A/N: See Chapter 1 for Disclaimer.
Chapter 2: Death Row
To say that Christmas was horrible for the Jefferson family that year would be a gross understatement. Louise never got around to telling George, Lionel, and Jenny about her trip to the E.R. because they had stayed at Olivia's apartment until well into the night. It was only when a friend and neighbor of Olivia's finally got back from a Christmas Eve party and took over for them a little after midnight that they were able to go home. George, Lionel, and Jenny stayed by Olivia's bedside as much as they could, and despite how bad Louise obviously felt physically, she, too, spent a lot of time with her mother-in-law. She continued to help Jenny cook for the men and make sure they were eating well, and she coaxed what little bit of food and liquids she could into Olivia. Louise also continued to help Jenny take care of Olivia's apartment, despite the fact that it was all beginning to take a toll on her. Louise's biopsy was scheduled for that coming Tuesday, two days after Christmas, and even though she knew she had to tell her husband and son and daughter-in-law about it, she just couldn't bring herself to.
However, that Monday morning, when it was just George and Louise there in Olivia's apartment, Louise actually fainted, and when she came to a few moments later, she assured George that she would be fine. Then, deciding to use the situation to put off the inevitable discussion with her husband, she told him that she probably just needed a couple of days off, and they agreed that George would remain by his mother's side while she stayed at their apartment for the next two days so she could rest up. It made perfect sense to George that Louise needed a break. He was a clueless jerk most of the time, but he wasn't completely blind. He knew better than anyone how hard Louise had worked to help take care of Olivia ever since she'd broken her ankle in February of that year. He knew that she'd been taking care of two apartments at once and running herself ragged waiting on Olivia hand and foot on top of that. George and the kids had helped with Olivia too, of course, but no one had put in as many hours of work as Louise had over the course of that year, and George knew it. Although no one adored Olivia more than George did, even he recognized that she was not the easiest person to take care of, especially for Louise. Olivia had never made her disdain for Louise a secret, and she constantly nitpicked and complained about practically everything Louise ever did, no matter how hard she tried to please her. So when Louise expressed her desire to take a couple of days "off" from Olivia, George completely understood. He knew that Louise hadn't been feeling well lately, and even though he was very caught up in his mother and himself, he actually was a little concerned about his wife, too. He'd been living with Louise for over twenty-five years and even someone as dense as George Jefferson knew that something wasn't quite right with his wife.
Louise checked into the hospital by herself the next morning, and the biopsy was performed that afternoon, but not by Dr. Bernard, the physician recommended by Dr. Hendrix. He'd been called out of town unexpectedly, so his colleague, Dr. Nora Jackson, took over the procedure. Dr. Jackson was a rather heavyset woman with dark hair, blue eyes, and glasses, and when she entered Louise's hospital room, she was completely calm, cool, and professional. When Louise looked into her cool blue eyes, her gaze gave away nothing.
After approaching Louise's hospital bed, Dr. Jackson looked down at her and told her point-blank, "I'm very sorry, Mrs. Jefferson, but the biopsy shows that the tumor in your left lung is malignant."
Silent tears streamed down Louise's face in those moments. "I knew it," she gasped. "I knew it."
Dr. Jackson looked down at Louise's chart for a couple of long seconds, and then she looked back at Louise and said, "I see here on your chart that you're married, that you're forty-six years-old…and that you're pregnant." Louise nodded. "Do you and your husband have any other children?"
"We have a son. Lionel. He's twenty-four. He's an electrical engineer. He just got married one year ago this Christmas Eve. My husband and I got pregnant with him just a few months after we were married. We were so happy. We always dreamed of having a big family when we were young. But we got pregnant three more times after we had our son, and every single time, we lost the baby."
The doctor nodded and said, "I take it that this pregnancy was not planned."
Louise shook her head and responded, "No. It wasn't. And it couldn't have happened at a more terrible time. If this had happened when I was young and healthy, I would've been so happy. But being pregnant now? It's a disaster."
In that moment, Dr. Jackson came around and sat down in the chair beside Louise's bed, and she told her, "I understand how you feel, Mrs. Jefferson. You're shocked. You're terrified. You're scared out of your wits. You can't believe this has happened. You don't know what to do. You don't want to kill your baby, but you don't want to go through the agony of another miscarriage, especially not at your age. And you don't want to die at forty-six and leave your husband and your son without a wife and mother."
