There’s an open bottle in the–” She stopped short and a slight ironic grin, a grin I’d never seen before, crossed her lips. “Oh, wait, you can’t have any wine.”
“Bullshit,” I said. I handed her glass to her, got the bottle, and filled a glass for myself. I put it to my lips, but didn’t drink. I took it away from my mouth, looked at it for a few seconds, and slammed it down on the table hard enough to slosh out a sizable puddle. “Shit!”
Allie brought a rag over and wiped up my mess. “I wish you wouldn’t use that kind of language,” she said.
I scrunched my face at her but let her comment go. “The first thing I need to do is see another doctor. Then think about how to legally have it terminated.”
Her face went pale. “You can’t do that. What about the sanctity of life? What would the Pope say? What about the politics of it, for goodness’ sake?”
I sighed. “What doctor do you go to for this kind of thing?”
“You don’t even know? No, why would you, I guess. Dr. Brown, although I’m not sure she’ll take you. She hasn’t minded telling me that she’s not your biggest fan.”
Allie called her doctor and, as a favor to her, the doctor said she’d see me the next morning.
***
On my way out of the house to my appointment, I was confronted by several TV cameras and reporters. I knew several of the reporters from previous encounters. Four news vans sat in the street. Somebody in Doc’s office must have leaked the news. I knew it wasn’t him, personally. We ribbed each other; but, when shit hit the fan, we protected each other. We always had.
“How does it feel to be the first pregnant man in the world, Mr. Cavendish?”
“It feels great, Fred,” I said, not trying very hard to mask my sarcasm. “Thanks for asking.”
“Are you going to try to seek an abortion, Mr. Cavendish?”
“That’s none of your business, Beth.”
I might as well have just poked a hornet’s nest.
“It’s the government’s business, and everybody’s, when anyone else in the country tries to seek an abortion. But whether you do isn’t anybody’s business? Why is that, Mr. Cavendish?” She thrust her microphone in my face.
“In case you haven’t noticed, Beth, I’m a man.”
“Because you’re a man? Jesus Christ!”
“No, I’m not quite Jesus Christ, Beth. But thanks for suggesting it.”
“Oh my God!”
“I have to go. Please don’t follow me, or I’ll have you slapped with harassment charges quicker than you can say restraining order.”
***
So, there I was, sitting across another desk from another doctor. She didn’t make me wait, at least. She came into her office at exactly the appointed time, doffed her long white lab coat, and set her slender frame into her sleek white leather desk chair. Now she was peering at me through attractive steely blue eyes, although I was sure I shouldn’t be noticing the attractive part. “So, what can I do for you, Mr. Cavendish?”
“Well, I’m in an unusual situation. I’m apparently pregnant and I need the services of a doctor such as yourself.”
She didn’t seem at all surprised. “A doctor such as myself. How nice. Despite the fact that I have high regard for your wife, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
“May I ask why? Because of my stand against abortion?”
Her eyes drilled into me. “No, Mr. Cavendish. Nobody is for abortion. No woman has ever gotten up one morning and said to herself that she was going to go out that night to get herself pregnant so she could go get an abortion. No woman, Mr. Cavendish, has ever done that. Yet, despite her best efforts not to, or even against her will, occasionally a woman does become pregnant.” Tightly-controlled fury was radiating from her like heat from the sun. “And you, Mr. Cavendish, have taken it upon yourself, have made it your crusade, to take the decision as to how that woman is to handle that unfortunate situation, even though it is nobody’s business but hers, and nobody’s body but hers, away from her and made it your own. Even though it is not, even in the smallest way, your business!” The heat had not dissipated. “That’s why I cannot help you with your pregnancy, Mr. Cavendish. I simply could not treat you in an unbiased professional manner.”
I’d heard all that liberal namby-pamby bullshit more times than I cared to count and I considered telling her so. But it had never done any good before, so why bother trying now? I stood up and headed toward the door.
“Tell Allie I send my regards,” she said to my back.
