Summary:
I warn you: in this chapter I talk about abortion in rather negative and explicit way.
Comments are greatly appreciated: please, let me know what you think!
Chapter:
The roar of the engine woke Skye from her slumber.
It was almost morning and there were still a few cars on the highway, zooming back and forth, leaving trails of light with their headlights. Outside the car it must be chilling, judging from the brine around the glasses, but inside it was all so comfy and warm and beautiful!
The sun was becoming a huge red ball just above the horizon: it colored the whole sky, which seemed on fire.
Skye did not remember how long she didn't enjoy such a magnificent spectacle! So she admired it quietly all the time she desired, without a care in the world. That beauty was too valuable, right now, to loose it! That immense ball of fire that gave light and heat and energy to the Earth always fascinated her…
The situation reminded her that time she was on the Bus alone with Ward, on a sea of clouds, with the sun flanking them over the entire world… in those few instants she forgot that he was a traitor, and that she had to play a double game to defend her team… in those moments she was only a woman and he only a man, the both of them wounded, suffering, broken, even if in different ways… in those few minutes it seemed the two of them were the only ones remained on the planet…
Back to the present, now she felt as good as she had never been for a long time: she felt rested, fit, her body was harmonic, her breathing deep and regular, her eyes saw clearly in the distance, her tactile sensations were pleasant… It was like having another body, healthy, powerful, elastic, agile and tonic… She felt like reborn!
After a little while, she turned idly towards the driver.
He was a young man with a short beard and mustache tending to light brown, light eyes, toned but not bulk physique.
"Good morning, sleeping beauty!" he greeted her cheerfully smiling at her with a pleasant tenor voice.
She remained silent for a second, then decided that a bit of kindness would not hurt anyone:
"Good morning… bearded driver…
Can I ask you… who are you?"
He held out his right hand for a handshake and said:
"I am your future brother in law, Thomas Ward, Grant's brother!"
She absentmindedly squeezed his hand and slowly the wheels resumed their turning in her brain:
"You are… the famous little brother of Ward?
The one whose memory tortured him for years?
The one for whom the Berserker Staff made him go… berserk?
I can't believe my own eyes!"
Skye was full of astonishment, the comment about the 'brother in law' conveniently put aside.
"I am in the flesh!"
"You two… well, you two don't resemble a lot.
Do not misunderstand me… you're really a nice guy, but he is… another planet!"
"Naturally! I had no doubt that you were crazy about him, and that no one can be compared to him in your eyes!"
"I'm not crazy about him!" she protested.
"Here it is! Another one that wants to deny the obvious!
However, sister, you can resume your sleep… we will not arrive before a couple of hours."
"Where are we headed?"
"It's classified!"
"I don't like surprises, but right now… I'm too tired to complain" she said with a yawn.
And she fell asleep once more, on the reclined comfy leather seat of the Ferrari…
…
After a couple of hours they had reached their destination.
Thomas woke up Skye and she gasped:
"You took me back at St. Agnes!"
"Don't play me. That was Grant's idea."
"And why did he want me back here?"
"Because he will be indisposed for a time and wants you to be safe, together with people who love you, like he did when he led you to your father."
"It was him who brought me to my father?"
At those words Thomas silently cursed himself:
"Oops!
It was not in my plans to reveal you this little secret!
I slipped!" Thomas said embarrassed.
"Say him not to worry about me. I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself…" Skye protested.
"… said the krokodil addict" he finished the sentence for her, deadpanned.
At those words Skye remained petrified.
"Look, Skye.
Grant went to great length to save you, you cannot imagine how much.
I think the least you can do now is to respect his desire, and stay here for a while.
Here you will be safe and probably you will rediscover the value of life.
I, too, think Grant had a great idea to bring you here: it is probably just what you need."
At his words and at the honesty in his voice Skye remained silent, the memory of the cold barrel of the gun to her temple suddenly resurfacing.
Then she answered:
"Ok, ok, I got the point.
But now I am a grown up woman and not a poor orphan anymore: why do you think they will welcome me?"