"You summed it up perfectly," Louise admitted.
"I've been there, Mrs. Jefferson. Well, not exactly, but close. I was raped two years after I finished medical school, and I got pregnant. My husband and I had had a baby while we were in college, a little boy, but there were complications during the delivery and he was stillborn. It tore us both apart. And my husband was away on a business trip when I conceived the second time, so we both knew the baby couldn't possibly be my husband's. It was my rapist's. After we lost our son, we were always so careful. We always had safe sex. We always used a condom. Always. After losing our first baby, after going through such a horrific experience, we knew we never wanted to get pregnant again. We never wanted to risk going through that agony again. And when we found out that I was pregnant with my rapist's child…I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't put myself through the trauma of childbirth again and risk having another stillborn baby. I certainly couldn't take that risk for a baby that wasn't even ours. There are some people out there, some who will even call themselves Christians and claim to be Godly people, who would accuse me of murder directly to my face because I chose to put my own sanity and well-being and marriage ahead of a mere fertilized egg. The problem with this kind of 'Christianity' is that all it ever cares about are embryos that aren't even fully formed yet. It cares nothing about the well-being of traumatized women. In that heartless religious system of theirs that claims to care so much for the oppressed, it spits in the face of women who have been traumatized and raped. And those same people would also get right in your face and call you a murderer if you decided that you didn't want to throw your whole life, your whole marriage, your whole family, under the bus, for a mere embryo."
"Now wait a minute, doctor. You may be right about me being scared out of my wits right now. I definitely am. But I AM NOT aborting my baby! I can't do something like that. I just can't. That's just not who I am."
"As I said, I've been there. For most of my life, I couldn't have imagined doing it either. But the truth is, while professing Christians would have you believe that most women who go to get abortions are evil, cruel, selfish, heartless sluts who sleep around and don't want to accept responsibility for their decisions in the bedroom, the truth is, most of them are like you and me. Good, kind, decent, hardworking everyday women who suddenly find themselves in an impossible situation they never imagined they would be in, who are terrified and don't have any other way out. And I won't lie to you, Mrs. Jefferson. If you want to have a real chance of fighting this cancer and staying alive for your family another ten, twenty, thirty years, then an abortion is your only way out. The tumor in your lung is so big that we can't just remove the tumor. We'll have to remove your left lung as well. And then you'll need to have chemotherapy to kill off any remaining cancer cells the surgery might have left behind so that the cancer doesn't spread to your right lung or to any other part of your body. And if you go through with the pregnancy, you won't be able to have the surgery or the chemotherapy until after the baby is born. Your chances of beating your cancer now are already slim. If you try to wait until after you give birth before you start fighting your cancer, you will probably die. I hate to put it so bluntly, but it's the truth, and you need to understand what's at stake, here. Mrs. Jefferson, you are forty-six years-old. You already suffered three miscarriages when you were younger. How likely do you think it is that this pregnancy won't end in another miscarriage? Do you really want to put yourself through that ordeal again? And what about your husband and your son? Do you really want to make them lose you now, all for the sake of an embryo that probably won't even survive to the second trimester of your pregnancy? What's more important? A mere zygote that'll probably be miscarried soon, or the lives of the people who are already here? The lives of the people you have known and loved for years? Those are the hard questions that you're going to have to ask yourself in the days ahead. And whatever decision you make, just know that if you do choose to have an abortion so that you can start fighting your cancer now and give your family more years with you, that does not make you a cold, evil murderer. If you do make that choice, know that you are not cruel and you are not evil, and know that you are not sinning against God, no matter what a bunch of religious zealots may try to tell you. Know that you are a good woman who is choosing to put the people she loves the most ahead of some mere fetal tissue. Period, end of story."
Dr. Jackson then got up and left Louise alone with her thoughts, and once she was gone, Louise just cried out to God on the inside, over and over again, as rivers of tears started flowing from her eyes.