“Go fuck yourself,” I said almost loud enough for her to hear me. I’m not sure if she did or not.
***
Over the next three days, a variation of that first doctor’s theme happened several more times. It seemed to be true, I was universally detested among the reproductive profession. Who knew?
Finally, Doc recommended an old OB/GYN friend of his who might take me. He didn’t recommend her to begin with because she was on the crusty side and her office was in a pretty bad part of town. He was being kind. As I got close to her office, I began fearing for the safety of both myself and my Mercedes. Luckily, my car had been fitted with bulletproof glass and run-flat tires a couple of years ago when there were multiple “credible” threats against me. But, still, the area was disconcerting.
I parked as close as I could to the graffiti-encrusted storefront that was the doctor’s office, trying to ignore the pale sunken-eyed man sitting by the entrance with his skin-and-bones dog and the small cluster of people simmering on the street corner a couple storefronts away, eyeing me with suspicion and my car with envy. As I got out of my car, their simmer notched up several degrees toward a boil. I hurried.
The waiting room I entered was disheveled but otherwise clean. Three women of various shades, cleanliness, and gestational girth were sitting, waiting. All three of them sat up straighter when I walked in. One of them pulled papers out of a beat-up purse and tried to show them to me. “Look, legal,” she said with an accent I couldn’t place. I waved her off. Four adequately-behaved children sat on the floor in a corner playing with toys that seemed to be the best-kept aspect of the room.
I went to the reception desk where an attractive woman, presumably a nurse judging from her uniform, sat writing. She looked up and gave me a big genuine-looking smile. I couldn’t help but notice that she also had impressively large breasts, also genuine-looking. “May I help you?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m Mr. Cavendish, a few minutes late for a 12:30 appointment.”
She took a quick look at her calendar. “Oh, yes. Please have a seat, Mr. Cavendish. There are a few people ahead of you.”
“But I have an appointment. Do you know who I am? My time is very valuable. I must go next!”
A couple of groans came from the ladies behind me in the peanut gallery, but the nurse’s smile didn’t waver even a little. “Please have a seat, Mr. Cavendish. We’ll be with you as soon as we can.”
I harumphed but sat down on one of the several chairs set against three walls, kitty-corner from a woman with several tattoos and piercings, including a large barbell-like one straining the skin of her distressingly swollen belly, a belly that her too-tiny T-shirt had no chance of covering even if it had desperately wanted it to. She looked at me with empty eyes and slid back into a slouch. If she was going to sit like that, she would have done herself a favor, and me, by wearing a longer skirt. I forced my eyes away.
“What ya doin’ here, mister?” the woman across from me asked. “This ain’t a place for you.”
“I have an appointment,” was all I said. No sense trying to pass the time with small talk. I should have brought some work to do. But who would have expected them to keep a person as important as me waiting? To pass the time, I tried to match the children with the women. It was mostly easy, with one exception; I tried anyway. I got to test how right I was as Nurse Big-Breasts called the women back to see the doctor one at a time and they took the kids with them. I was right every time, just like I always was.
Finally, the nurse called me back and led me to an office that was in as much disarray as the waiting room, but was also as clean. “Please have a seat,” she said. “The doctor will be with you in a moment.”
I sat in a green World War II era chair, with a similarly old desk and chair in front of me, and looked around the room. The several pictures of pregnancies at various stages and women’s private parts plastered on the walls made it hard to focus. I closed my eyes and got myself under control.
The doctor came in a minute or two later. She was thin and wrinkled with gray eyes and gray hair; kind of like a boney dragon. The single clue that she was a doctor was the stethoscope hanging around her neck. I noticed a Harvard medical diploma hanging crooked on the wall behind her as she sat down. I just prayed it was really hers.
“So, I hear you have an unexpected bun in the oven,” she said. No sense wasting time with pleasantries. “And you’re not having any luck finding an obstetrician.”
“That pretty much summarizes it.”
