She remembers with painful accuracy what it feels like to be pregnant and wish you weren’t. To be in denial, then weeks later find yourself vomiting up your morning toast while the tears run down your face into the toilet. To feel the slight swell of your belly and the pain in your breasts and know that you won’t be able to hide it much longer. To dream of ending it, any way at all. An accidental trip down a flight of stairs, or drinking just enough bleach to not quite kill yourself. Opening up your wrists in a bathtub.
Steam fogging up the bathroom mirror.
The feeling of falling, falling, the scent of roses on the warm air.
Her brother’s voice calling her name.
Evelyn wrenches her mind out of that dark corner of her past, back into the bright lights of the church basement. She rolls her shoulders back, tries to focus.
Holly returns to the pulpit, her eyes shining with admiration and something deeper, a fiery determination that seems to glow. “Thank you, Lillian,” she says. “Thank you for your bravery in sharing your experience with us. It was our honour to help you exercise your right to determine what happens to your own body.”
Evelyn’s heart is racing as though she just ran up several flights of stairs. Holly reminds Evelyn a bit of Paula, her protest friend from the Abortion Caravan. She isn’t as crass, but there’s a fierceness to her entire presence that takes Evelyn back to those days in Ottawa. The steely yet pained expressions on her comrades’ faces when they delivered the coffin to 24 Sussex Drive with the fire of the setting sun in their eyes. Paula screaming her outrage up into the sky because it was too big to be contained in her body. How the air in the House of Commons gallery was charged with the protesters’ daring and resolve.
Evelyn feels that same energy hovering over the heads of the women gathered in this musty church basement tonight. The fight is still very much alive; it’s simply changed its form.
“And that leads me into our big focus tonight,” Holly says, shifting her weight. She’s all business now. “Access. Adequate, on-demand access. As word has caught on about Jane, the demand has outstripped our resources. Lillian just demonstrated to us what we’ve known for a while now: that the abortion law is too restrictive. Women are coming to us instead of even trying to go the legal route because the powers that be want us subjugated. The truth is we desperately need more doctors. We need to be able to provide safe abortions to every single woman who calls Jane. It’s our duty as resourceful, privileged women.
“So, if you have any friends who are sympathetic to the movement and have some time to spare—and are sensible enough to exercise discretion—please approach them. And if you know a doctor who might be willing to join our network, please, please, please”—she leans forward on the pulpit like a preacher—“ask them to reach out to us. It’s a risk, yes, but these women need help.”
“We can help.” Evelyn is on her feet in the back row.
“Yes!” Alice gasps.
Every single face turns in their direction. It’s unnerving, but Evelyn plows on. “My name is Evelyn Taylor. I’m a family physician and my nurse Alice and I”—she motions to Alice to stand—“have been performing abortions for the past several months at my practice, after-hours. I trained under Dr. Morgentaler in Montreal.”
Suddenly Evelyn feels the intensity of all those eyes, the heat rising in her face. Alice gives Evelyn’s hand another squeeze, but Evelyn keeps her eyes on Holly’s. “We can help,” she repeats.
A grin spreads across Holly’s face. Everything in the room is lit up. She nods slowly. “All right, then, Dr. Taylor, Alice. Welcome to the Jane Network.”
CHAPTER 15 Nancy
MARCH 1981
Nancy descends the creaky stairs of the old nursing home, heart fluttering in her chest as she recounts the days in her head. It’s been two weeks. Turning right at the bottom of the staircase, she ducks into the public washroom near the reception desk. The young nun at the desk tosses her a smile, which Nancy returns with tight lips. She figures she may as well check one more time.
Despite the fact that her Grandmama passed several months ago, Nancy has been volunteering at her nursing home, offering much-needed companionship to those few poor souls with no family. Nancy sits by their bedside during those last days, once Death has announced his intent to visit and there is nothing anyone can do to stop his steady march.
And although Nancy spent her morning here, she should have been at home studying. She’s behind on a couple of courses, and her grades are slipping, but part of the problem is that she doesn’t care much about school right now. She’s more interested in spending her time hearing about the ways other people managed to screw up their own lives—the secrets they kept, the painful buried truths. The lies they could never unravel.
Her grandmother’s confessions in the haze of her last days and the resultant revelation have stuck with Nancy ever since, and she’s found the same inclination among the other palliative residents she sits with. She’s found that, more often than not, the presence of another person, even a stranger, sparks an urgency to relay anything left unsaid. To ensure someone will at least hear their story and carry it into the future for them in an existential relay. The prospect of death causes a person to shine a light into the darkest corners of their history, turning over the moss-covered rocks that have lain there for years. Undisturbed, perhaps, but certainly not forgotten. And Nancy likes to be there when the spotlight is flicked on for the Big Reveal. She watches the secrets begin to take shape, first with clouded edges, then sharpening with each word. The deepest thoughts these men and women dared not speak to their loved ones. The confessions and regrets, the things they did and the things they should have done.
The departing soul holds the words out to her. Nancy takes them gently in her hands, runs her fingers along the ragged edges, bumps, and sharp corners. She turns them over in her palm, viewing them from different angles, knowing that if she isn’t careful, the cut could be deep.
But the danger is part of the appeal. They’re all in Nancy’s keeping now. She has become a collector of other people’s secrets while her own just keep piling up.
In the washroom, Nancy locks the stall door and unzips her jeans. Nothing.
“Shit. Fuck.”
Her period is now officially two weeks late.
She hikes up her pants and slips out of the bathroom, making her way to the front doors of the nursing home. Her stomach churns as she walks; it could just be the nerves that are now setting in, or it could be more of the nausea she’s been trying to ignore for the past few days. She threw up yesterday morning, but she’d chalked it up to the previous night of drinking with friends.
She’s tried her best to put off the inevitable, but knows now that she’ll have to bite the bullet and go get one of those new at-home pregnancy tests. And whatever the result is, she knows she won’t be telling Len.
Len, she thinks darkly as she dodges her fellow bustling pedestrians out on the street, her head bowed down against the freezing spring drizzle. It’s Len who got her into this damn mess in the first place. Len and his cheap candy-apple-red condoms. Len Darlington, with a name like a character from a drugstore romance novel. They’ve only been dating a few months, and on and off at that. Nothing serious. Nancy isn’t even sure she would call it dating. They’ve slept together on a handful of occasions, and she thought they had been reasonably careful. Except for the past couple of times when she was too drunk to remember much. She’s spent most of the past year drinking; too heavily, she knows. But it’s an effective numbing agent.