Louise left the hospital and came home that evening in a complete and utter daze once again. She just sank down into one of the chairs at her dining table, buried her exhausted head in her hands, and cried from the crushing, intense weight of it all. Every day of her life, Louise had always been thoroughly convinced, down to the bone, that abortion was the cruel and heartless murder of an unborn baby. A ruthless and selfish act committed by cruel and irresponsible women, cruel and irresponsible abortionists, who were arrogantly trying to take the place of God. She never imagined that she would ever wind up in a place like this, with her whole life and the well-being and future of her entire family at stake, completely scared out of her mind, without any other real options for the people she loved the most, or for herself. She never imagined it for one second. She never dreamed that a disaster like this would happen. But as strongly as she despised abortion, she knew that Dr. Jackson actually did have some valid points, whether she wanted to admit it or not. It wasn't as if Louise were some kid in her twenties. She was not a spring chicken. Louise and George were not young anymore. And bringing a baby into the world and caring for it for eighteen years or more was difficult for young couples under the most ideal of circumstances. Louise couldn't even begin to imagine doing it now, at their age, with her already having cancer to fight. It was absolutely, completely, utterly impossible, and Louise knew it. How could she bring a baby into the world and leave it without a mother? How could she force George and Lionel to endure the heartache of losing their wife and mother for a baby that would most likely be miscarried? How could she put the two people she loved the most through something like that? She didn't want to end her baby's life, but didn't she owe it to her husband and her son to do everything she could to beat her cancer? Didn't she owe it to George and Lionel to stay healthy and strong for them and give them as many years with her as possible? Would it really be right or fair to them to throw their needs under the bus for the sake of a baby that wasn't even here yet, whose chances at life were already slim to none? What kind of sense did that make?
"Sweet Jesus, help me, please," Louise gasped through her tears. "I don't want to kill my baby, but I don't want to leave my husband and my son without a wife and mother. I just don't know what to do. Just show me what to do. Show me what the right decision is. Please."
Still utterly exhausted, Louise folded her arms on the dining table and laid her head down and fell asleep.
Louise suddenly woke up in the wide, cold corridor of a prison. Jail cells surrounded her. Surprisingly, though, she didn't see adult inmates standing in the prison cells in orange jumpsuits. She saw children of various ages standing in the prison cells, each of them wearing a little orange jumpsuit. All of their little hands holding onto the jail bars. Louise noticed that while some of the little children were white, the vast majority of them were black.
"What is this place?" Louise whispered as she looked around, taking in her unusual surroundings. "Where am I? What's going on, here?"
In that moment, a bald, fat white doctor in a white coat and scrubs approached a jail cell, unlocked it, took the hand of a little black boy who was still a toddler, who had obviously just barely learned to walk, and led him away. Seconds later, the prison was filled with the sounds of the most horrific, unimaginable crying and screaming. Cries and screams that could only come from a little child.
"Oh, my Lord! He's hurting that little boy!" Louise cried, and then she began to run after him to try and save him.
But then the blood-curdling screams stopped, and a little voice called out, "Mommy?"
Louise stopped and turned her head, and she saw two little black girls, both of whom appeared to be about six or seven years-old, standing together in one of the jail cells in orange jumpsuits. Their physical appearance was very similar, but it was not completely the same. The girls were fraternal twins, and they both looked almost exactly like Louise's childhood pictures. They were gorgeous little girls with Louise's lovely darker skin tone, and her heart melted as soon as she saw them.
Louise walked up to their cell, stuck her hands through the jail bars, and took their hands in her own. And then she asked them, "What are your names?"
"We don't know what our names are yet, Mommy," answered the girl who'd called out to her moments earlier. "You haven't given them to us yet."
"God knows what our names are, though," answered the other little girl. "If you decide not to rescue us from the executioner and we die, God will tell us what our names are after He takes us to heaven."
"What are you talking about?" asked Louise.
"We're all babies who are living inside our mommies right now," the second girl replied. "We're all different ages. Some of us were just created by Jesus a little while ago, and some of us have been around longer."
"We're all on death row, because our mommies don't know yet if they want to have an abortion or not," the first girl explained. "When that mean man who's dressed up like a doctor comes for one of us, that's when we know our fate."
"That's when we know if we're going to live or die," said the second girl.
"That guy may look like a doctor, but he's really an executioner. Inmates on death row know they're going to die when the clock strikes midnight, but for us, midnight can strike at any time. Our mommies can decide at any time to have us executed if they want to. And because you're our mommy, you can have us executed any time you want to. You can choose to have an abortion at any moment now," the first girl told Louise.