“I’ll help you. But you should know, I’m old-school. I still call my patients honey and sweetie. A few years ago, I realized I use honey for my patients I don’t like very much and sweetie for the ones I do. You good with that, honey?”
How dare she insult me with the first few words out of her mouth. I stood up to leave.
“From what I’ve heard, you’re not going to find anybody else to help you.”
She was probably right. I dropped myself heavily back into the chair. “Okay, so why will you help me, then?”
“Actually, I won’t be helping you. I’ll be helping the precious little one growing inside you.”
I sighed. A person like me really deserved better treatment. But I was feeling weary. “So, what’s the next step?”
“An ultrasound. Stop at the desk and have Nurse Caroline set up an appointment for tomorrow morning. We need to get a handle on this, pronto. And bring your better half with you.”
I looked down at the green and gray linoleum floor and shook my head, but, with no other options, said, “Okay.”
***
The next morning, my wife and I were the only ones in Dr. Dragon-Lady’s waiting room and Nurse Big-Breasts called me back after only a couple of minutes. She took me to a little changing room and told me to strip everything off and put on the flimsy little hospital gown she handed me, the kind that opens in the back with little ties to keep it closed.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Nope. Put your clothes in that plastic bag and pull that little string on the wall when you’re ready. I’ll come get you.”
When I did all that, the nurse took me to an exam room where Dr. Dragon-Lady and my wife sat chatting. “Well, don’t you look cute,” the doctor said.
“Oh my God,” I mumbled, my tense body tensing even more.
“Relax, Mr. Cavendish, I’m just messing with you.”
She sat me on the end of an exam table with rolled-out paper covering it. Randomly strewn clouds and sheep, all pink and blue, comprised the pattern for that particular paper.
“Before the ultrasound, I need to give you a thorough physical exam, Mr. Cavendish, to serve as a baseline for all the changes your body will be going through.”
I didn’t bother telling her that wouldn’t be necessary because my body wouldn’t be going through changes for long, since I didn’t want her kicking me out like all the other OBs had.
“For the last forty-five years, every single one of my patients has started the exam in the stirrups. What do you think, Mrs. Cavendish, should I make an exception for His Honor, here?”
“You wouldn’t dare,” I said. “Those are for women.” I was about a half second away from standing up and storming out, but I didn’t know where the nurse had put my clothes and I was sure I wouldn’t get any help finding them in that estrogen-infused exam room. I felt trapped. I glanced at my wife who had the same little grin she’d had when telling me I couldn’t have any wine. So much for spousal-support; she was enjoying this too much.
“But you want the full experience, don’t you, honey?” the doctor said.
For one of the first times in my life, I didn’t know what to say, what wouldn’t make the situation worse.
“Maybe you could make this one small exception for His Honor,” Allie said.
“Well, all right,” the doctor said, with a chuckle that Allie shared. “You are too serious, Mr. Cavendish. But I do need to examine you. Please lie back.”
The doctor snapped on her gloves and poked, prodded, and probed me for what seemed like an hour. My face was already flushed from the doctor’s little stirrups joke and it stayed that way through the examination. To top it off, I was getting shaky, like I was cold, but I wasn’t cold.
“You okay, honey?”
“Of course I’m okay!”
“You seem a little jittery. That’s normal. You might as well get used to it. The hormone cocktails you’ve started taking are going to whip you around like a category 5 tornado. It’ll probably be worse for you, because all my other patients have had most of their lives to get used to hormones knocking them around this way and that.”
“Swell,” I said. And I guess to prove her point about the hormones, I felt sad, like I did when my dog, Hercules, got hit by a car when I was nine. I had to find a way to get this festering little parasite out of me! Soon!
The doctor picked up her ultrasound transducer, squirted my belly with goopy gel, and moved the transducer around, imaging my insides.
“My, my,” she said under her breath. “Katherine did do a remarkable job.”
“Who’s that?”
“Dr. Katherine McKenzie.”
“That’s the bitch who did this to me?”
