To be completely honest a lot of you are going to hate me after you've finished reading this but I felt that I wanted to at least give the subject matter a try.

Warning: Mentions abortion, anyone sensitive to the issue may not want to read what follows.


The smell of hospital grade antiseptic tickles her nose as she sits in the too cramped waiting room of the clinic.

She's alone and so terrified she can barely breathe.

The woman directly in front of her sits lovingly stroking the swell of her stomach and Haley feels like the most rotten person alive as she looks down at her own, deceivingly flat abdomen because she knows that in just a few short hours it'll be empty.

She can't do this. She can't do this to herself, she can't do this to Sam and she can't do it to the tiny little life growing inside of her.

She has to do this.

Her life, the life she shares with Sam, it's no life to bring a child into. It's too dangerous, too unstable as it is, adding a child to the mix would be foolish.

But she doesn't want to do it; she doesn't want to get rid of her child, her baby, the little person growing inside of her that would be the perfect mixture of herself and Sam.

She wants to keep it more than she's ever wanted anything else in her entire life and this decision, this decision is killing her.

She wishes Brooke were with her, to hold her hand, to lie to her and tell her she's doing the right thing.

She wishes Sam was sitting beside her.

But he's not because he doesn't know, he can never know. He'd try to talk her out of it, try to be noble and make promises he has no way of knowing if he can keep or not and she'd let him too because part of her already wants to stand up and run out the doors as fast as she can.

Its better this way, its better that she does this by herself, that this act is her burden to bare alone, her secret to keep, her cross to bare.

The nurse comes out, calls her name, and she feels the eyes of the expectant mothers on her back as she walks away.

She imagines that they know exactly what she's doing here, she imagines each one of them judging her as she starts walking the stark white halls toward the room where the last of her innocence is about to be lost.

The door closes, she takes a seat, and the doctor walks in with a kind smile on her face.

She has to do this, but she doesn't know if she can.