“Try to stay calm, Clara,” Nancy says, pulling away. “It’ll be over soon.”
The girls enter the subway station, drop their tokens into the metal box. They land with a clink, one after the other, on top of the hundreds of other tokens from that day’s commuters. Normally it’s a sound Nancy quite likes. It’s the sound of going places. Of visiting friends or adventurous Saturday afternoon excursions to the St. Lawrence Market. She loves just walking around the city, popping into shops, galleries, or cafés whenever the mood strikes her, discovering new and peculiar oddities and hidden gems within the boundaries of the city she loves so much. But tonight, the sound seems to echo off the walls of the quiet subway station with eerie magnitude.
They hurry down the stairs to the train platform, breathing in the smell of the subway: somehow damp and dusty at the same time, with pungent undercurrents of rotting garbage and urine. Their fellow travelers are all staring down the dark tunnel in impatient anticipation for the distant light of the train and the rush of wind that precedes its arrival. When Nancy and Clara finally board, they take two seats right across from the doors.
She notices Clara is staring resolutely at the empty seat across from her, her face white above the small gold cross hanging around her neck. Nancy’s never known anyone who got an abortion. Or at least, she thinks with a jolt, no one that she knows of. She isn’t entirely sure what to expect, and that makes her nerves tingle. She’s the type of person who’s most comfortable when she has all the information, for better or worse. But tonight it feels like she and Clara are groping blindly with only the vaguest sense of direction.
After several stops, Clara glances up at the map on the wall above the doors, stands, and clears her throat. The sound is small, like a little girl’s. Nancy rises from her seat as the car lurches to a halt.
On the street outside the station, Clara pulls a crumpled piece of paper out of her pocket and squints at it in the light from the streetlamp overhead.
“This way, I think,” she mutters.
They turn right toward a side street that takes them deeper into a shabby neighbourhood. The farther they wander into the deserted streets, the more nervous Nancy becomes. The unfamiliar houses are packed in tightly and seem to bear down on them. After ten minutes’ walk and two backtracks, they arrive at the address. It’s a triplex building with peeling paint and sagging eaves. A rusted screen door hangs drunkenly off its hinges. The lights are on in the unit on the top floor, but the main floor is dark. They can just see a peek of yellow light through a gap in the basement curtains.
“He said side door,” Clara says, but she doesn’t move. She looks confused, as though she isn’t quite sure why they’re standing in the middle of this strange street in the pouring rain.
Nancy licks her dry lips. “Clara? Are we… do you still want to do this?”
An overwhelming part of her hopes her cousin will say no, she’s changed her mind, let’s go on home and we’ll figure it out somehow. But instead she nods. “Yes.”
Nancy swallows the sour lump in her throat and follows Clara down the lane between the houses. It’s pitch-black and the pavement shimmers with rain.
Clara knocks on the back door. A light flickers to life through the glass above and they hear a series of locks being turned, then a man appears in the crack of the door. He has a rough, reddish brown beard and round glasses perched on a slightly sweaty face. He takes in Clara and then looks behind her at Nancy.
“Which one of you called me?” he asks.
“Me,” Clara answers.
“Do you have the eight hundred?”
“Yes.”
“Let me see it, girl.”
Clara unzips her coat and withdraws a wad of twenty-dollar bills from the inner pocket. Nancy’s jaw clenches. She knows Clara’s been saving her tips from the diner to pay for school. She’ll have to work double shifts now to make up for this.
“Okay, then,” the man says. “Come on in. Be quick about it.”
He opens the door wide and Clara steps over the threshold. Nancy hesitates a moment before following. She regrets this decision like hell, but there’s no point abandoning Clara now that they’ve come this far, and as the elder of the two girls, she feels responsible for her cousin. The man leads them down a narrow, bare staircase to the basement apartment. The damp and cold increase with each step. When they reach a small bedroom at the back of the unit, Nancy’s stomach flips at the sight before her.
In the centre of the room is what appears to be an old wooden dining table covered in a sheet with a small flat pillow at one end. The sheet is black. Nancy realizes with a lurch that it’s likely because it’s stained with blood from all the women who have lain on that table before. It reminds her of the black draping at a funeral.
There’s a small stool at the bottom of the table beside a metal cart that looks like it was found in the garbage skip behind a hospital. It’s vaguely medical, but rusted and missing a wheel. In the corner, there’s another small table with a large bottle of rubbing alcohol, a garbage bin, some silver instruments, towels, and a radio that seems conspicuously out of place. It’s the instruments that draw Clara’s eye, and her head starts to shake.
The man closes the door behind them. “All right, then, take off your pants and underwear and get up on the table.”
Nancy jumps at the click of the lock and feels her heart rate accelerate into overdrive. The man still hasn’t told them his name. “Clara…” she says.
“Okay,” Clara whispers, and does as she’s told. Nancy’s instinct is to face the wall in an attempt to give Clara some privacy, but there’s no point. The room is small and there’s no blanket or anything to cover Clara. There will be no dignity in this experience, and by the set of Clara’s jaw, Nancy can tell she’s too determined to not be pregnant to bother with something as insignificant as her dignity.
“Drink this.” The man hands Clara a bottle. It doesn’t have a label, but Nancy hopes it’s alcohol to numb the pain. Clara drinks three large gulps and splutters in disgust. Some of it drips down her chin, and Nancy steps over to her to wipe it away. It smells strange.
“It’s my own little cocktail,” the man says with a half grin. “Good for the nerves at a time like this. The ladies seem to like it, anyway.”
Clara closes her eyes, but tears pour out the corners, falling back into her blond hair. Her bottom lip is trembling. Fear skitters down Nancy’s spine. She can’t imagine how Clara must feel. Nancy takes her hand, squeezes it tight, but Clara doesn’t return the pressure.
At the table in the corner of the room, the man pours rubbing alcohol on the tools—knives, scalpels, some kind of long stick, and other instruments—then he settles himself down on the stool at the bottom of the table and places the items on the tray beside him. He pulls on a pair of blue surgical gloves, snapping each of the cuffs into place. It hits Nancy now—what’s about to happen to Clara’s body, the things she might see and hear and smell.
“I’m right here, okay?” Nancy murmurs into Clara’s ear, brushing her damp hair back off her forehead. Clara’s half-conscious now with whatever this guy gave her to drink.