The doctor grabbed my earlobe, like an old schoolmarm might have two hundred years ago, and pinched it, hard.
“Ouch. What are you, crazy?”
“What’s that, honey? I didn’t quite hear what you just said about Dr. McKenzie.”
There wasn’t much question as to whose world I was in right then. It sure as hell wasn’t mine. “Nothing,” I said.
“Good, that’s what I thought. So, it looks like you’re going to be carrying pretty much like the rest of my ladies.”
I was sure she’d intentionally said ladies instead of patients. My face was getting red again.
“And a C-section should be easy enough,” she went on. “Which is good because, well, you don’t have most of the necessary plumbing for this little adventure you’re on.”
Yes, and thank God, I thought but didn’t say. I didn’t want to get my ear pinched again.
“Can you tell anything about it yet? Like is it a boy or girl?” I had no idea why I asked that. Why would I care?
“No, it’s way too early. About all I can tell is it appears healthy.”
“Oh, thank God,” Allie said.
The doctor touched her screen and we heard quick little thump thumps. “That’s the heartbeat. So that and its size makes your baby six weeks, or so. That’s what we’ll go with. Six weeks.” She adjusted her screen so we could see better and then adjusted her transducer a little bit on my gut. “And this is what she looks like so far. That’s where we’ll see her little head in a few days.” She pointed at the screen.
Both Allie and I looked over. “Well, I’ll be damned,” I said.
“Why did you say she and her?” Allie asked, ignoring my language.
“I just have a hunch. And I’m right more often than I’m wrong.”
Allie smiled a big smile. I didn’t, of course. But, full disclosure, I wanted to.
***
After that, I finally headed over to the church, where I’d planned to go a few days ago, if I hadn’t been rejected by a string of spiteful OBs. On the way, I dropped Allie at home so she could get back to caring for the house and the kids. By then, my momentary loss of resolve at Dr. Dragon-Lady’s office had corrected itself and I was reverted back to being hell-bent on ridding myself of this curse that had been imposed upon me. I just needed permission. Unfortunately, I realized afterwards, I was going to the wrong place for that.
“Is Father Joe around?” I asked the secretary as I entered the church offices.
“Oh, no, I’m sorry Mr. Cavendish. He’s doing a funeral. Father Fran’s around, though. Would you like to see him?”
I didn’t like Father Fran very much. He was a little too limp-wristed for me. Even his name seemed too girlish, and it didn’t help me at all that Fran was short for Francis, just like Saint Francis. “How long until Father Joe gets back?”
“At least a couple of hours.”
“Okay, would you please let Father Fran know I’m here?”
I went down the hall and took a seat in Father Fran’s austere office. Our Lord and Savior stared down at me from his cross on the wall, being crucified for the billionth time. The sweet aroma of the frankincense and myrrh incense that had been smoldering in the building for decades nearly overwhelmed me. I’d never been bothered by that aroma before. But that day it was oppressively strong, to the point of nausea. I fought it off.
“Welcome, Bert.” he said. “How are you?”
“Hi, Fran. Thanks for seeing me. I’m about as well as can be expected.”
He raised a cup of coffee in my direction. “Can you still have this? Do you want some?”
My jaw clenched. “Yes, I can still have that,” I squeezed out through gritted teeth. “But, no thanks. So, you’ve obviously heard what’s happened to me.”
“Yes. I saw it on the news.” He took a dainty sip of his coffee; I tried not to cringe.
“I need to get rid of it. I can’t have this devil’s spawn growing in me. It’s an affront to God and man. You must agree.”
He flicked his hand at me a couple of times as though brushing away my blasphemous words. “None of that matters, Bert. You can’t get rid of it, as you put it. It would be a sin.”
“But God couldn’t have possibly wanted this. It’s not natural!”
“It’s not our place to question God’s will, Bert. You know God works in mysterious ways.”
“But it’s not natural,” I said again. “How about this, how about if Allie and I donate $100,000 to the church’s mission for wayward mothers? That should make up several times over for me having the crime that’s been perpetrated against me corrected.”
