The woman just wants the murders to stop. She kneels on the concrete outside the Women’s Healthcare Services clinic, eyes closed, hands clasped tight in front of her heart, words spilling out of her mouth in a sort of ecstasy. She is praying, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” Tears form in her eyes as her mind turns to the vision of so many precious babies pulled out of the womb, brutally killed before they can take their first breath, before they can become children of God. She prays, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.” She opens her eyes and suddenly the world is full of light, the sun bursting out from behind the cumulus clouds lazily drifting across the Kansas sky. She is filled with love, as the cops move in. The man next to her is grabbed by two uniformed men, his hands cuffed in front of him, and carried off to the waiting vans. The woman sees a young girl standing far away, waiting for the path to be cleared. The woman’s heart races. She has to stop this. 

She jumps to her feet, forgetting her post and the commitment to be unmoved so that the way will stay blocked for those seeking access. She must get to her. She has to let her know. Hands reach out, fingers grasping to stop her. Words from her brothers and sisters telling her to stay strong, to not run, to be unafraid. They don’t understand that she’s not afraid. In fact, she’s never felt stronger. As she sprints through the crowd, the young girl sees her approaching and her eyes go wide before her features harden, eyes narrowing and mouth pushed into a thin line. The woman doesn’t stop. She runs and runs, hopping over legs and outstretched arms. She opens her mouth, shouting, “Please don’t kill your child. You have the power of life in you! You are a gift to God. Turn around! Walk away from this place. Please!” Her voice is strained and pleading as she tries to travel the last twenty feet to get to the girl, a teenager with long black hair pulled into a ponytail. The teenager’s face doesn’t soften as the woman is grabbed from all sides, pushed onto the ground, face in the concrete.

A man’s voice says, “Stay calm. We don’t want to hurt you.” She goes limp and doesn’t resist as the cuffs are put on her hands and she’s pulled up, one officer holding her under her shoulders, another grabbing her ankles to lift her over the heads of those still holding vigil, holding strong for the innocent lives they are here to save.

As the cops carry her away, she glances back over to the teenager, only ten or so feet away. She smiles as sweetly as she can, to let the girl know she loves her even still, a smile bolstered with God’s forgiveness. The woman’s face lights up even more in shock and hope when the girl smiles back at her.

“Have fun in jail, bitch,” the teenager yells, tilting her head to one side and pulling her lips back in wide grin. She waves one hand goodbye, flapping it like a deranged bird trying to take flight. The woman’s face falls, jaw slack, mouth gaping, as she is carried farther and farther away. The girl’s body gets smaller and smaller until the woman is pulled into a van and put down onto a seat. She closes her eyes. More tears spilling, more prayers rising to the surface of her lips.

Kit turns away from the van, dropping her flapping hand down to her side to grab Shel’s.

“Fucking hell,” she sighs. “Just my luck to get knocked up when this shit’s going on.”

Kit’s mom gives her a small sad smile. Shel bumps her shoulder against Kit’s.

“Well, now you’re part of history, Kit,” Shel remarks, sharp teeth in a fearl grin as she speaks, then turns to see if the cops have cleared a decent path yet. “Jesus, what a mess. Can’t they just kick them away? I’ve never seen cops be this nice.”

Kit’s mom scowls toward the scene, “They like these people though. Look, they’re all white and dressed so nice and praying. I’m sure the cops hate this.”

The noise from the crowd is a dull roar, prayers and slogans shouted in small groups scattered over the sidewalk and driveway. It takes another seventeen minutes for a dozen cops to clear out a dozen more people, while a handful of other cops hold the space left vacant by the arrested protestors. Kit squeezes Shel’s hand a bit too tightly to be comfortable, but Shel doesn’t let on.

“Hey,” Shel whispers, “I got you, ok?”

Kit smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. She looks down at her beat-up Vans and mutters, “I just want to get this over with.”

“It won’t be—”

“You ready?” a gruff voice cuts off what Shel was about to say. The man attached to the voice has a golden blond handlebar mustache, red nose and chubby cheeks, stiff cowboy hat atop his big head. His muscled forearms extending out to show them the way while simultaneously holding back anyone who might dare to approach. 