"Because Grant verified and they still remember and love you, even if you left them without a goodbye…
Moreover, they need always someone to help them with all the work.
And… I have a little gift for them" and he indicated the cheque book in his hand.
"They have helped you when you needed it. It's time for you to return the favor."
Skye had to admit that Thomas had a point, so she sighed and said:
"Ok, you convinced me. I will stay here for a little while."
"Deal?"
"Deal."
They entered the compound. Skye noticed several new buildings: during the years the convent grew up a lot! It seemed more like a little village framed in the city, now.
"Mary Sue!"
Skye turned immediately to figure out where that voice, that had something familiar, came from.
"Sister Bertha!" she cried with a surge of joy.
And the two ran to meet each other in a warm embrace.
"Look how you've grown up! You've become a woman, my dear!
Think of how long it has been, now, that I didn't see you! For sure more than ten years!"
"Yes, yes! More than ten years!" Skye was extremely happy to hold the old short nun in her arms, now.
She remembered the nun taller than that… probably her oldness had started shortening her body.
Sister Bertha was now a little old lady with wrinkles and white hair, instead of her corvine black one, but with the same very sweet smile and an affable, gentle voice. Her eyes were always the same: clear, limpid, with a frank look, strong and secure, despite the weakness of the body. It was as if the years had strengthened their look, and as if the weakness of the body let emerge even more the soul's force, as if the latter supported, sustained the body.
"Come, come with me, together with your friend…?"
"His name is Thomas."
"… Thomas."
"How do you do?" Thomas said politely.
"Nice to meet you" answered Sister Bertha.
"Come along with us, Thomas, please!
Mary Sue, I will lead you to your room, now.
Your friend Grant said on the phone that you are going to stay with us for a little while.
Is it true?"
"Yes, for a little while…" confirmed Skye hesitantly, looking at Thomas, who nodded.
The nun continued:
"I'm afraid, though, that you will not have a room all to yourself…
In this period the monastery is extremely crowded…"
"That's not a problem.
I noticed that you have expanded a lot since the last time I was here."
"Yes, it's true. We were able to create, alongside the local orphanage, also a new building for the accommodation of future mothers in distress. They are 'accidentally' pregnant girls who, without our help, would have decided to have an abortion. They have been abandoned by their families and by their children's fathers, and they didn't know where else to go. We assist them throughout the pregnancy, during delivery and in the first months after the birth of their children. Then they decide whether to keep them or give them in adoption."
At these words Skye became sad.
"But I'm happy to say that there are very few mothers who abandon their children and, if it happens, it is for very serious reasons. It sometimes happens also that the original family returns on its steps and takes back daughter and nephew. It happens also, even if more rarely, with the natural father.
During these years, I never met a girl who has regretted keeping her kid."
"All of this is very nice of you!" Skye was impressed.
"My brother Grant wants to give you some help for this wonderful work you are doing" interjected Thomas, and he gave the cheque to the nun.
Sister Bertha took it and commented, with a surprised voice:
"Your brother is really generous!"
"He is" and Thomas looked at Skye.
"But I'm afraid I have to leave you, now. Grant really needs me."
Skye stopped and turned towards Thomas:
"Ok. Go. Don't worry about me and greet Grant on my behalf."
"Ok, ok… I will give him a kiss on your behalf!"
She smiled, punched him jokingly and then, like an afterthought, she added:
"Thomas… there's a certain girl… over there… Ward knows of whom I am talking about…
Her name is Jenny and she helped me a lot, even if she can be called a companion of misfortunes…
But now she needs somebody that can help her… she's in trouble.
Can you bring her to my father, and ask him to assist her on my behalf?" said Skye.
Thomas nodded and said:
"I'll see what we can do.
Bye, and take care of yourself!" and he hurriedly went away.
He seemed concerned by something…
…
Skye and Sister Bertha arrived to the main building and Skye was presented with a bunch of young girls, all pregnant at different stages, some with little invisible wombs and some with huge ones.
"This is Ann: she will share the room with you, Mary Sue."
Ann was a very tall and strong girl, with blue eyes and blond hair, and a huge belly. She was probably at the end of pregnancy.