“That would be very generous and the church would greatly appreciate it. But you can’t trade helping many lives for ending even one single one.”
“But for all intents and purposes, I was raped.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“How about if I become a Deacon? I’ve been thinking about that, anyway.”
He put down his coffee, folded his hands on his desk, and shook his head at me.
“Okay, Fran. Well, thanks anyway.”
“Good luck, Bert. God bless you and your precious little one.”
“Yeah, thanks.” That was absolutely no help. I should have waited for Father Joe. That good old boy would have seen things my way. I started getting weepy. Jesus Christ, I had to get out of there before somebody saw me!
***
The next morning, I went to the Court where, admittedly, I’d been neglecting my duties lately. But I wasn’t going there to work. After running the gauntlet of news reporters outside the building, repeating, “No comment,” several times, I made my way to Chief Justice Jack Davidson’s office. Although he and I had locked horns on the abortion issue several times, with him being squarely in the right-to-choose camp, I was hoping for his support.
I walked past the admins and clerks in his outer offices, feeling many eyes on me, or trying not to be on me, and knocked.
“Come on in, Bert. Be right with you.”
I went in and sat at his finely-polished mahogany table, steeped deeply in jurisprudence. He got up from his desk and joined me after a moment. As I anticipated, having spent countless hours with the man, his expression gave me no clue as to what he was thinking. Although I doubt he had ever wagered a penny in his life, he had perfected an impenetrable poker face.
“It seems like you’ve gotten yourself into a bit of a pickle.”
“I wouldn’t exactly say I got myself into it, Jack.”
Thankfully he spared me the one reaps what one sows speech he could have easily launched into. “So, what can I do for you?”
“I was hoping you could help me get out of this bit of a pickle, as you call it, in a legal and moral manner.”
He sat, stone-faced, his body completely still, almost eerily still. “By get out of it, do you mean terminate it?”
“Of course that’s what I mean! Allie and I can’t have another baby at our ages.”
“I’m just being sure I’m understanding you. I can’t help you with the moral part, Bert. That’s between you and God. And you and our colleagues with their minds set similarly to yours have left very little maneuverability legally. Perhaps you are now realizing that upholding a total ban on abortion was not the right decision. Of course you could always get around the ban like other well-to-do people do, by taking a vacation in Canada. Or there’s always adoption. But you already know all that. So, what’s your real issue, Bert?”
“I’m a man, goddamnit! Carrying a baby is women’s work. It’s the ultimate form of women’s work! I need to take a stand for men everywhere. Maybe the final stand for men the way our mixed-up world is heading.”
“I wish I could agree with you, Bert. But I can’t. Nonetheless, I think what was done to you was wrong. So, I’ll do what I can to help you, as I’d like to help everyone in your present situation. I will require a single thing from you in return. I need your full support the next time a woman’s right to choose comes before us. Your full support, regardless of how a woman ends up where you are right now, be it by violence or by accident or for health reasons or for any other reason. Do you understand? Can you do that?”
“That’s a lot to ask, Jack. I’ll have to think about it.”
“Okay, Bert, you go ahead and think about it. In the meantime, if you have legal maneuvering in mind, you better get it started. I don’t need to tell you that anything will take at least many weeks; if you’re lucky. Do you have anything in mind?”
“I think my best and maybe only approach in the time I have is to convince Congress and then the President to revise the wording of the abortion ban to apply specifically to women. For biological reasons, it could easily be argued that that was the original intent. I would expect immediate backlash and legal challenges to the new wording due to it discriminating against women, probably with an immediate moratorium on the law pending review. That’s where you would come in. When a lower court finds against the revised law, I would make sure there was an emergency appeal to this Court.”
“You would need to recuse yourself, of course. But you would still want this Court to find in favor of the new law, putting an end to it, with you getting what you want. Is that what you have in mind?”
“Yes.”
