!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!
Sunday, I alternated between anger and depression, fuming first at Howard, then myself. I feared calling anyone, afraid of their reaction, or maybe my own, the imagined words of my sister echoing in my thoughts all day. Finally, after dinner, I called Lauren, and spilled the story.
“I’m so sorry, Sarah, that happened to you. You’re right, it’s not fair. Not fair, to you, not fair to us to women. What are you thinking? What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. I can’t think straight, I just want to smash his face. Or maybe my own, I don’t know.” I started crying. “Besides,” I said through sniffles, “What can I do? Just wait, I guess, see what happens…”
“I’ve heard if you take two birth control pills, the old kind, the strong ones, now, and then again in the morning, that sometimes works.”
The thought went through my chest like an electric shock. “What do you mean, like an early abortion?” I shivered, thinking of facing another man, a doctor, to explain and ask for a prescription. “I couldn’t do that, not now.”
“Why not?”, she pressed.
“Seeing a doctor, I can’t handle that right now…”
Lauren suggested calmly, “Wait a minute. Didn’t you tell me about Esther, that grad student who did a circle thing with you and your friends, the mirror thing? You said she helped out at the Women’s Health Collective, right?”
Lauren’s thought pulled me away from my enraged emotions, re-triggering the analytic part of me. “Yes. Yes. The ones who did that book, Our Bodies… “
“Right, her. Think she might know what to do?”
After I hung up, I dug out my copy of that thick paperback, found their phone number, and called first thing in the morning.
“Yes, there is a good chance doing that would prevent implantation. Not 100%, but better than 50-50.” Esther explained after I’d re-introduced myself and we caught up a bit. “It is a prescription, unless you know someone who would share a pill pack with you.” She paused, and I heard distant voices in the background. “Oh, somebody just reminded me. They’re starting to try an IUD to see if that works. Putting in a Copper-T, that’s supposed to prevent implantation, which doesn’t happen right away, you know. But you’d have to be sure, you don’t want to make a bad situation worse. And they don’t know for sure about any side effects on the baby if it doesn’t work. Nobody’s been willing to really study it yet.”
Her hesitance convinced me. Deep inside, I became aware this just wasn’t right. “I don’t have to decide now, about anything. Who knows, the odds are I’m not even pregnant, right? And I can always do something later, can’t I?”
All of February, the deadline for my thesis submission overpowered the fear and anger I’d felt that first weekend. By the end of the month, I had finished it to Julia’s satisfaction. We sent it off the the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry for peer review, and scheduled my oral defense with the committee for mid-April. Once that was done, she took me out to celebrate.
“Have you decided on what you’ll be doing, once you graduate?” she asked.
I glanced down at my salad, covered with thin strips of salmon, and felt a little queasy as I replied, “I’ve put in for a fellowship at Beth Israel, with the medical school…”
“Back to Harvard, eh?” she commented with a twinkle.
I nodded. “The Department of Psychiatry is starting up a program in consultation liaison. They need a research director.”
“Interesting. What’s that entail?”
‘I’m not sure yet. I’ll be meeting with Dr, Silverman…”
“The medical education director? Wow, must be a big deal.” she enthused
“I guess so,” I said with a sigh. “It’s something, to keep me busy. I hope I’ll like it. I can’t really start practice until after I pass my boards.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that, you’ll do fine, Sarah.”
I said nothing, still wondering why I didn’t feel like eating.
Dr. Klein noticed my discomfort. “What’s up? You don’t seem very excited about being done, with the thesis and all, and finally stepping out into the real world.”
All those years, those meetings with her, her guidance, support and honesty, helped me to confess, “I’m late. Julia. I think I’m…”
She put her fork down, reached across the table and gently took my hand in both of hers. “What is it, what happened?”
I managed to get through the whole story without crying. “I’m numb to it now, that night with Howard. Now, I’m wondering about the future, my future.”
“Have you been talking with your analyst about it?”
“I’ve only seen him twice since then, it’s been all about what happened, not what I’m going to do. Besides, I don’t know if I want to talk that over with a man. Can they really understand, even if he’s supposed to have professional distance. It’s not just about feelings. It’s about…my life.”
“Your life?”
“You know the phrase, ‘biological clock’? I’m thinking it’s not only time ticking away, whether a woman can get pregnant. It’s also about when in her life a women can be pregnant, can have a baby. Raise it, love it, give her, or him, all the attention they deserve. If I have it now, what will it do to my work, I don’t even have the assurance of a stable job, to say nothing of a man, a husband to help me out.”
She nodded a bit ruefully.
“You don’t have to keep it, you know.”
I closed my eyes and swallowed hard. Even though I hadn’t been thinking about this, I instantly knew the answer. It started pouring out. “Intellectually – and politically – I believe in it. ‘My body, my self.’ But the last six years, I’ve watched mothers and their newborns, bonding, loving, so many times. All those girls I saw, the teen-agers, they mostly seemed so happy, so ready to be a mother. And yet, they had so little – still in school, most of them, no job, no money, even those with a boyfriend, he didn’t live with them. I’ve got so much more, my degree, my experience if only because I’m nearly twice as old as they are. And then there’s…love is the only thing I can call it. I don’t even know for sure I’m pregnant, but already I love my baby, I never want anything to harm her. I’d do anything for her.”
“Anything? Raise it alone, juggle your time at work, give her to someone else eight hours every day?”
“All I know is, I have to make it work. It’s the only way I can be me. It’s what I’m supposed to do.”