"Our lives are in danger," the second girl informed her. "My sister and I are almost eleven weeks old now. We're twins, and we're living side by side in your belly. If you choose to have an abortion now, the executioner will turn on a suction device and suck us out of you, and it will be very painful for us. The suction device might actually suck our limbs off of our bodies. We'll die by having our bodies ripped apart. Literally."
"And if you wait until we're sixteen weeks old, the executioner will inject a needle full of a salt solution into your abdomen to poison us. And the poison is not quick, and it is not painless. When we swallow the poison, it could take us over an hour to die. And as we're dying, the poison will be burning off the outer layer of our skin. And then about twenty-four hours later, we'll be either dying or completely dead as you give birth to us," the first girl explained. With tears streaming down Louise's face, she then continued, telling her, "And if you wait until we're eighteen weeks old or older, the executioner will stick forceps inside you to grab our legs and tear them off. Then after our bodies are delivered, he'll take a pair of scissors and jam them into our skulls and open the scissors to enlarge our skulls. After that, he'll suction out our brains so that our skulls can be removed."
"You have the power to make midnight strike for us at any moment now, Mommy," said the second girl. "And we want to know: what is your decision? When will midnight strike for us?"
"What will midnight be like for us, Mommy?" the first girl demanded to know. "Will our midnight strike after we've had the chance to live and grow old, or will you make midnight strike for us now, before we've even had the chance to take our first breath?"
"Are you going to let the executioner torture us to death, Mommy?" asked the second girl. "Will midnight strike for us now?"
In that instant, Louise looked down and saw that she had a key in her hands. She then began fervently shaking her head as she unlocked the jail cell her unborn daughters were standing in. In the next moment, she knelt down and held her arms open wide to her children, and they walked out of the prison cell and into her sweet embrace, and she held them close and smothered them with endless kisses.
After she'd finally calmed down enough to be able to speak again, she told them, "Listen to me, babies. Listen to Mommy. Midnight is not going to strike for the two of you until you are at least five hundred years old. As long as there is breath in this old body of mine, I will use every last ounce of my strength to care for you and protect you. I will NEVER let anyone hurt you. Do you hear me, girls?"
They both smiled, and the first girl said, "We hear you, Mommy."
"Thank you for saving us, Mommy," said the second girl.
"Yeah, Mommy. Thank you for getting us off of death row."
"You two never, ever have to worry about death row. As a matter of fact, from this moment forward, you girls are never allowed to think about death row again. Not ever. Not for a single moment. And from this day forward, you two are never allowed to wear orange again."
Louise then took her daughters by the hand and walked with them out of the cold prison, outside into the warm sunshine, and they all smiled at each other. And Louise felt the most wonderful sense of peace just wash over her in waves, feeling it seep all the way down into her bones that this was, undoubtedly, the will of God. And the Holy Spirit overwhelmed her with certainty that everything would work out okay, regardless of how bad it seemed now.
In that instant, Louise opened her eyes. And for what felt like the millionth time over the past few days, tears flooded her eyes once again. But this time, they weren't tears of anguish. They were tears of joy and tears of relief. The thought of having an abortion thoroughly devastated her, but for a little while, her reality was so skewed by her dark circumstances that she couldn't see any other way out. But now, she knew beyond a doubt that God was with her and that He would never abandon her, no matter how bad things might get. She didn't want to die of cancer now, of course. She didn't want to leave George and Lionel without a wife and mother. But if she chose to have an abortionist – an executioner – torture her unborn daughters to death, she knew she would never be a worthy wife and mother for her family again. No matter how terrifying and impossible her circumstances were, nothing could ever make torturing a baby to death an acceptable practice. If she did such a cruel thing, Louise knew in her heart that that would make her a murderer, and that would completely destroy her inside, and it would make her useless to the people she loved the most. She was still terrified, but even so, she now was filled to the brim with strength, resolve, and determination. She would do everything in her power to protect her unborn daughters and get them through the pregnancy safely. She would do all that she could to give them life, not death. Lung cancer and fear of another miscarriage and all other impossible obstacles in her path be damned.