“That sounds very shady, Bert. But I’m not saying no. Whether I would deliver that decision or not would depend on your final answer to the single thing that I require in return. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“But really, Bert, I think it would be much easier to just go to Canada.”
“That’s the coward’s way out. I’ll only use it as a last resort, if I can’t ram through the legal approach in time; in other words, by the end of my second trimester.”
“Suit yourself.” Still stone-faced and completely still. “Good luck, Bert.”
“Thank you, Jack.”
***
I started having weekly appointments with Dr. Dragon-Lady. I was there enough that the simmering on the corner didn’t go up a single degree when I parked my Mercedes and went in. I even got an occasional half-hearted nod from a random person on the corner, or from George, the man with the skin-and-bones dog who called a small patch of sidewalk in front of the doctor’s office home.
My appointments seemed to coincide with a young woman’s because she was usually sitting in the waiting room when I got there. Sometimes she’d be doing what looked like homework. Other times, she’d just be sitting there, her head bowed, her cornrow braids hanging limply down her shoulders. Regardless of what she was doing, she always looked very sad.
I would normally take my laptop out of my briefcase and get to work, sometimes waiting minutes, sometimes longer until the nurse called me back to see the doctor. One day, a few weeks in, I didn’t take my laptop out. I put my briefcase on the floor, instead. “Are you okay?” I asked the young woman.
She sat there with her head down.
I shrugged my shoulders and picked up my briefcase.
“What do you care?” she said quietly.
That was a fair question that I couldn’t fairly answer. I shrugged my shoulders again and took out my laptop.
“I’m about as far along as you, you know,” she said.
I instinctively put a hand on my mildly protruding belly. “How on earth could you know that?”
She raised her head up and looked at me with deep eyes. “I read the news, Mr. Cavendish. I know who you are.”
“I’m very happy to hear that. That you read the news, that is, not necessarily that you know who I am. So, I’ll ask my question again, are you okay?”
“No, I’m not okay. I’m pregnant with a baby I don’t want. I was going to be a nurse, like Nurse Caroline over there.” She nodded her head toward Nurse Big-Breasts, who looked up from her work and gave one of her patented smiles. “Now I’ll have to drop out of school.”
“Well, you just shouldn’t have had sex.”
The girl shook her head slowly, her braids moving back and forth on her shoulders. “My uncle shouldn’t have bologna and cheese sandwiches slathered in mayonnaise for lunch every day. But he does. Sometimes people do what they shouldn’t, Mr. Cavendish. The difference is that my uncle won’t have to spend the next twenty years of his life having to care for one of his mistakes. I will.”
“That was remarkably well said.”
“Why remarkably? Because I’m a girl? Because I’m black? Because I’m poor?”
Well, kind of all of those, yes; but, “No. it was just well said. I understand exactly what you mean.”
“Good. So, are you going to apologize?”
“For what?”
“For being one of the main people forcing me to still be pregnant.”
Hmm, she really did know who I was. “I’m sorry, what’s your name?”
A quick smile replaced the perpetually glum look on her face.
“I wasn’t apologizing, I just want to know your name.”
Her smile vanished; her glumness returned. “Talisha.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Talisha. Please call me Bert.” I immediately wanted to take that back. I normally only wanted my closest acquaintances to address me so informally and then only grudgingly. Oh well, I’d said it. “I can’t apologize. The whole issue is very complicated.”
She bowed her head back down toward her belly. “It doesn’t seem very complicated to me.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” the nurse said, “but the doctor is ready for you Mr. Cavendish.”
I pushed myself out of my chair, gathered my things, gave Talisha a nod that wasn’t returned, and went to the door so the nurse could buzz me in.
***
After that, Talisha had me almost looking forward to my appointments. She never got particularly friendly. But she was the one person in the world I felt somewhat willing to share with because we were far enough apart socially that no nasty gossip would result and because we were sharing the same misery: very unwanted babies growing inside of us
Like I could tell her about the rollercoaster I was on, ranging from feeling on top of the world one minute to wanting to sit in my garage with the car running the next. “It’s driving me crazy!” I said, spontaneously slamming my fist into the chair next to me, proving the point.