Oh for fuck’s sake, a cowboy, Kit thinks and makes an annoyed face at her mom. Her mom winks back.

Kit nods at the cowboy, and the three of them begin the walk to the clinic. Now that the space is clear, they quickly move over the sidewalk, across the driveway that leads to a parking lot with no cars, and up the steps to the clinic. The cowboy cop leads them all the way, head jerking back and forth to scan the crowd. Other cops lined up on the side every few feet, arms stretched out to their sides.

Thankfully, the cop doesn’t say anything when the two teenagers and the mother reach the front door of the clinic, just turns out to face the way they came, waiting for them to be safely inside.

The door opens quickly and two women dressed in scrubs usher them inside. Kit feels an impulse to hug them and thinks the two women feel the same. Inside the clinic, there’s soft music playing to try and drown out the chaos just outside. The women lead them to a couch and some chairs.

“Please sit down for a bit,” one of the women says. “You probably need a moment or two.” She seems to want to say more, but just smiles instead before looking at her companion. Together, they turn as one and walk through a door leading to the back of the clinic.

All three squeeze close together on the couch, not wanting to be separated. All at once, they sigh, one loud exhale like a shared chorus of relief. 

“Have fun in jail, bitch,” Kit’s mom repeats, gently shoving her daughter by the shoulder.

Laughter. They laugh, nervous at first, glancing back and forth at each other’s faces. The laughter gets louder, bounding out of bellies and launching from mouths before ricocheting off the ceiling. Kit, in the middle, grabs her mom’s hand and Shel, on the right, grabs Kit’s. They laugh until the energy has been shaken out of their lungs and skins, panting and smiling, eyes dancing over one another’s features with care.

They don’t say anything after that as they wait. Eventually, a nurse comes back with paperwork and a tray of tea. Eventually, Kit and Kit’s mom are taken through the same door to the back of the clinic. Eventually, Shel realizes she needs to pee and makes her way to the bathroom. Eventually, it will all be over and they will have to make their way back outside. Shel washes her hands and looks in the mirror.

“People are fucking stupid,” she says to the glaring face before her. Then she dries her hands with a paper towel, throws it in the can, and stomps back to the waiting room.

The too chipper voice of a woman hums through her mom’s shitty car radio, and since they’ve sped far enough away from ground zero, static lightly crackles in the background.

More than 50 people were arrested in southwest Wichita outside the clinic of Dr. Tiller today, as part of Operation Rescue’s Summer of Mercy campaign. 

Kit sighs and bangs her head against the window, closing her eyes tight.

This is the same clinic that citizens may recall was firebombed five years ago, reopening only months later to resume providing services, which includes late term abortions, only one of three in the nation to perform such procedures. 

She realizes one of her hands is pushed into the soft flesh of her belly and quickly moves it to side of her thigh. It doesn’t hurt. She doesn’t need comfort.

The protestors have been blocking the entrance to the clinic every day for weeks now and show no sign of stopping. Police say that the protestors are mostly peaceful and do not resist arrest as they are cleared away by—

“Mom, please,” Kit mumbles from the backseat where she leans against the window, “can we not?”

“Sorry, babe,” her mom replies, shifting the radio dial to find some music before giving up and clicking the dial off.

The sound of the car humming along the highway lulls Kit back into her half-awake state. The drive from Wichita back to Meade is a little over 3 hours. They had to leave at 5am this morning, and, since they couldn’t afford a hotel on top of an abortion, had to drive back the same day.

Kit’s mom checks the rearview mirror and sees her daughter’s head lolling to the side, jostling gently with the rhythm of the car, seemingly asleep. She glances quickly to her right at Shel, thumbing through a magazine next to her, one ankle resting on a knee, foot shaking with impatience or anxiety.

“You know,” Kit’s mom begins, “I had one, before Kit, when I was 16 too. What a pain in the ass.” She looks straight ahead at the road, flipping the lights on as the sun begins to dip beyond the flat dusty plains ahead of them. She hears Shel shift the magazine closed and put her foot back on the ground.

“Roe v. Wade was only like a year old. It still wasn’t easy for most women to find a place to get one. But I was in DC. So,” she shrugs, not sure what else there is to say, not sure why she needed to tell someone this right now.

