The Justice Game

52

This was the last place Kelly Starling wanted to be.

The Hillside Clinic was a nondescript medical facility with red brick, lots of glass, trim shrubs, and a small professional sign. It seemed so harmless and sterile. But as Kelly pulled into the parking lot, the memories came back with a debilitating vengeance, like someone had just ripped a fresh hole in her heart.

Kelly backed into a spot in the far corner of the lot and left the car running as she stared at the building.

She had read a few online journals written by other women who had taken the RU-486 pill and later spilled their emotions for the entire world to read. The women featured on the pro-life sites said they thought about their babies every day. How old were they now? What would have been their first words? their favorite toy?

Some wrote about the deception they had experienced at the clinics they used. The women had been promised that the abortion would be like any other period. But some had seen an embryo larger than expected. Some talked about their desire to have a burial.

Kelly’s experience had not been like that. A nurse at Hillside had made it clear that the RU-486 pill was not convenient and painless. She had carefully explained the differences between chemical abortion and surgical abortion with patience and sensitivity. Kelly’s impression, which proved to be right, was that the RU-486 pill would be like a miscarriage with bleeding and cramping and a sense of loneliness.

And plenty of guilt, something the nurse had not talked about.

Most women said they chose the pill rather than surgery because it seemed more natural and allowed them to have a semblance of control. These were definitely factors in Kelly’s thinking. She could start the process at home, on her schedule. And it felt like something she did to herself, rather than something somebody else did to her.

But in hindsight, Kelly realized that she had also picked RU-486 precisely because it was not easy and quick and painless. In a convoluted way that Kelly couldn’t quite express, it felt right to suffer, as if the process itself should be the beginning of her penance.

Six years old. Her baby would have started first grade this year.

She blinked back tears and forced herself to focus on the job at hand. She had turned this over and over in her mind, always reaching the same conclusion. The leak must have come from someone at the clinic. She would walk in and demand a meeting with her doctor, refusing to leave until he gave her a few minutes of his time. She would tell him that somebody had threatened to disclose the fact that she had been pregnant. She would explain that she had talked to no one outside the clinic about it. She would demand that he investigate.

But even as she rehearsed the conversation in her mind, she recognized the problems with this approach. There was a good chance her doctor would become defensive. Even if he initiated an investigation, it would probably be clumsy and ineffective, serving no purpose other than to make the blackmailer more circumspect. If the doctor brought in outside authorities, it would only increase the number of people who knew about Kelly’s abortion.

Kelly knew she might temporarily feel better if she gave the doctor a piece of her mind, but it would solve nothing. Everyone at the clinic had treated her with kindness and respect. In her heart, it was hard to believe that somebody in there was working with the blackmailer.

She stared at the clinic and tried to honestly assess her own motives. Was she hesitating because she was scared? Or was this genuinely a bad idea?

Either way, she couldn’t make herself go in there.

She put her car in drive and pulled out of the parking spot. She would find out who was behind the blackmail; her resolve hadn’t been weakened one bit.

But this was not the way.