“I know what you mean,” she said. “But for me, the balance leans farther in the sitting in the garage with the car running direction most of the time – if I had a garage – or a car.”
“I’m sorry, Talisha.”
Or like when I was sitting there and felt a little flutter in my belly like a butterfly, and not from feeling sick either, and for the first time had a thought, or really more of a feeling like warm water waves going through me, that maybe I should keep the baby. I must have made a little noise, or maybe she just saw me put my hands on my ever-expanding gut.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I felt my baby for the first time, I think.”
She gave me one of her few real smiles, and such a nice smile. “Cool. I felt mine last week.”
I gave her a mostly pretend hurt expression. “And you didn’t tell me?”
Until one week she wasn’t there. I plunked myself into a chair and called over to the nurse sitting at her desk, “No Talisha today?”
“Talisha won’t be coming here anymore, Mr. Cavendish.”
“Why not?”
She didn’t answer.
I hoisted myself off my chair and went to her desk. Tears wetted her cheeks. “Why not?” I asked again, now knowing I didn’t want to hear the answer.
She pushed a small newspaper clipping toward me that had Talisha’s name and a tiny picture of her. It said she was a promising young high school junior who had been found dead in the bedroom she shared with her two sisters. It didn’t say anything about her being pregnant but it did say that she had hung herself.
“I just remembered something I have to do,” I said, quickly turning toward the door.
“Mr. Cavendish,” the nurse called after me.
I stopped, but didn’t turn around.
“You can cry here. I promise I won’t tell anybody.”
I dropped myself into a chair and did, hard and long. The nurse brought me a tissue and sat down with me for a couple minutes. I didn’t completely hate that.
I don’t know whether it was the redness of my eyes that tipped the doctor off to my state, or whether she was missing Talisha herself, or some combination. But, whatever it was, she was kinder to me that day. And I was kinder to her.
***
As I was approaching the end of my second trimester, I sat in my doctor’s office for a few minutes before my weekly exam, cradling my belly with my hands like I’d seen the women doing. It helped. “I’ve made my decision about my pregnancy,” I said to the doctor when she came in.
“You’ve made your decision? You’re saying that like it’s your decision to make.”
“It is my decision to make. Tomorrow it will be announced that the Supreme Court has decided that the abortion law applies only to women. So, I am free to terminate my pregnancy, as long as I do it before my third trimester.”
“Jesus, that is so exceedingly unfair!” she blurted out, literally trembling, apparently in barely-contained rage. “And sexist! And so many other things!”
“For whatever it’s worth, I now agree with you. Not only regarding my particular case, but regarding the whole issue. The decision should have been mine to make to begin with, as it should have been Talisha’s, and should be everybody else’s.”
The doctor sat for several seconds calming herself and then for several more seconds, scrutinizing me with her old gray eyes. “You know what?” she finally said, noticeably not calling me honey. “There might just be some small hope for you after all. So, what did you decide?”
There was a sharp knock on the door.
“Yes?” the doctor said.
Nurse Caroline came in. “Sorry to disturb you, doctor,” she said, breathless, “but Mrs. Smith just came in. She’s bleeding heavily at twenty-four weeks.”
I knew enough by then to know that Mrs. Smith was probably about to deliver a stillbirth. “Go,” I said to the doctor, with a couple of flicks of my hand. “She needs you more than I do right now …”
***
My ten-year-old comes bounding into the room, pulling me out of my reverie. She sits down next to me on the couch. “Hi, Daddy.”
“Hi, sweetie. What’s up?”
“Not much. What were you just thinking about?” I must have had a faraway look in my eyes.
“Just some things I think about sometimes, Talie,” I say, kissing her forehead. “A few things that were happening shortly before you were born.”
Story copyright © 2022 by David W. Palmer
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