Shel keeps her eyes on the road, her voice distant. “That’s rough,” she responds, but it’s clear from the tone that she’s just saying what she’s supposed to say, that perhaps she doesn’t really care, or maybe she’s just uncomfortable learning this about Kit’s mom. 

Kit’s mom sighs, “Yeah. It was. Rough,” and then adds, “I’m glad she’s got you, Shel. You’re a good friend to her. I know Kit wasn’t thrilled when I uprooted us and moved us to the middle of nowhere. But at least she has friends like you.” She glances quickly over at Shel with a small smile on her lips, the kind that has tears that won’t fall attached to it, the kind that makes you feel as though you are being pitied or consoled.

Shel turns her head sharply to look out her side window. She doesn’t want to see the smile. We’re not friends, she thinks bitterly. That they have been girlfriends for months and Kit’s mom doesn’t know makes Shel’s insides churn. That they’ve talked about it, Kit and Shel, and Kit always says, Soon, but never makes any specific promises. That they aren’t exclusive, but still, Shel loves Kit. Loves her more than anyone. Even though she’s a dumbshit that fucked Andre without a condom, because they didn’t have one and didn’t want to stop to ask someone else, that night two months ago when they all snuck out and went to his house for a “school’s almost the fuck out” party. Even though Kit never says it back when Shel tells her that she does, saying she can’t tell anyone she loves them until she learns how to love herself.

“Anyway,” Kit’s mom continues, breaking Shel out of her thoughts. “Thanks for coming with us today. I know it meant a lot to her.”

Shel grits her teeth. “No problem,” she whispers back.

“Now, just promise me you won’t get yourself in a situation like this,” Kit’s mom chuckles, the way parents chuckle when they’re trying to convey A Very Important Lesson but not sound like assholes while they do it. “If you do, you can come to me. But just, you know, wear a condom, ok?”

I don’t drive stick, Shel almost sneers out, but catches herself. Whatever. It’s not important. “Yeah. Sure thing,” she mumbles, keeping her eyes on the darkening horizon.

In the steadily growing dark of the backseat, Kit wishes she were asleep. Wishes quiet and a soft bed and no one ever touching her again. I’m such a fucking joke, she thinks. She thinks, What if I was the one mom aborted and not the one before me? Or both of us. It doesn’t depress her. She doesn’t wish to be born or to not be born. It’s not like that. Her hands clench beside her, empty palms squeezing nothing. She doesn’t think she killed someone today. She thinks every single month she bleeds out a possible person in the form of an egg that didn’t meet anybody else on the way down. She thinks the space has been cleared. That’s all. There was something, and now there’s not something. It happens. She thinks that the woman she saw, the one who got arrested running toward her at the clinic, should know better. She should know better than to mourn for whatever she thinks isn’t getting born because the world has enough already and anyway, technically she’s a hypocrite who lets a potential person die every month she doesn’t get herself knocked up. Kit tightens her mouth so as not to laugh at the thought.

Her head hurts and slight blasts of pain zip intensely every time the giant Lincoln hits a bump on the highway and her skull bites into the window a little. Inside, she makes her voice a whisper to herself. You won’t end up like her. It’s not the same. You’re not the same. Even if you did the same stupid things she did. You won’t end up like her. She’s not sure what “ending up like her” means exactly. 

She thinks of this morning in her bedroom, long before the sun rose, Shel’s head between her legs, lapping at her, a slow steady pleasure building and then release. So long ago now, but just this morning. Shel flashing her sharp smile afterwards, wiping her chin with the back of her hand.

“Won’t get to do that for a while,” Shel had said.

Kit tilted her head, put a hand on Shel’s cheek, and asked, “Why?”

“Who knows how long you’ll bleed,” Shel replied.

Kit shifts in her make-believe sleep in the back of the car speeding toward the boring town that’s now her home. She pulls her arms around herself gently and tries to press herself deeper into the seat. She’s not sad because of the space inside her. She’s not sad for a person because there was no person and because there’s so many persons. She’s sad because the sounds the car makes – the humming engine, the rubber tires rolling over concrete and the thunk thunk thunk as they hit various sections of the highway – always feel like leaving herself behind. Like she was just somewhere and now she’s not. Like she should stop and find herself before she gets too far away.