"Nice to meet you" her voice was strangely acute for such a piece of woman.
"Hi" Skye smiled and greeted her with her more deep voice.
The two started talking and Skye discovered that Ann was only twenty years old and that she remained pregnant after a one-night stand with a boy she had never seen before. She managed to track him down, but of course he did not want to take his responsibilities and now she was alone. But she wanted her son with all her heart and she wouldn't kill him for nothing in the world.
Another girl, Jennifer, was here because she already had an abortion once, and this time she did not want to do it. She said that every year she remembered the abortion day as a day of mourning and that, if she could go back, she would not have done it anymore. And, this time, she would have fought with her teeth and nails to give the right to live to her daughter.
There was also a girl, Susan, who had nine abortions. She had been taught that abortion was a contraceptive method like any other, so she used that several times. But it had started provoking collateral damages to her body and, moreover, the last time, she accidentally took a look, in the formalin jar, to what had just been taken away from her and… she couldn't believe her eyes! She thought it was only a clot of blood… instead it was a little embryo the dimensions of a thumb with already the hints of eyes, arms and legs! That image made clear in her mind what abortion really was, and she decided she would have never used it anymore, or any other analog method, like spirals or abortive pills. She would have had her son, even if this meant for her to stay put, lying in a bed, for nine months straight like it was happening right now!
There was also a very closed up and solitary girl: Catherine. She remained always all alone in an obscure corner of the room, not talking with anybody, clutching and caressing her belly like it was a treasure and also often talking with it. Sometimes the others caught her crying silently alone, but nobody knew what her problem was.
Skye was irresistibly attracted to her: it was like she felt a kind of resemblance in her, so she asked Sister Bertha some information about that strange lonely girl.
"She is the daughter of a doctor famous in all the U.S., who created an empire of abortive clinics. He earned billions of dollars that way, encroaching whatever moral law, oiling politics to promulgate laws favorable to his own assassin purposes."
"She seams really mournful."
"She thinks her father is a monster.
She escaped from him and came here when she remained pregnant and his father wanted to make her abort at her sixth month.
At that stage of the pregnancy the only abortion possible is the so called 'saline abortion'"
"And what is it?" Skye felt already goose bumps over all her body and she wasn't sure she wanted to hear the explanation.
"It is really a monstrous practice: the womb is injected with a saline solution that corrodes the fetus and makes it die.
It for sure provokes great pain to the fetus itself, but you know, they affirm that the fetus is nothing more than a mother's appendix.
Then they make the mother deliver it… dead."
The nun's voice was extremely hard and severe.
Skye felt like she was going to throw up.
"It is horrible! It's worse than anything I ever heard in my whole life."
"It is. And Catherine is torn between the affection she still feels, for him being her father, and the hate and the shame, for him being a monster."
"I think I can understand her quite well…" said Skye, her mood consistently darkened.
…
That evening Skye and Ann went in their room around ten p.m. talking amiably with one another like they had been friends for a lifetime. They had to share a double bed and when Ann sat on her side of it Skye almost rolled over against her, for the difference of weight between the two.
"Sorry, Mary Sue… This pregnancy made me put on almost 55 pounds!"
"Don't worry!" said Skye laughing. "Can I put a hand on your belly?"
"Of course!"
And Skye caressed it for a while, until suddenly she felt a kick.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! What was that?"
"I think little Eric wanted to greet you!"
"It's incredible! I really felt it!"
And the two exchanged a significant look.
"Tell me, Mary Sue: how old are you?"
"I'm 28 and I go for the 29…"
"Mmmhh… and when do you plan to have a baby? It's time!"
"What? No, no… I lack the raw material."
"Please! Don't make me laugh!
You are extremely attractive!
Don't tell me that no one has ever set eyes on you!"
"Yes… of course… but… my life has been very… complicated, lately."
"But tell me… would you like to have a baby of your own?"
Skye remained pensive for a while, then answered:
"Yes, I'd like it very much…" and then somebody had to explain her why, for the love of all the Saints, when she thought about a potential son, she imagined him with thick black hair and heavenly doe honey brown eyes!
After this image flashed behind her eyes, she had to make an effort to continue listening to Ann:
"You know, in this compound arrive any sort of woman: from the 13 to the 40 years old, of whatever origin, ethnicity or religion, mainly poor and without means, or abandoned by their families or boyfriends, more or less invited or compelled by them to have abortion.
But this doesn't mean they lack culture or knowledge.
Sometimes here arrive girls that are, for example, medicine students, who, therefore, know very well how to avoid getting pregnant.
But they get pregnant nevertheless.
I think this fact is justifiable only because, in them, the motherly instinct is so strong that, on one hand, they delude themselves saying they don't want to have kids, but, on the other hand, their subconscious make them nasty tricks, like, for example, regularly forget the pill…
And then they decide to keep their children, and are happy about that!"
"What happened with you, when your one night boyfriend rejected you?"
"It was terrible, but I was expecting that.
Men are so weak!
They are often only grown up kids…"
Skye thought of Ward: she too accused him of being weak… not knowing absolutely anything about him… and only now she realized how much strong, instead, he was! The most impressively strong man she had ever known, for sure!
Ann was still talking:
"He even offered to pay for the operation, but I refused.
I thought:
'What? So I should kill my own son and then, every moment, think about how he could have become, how much he could have grown up, how he could be able to call me mommy?'
No, that thought was simply unthinkable."
"I get your point" Skye answered.
But Ann was like a river in flood:
"And another thing I can't understand is this: they say that the fetus is not a person, so there isn't any problem in killing it…
But, even in the police investigation, they use the DNA as the main mean to prove one's identity!
So why a fetus can't be considered as a person with its own unique unrepeatable identity, given it has a DNA from its conception?"
Skye thought Ann's reasoning was simple and straight. And she liked it when the things were simple and straight: they perfumed of truth.
"I tell you: something smells. And I can hear the screeching of nails on the glass anytime I hear certain speeches!" Ann concluded, sure of what she had just said.
Skye liked that girl: she was very practical.
They went to bed and started sleeping peacefully.
But at two in the morning, Skye was awakened by an anxious Ann that said to her:
"Mary Sue! Mary Sue! Wake up! I think I'm loosing the waters!"
The ride to the hospital was vertiginous: the losing of waters could endanger the little's life, if not correctly managed.
After that Skye found herself at three in the morning in a empty hospital corridor, pacing back and forth, in the semidarkness, goose bumps and shivers running up and down her spine at hearing Ann's cries of pain and her words:
"I can't do that!
I can't!
I'm going to die!
Please help me!
Help me with the pain!
Aaarrrggghhh!"
Skye was massaging her own belly, clutching her legs and feeling her toes contracting and she finally found herself praying:
"God, please, have mercy of her! She's suffering so much! Please have mercy!"
This situation continued for another hour, then, after a last earsplitting desperate scream, finally another little cry was audible: the cry of a baby!
Ann made it!
Thankfully, at last!
Skye took a sigh of relief…
When she reached Ann in her room, she was full of awe for her and kissed lightly her on the forehead.
Ann greeted her, but the experience evidently had left its marks on her: she was still breathing hard, she was pale, sweating and shaking, but she was also smiling.
She had her baby in her arms, sleeping!
"Ann, you are a hero!" said Skye.
"Oh, Mary Sue!
I'm so glad it's finished!
I was thinking I was going to die, there and then!"
"I heard you…"
"How much I have cried!
I have still my head ringing!"
"Yeah… Those poor doctors are going to become deaf soon, if they don't take some precaution!"
Ann and Skye laughed together, in the end.
"Oh, Mary Sue!
It's so hard to build a man!
Only a woman can understand that!
If women ruled the world, I think there would be fewer wars!
It needs a lifetime and a lot of pain and troubles to build a man and a second to kill him…"
Those words hit Skye's heart like a bullet.
She killed a lot of men.
It was so easy to pull the trigger…
And all finished in a split second.
But what was behind every man she destroyed?
And remorse and guilt once again bit her soul.
Dangerously.