“What about a few nights in the city? At the hotel where we conceived this little nugget. Surely you can get off in the middle of the week.”
“Tuesday’s my day off, and I could probably swap shifts to get Wednesday too.”
“See, it’s perfect,” Ted said.
We met in the lobby of the Gansevoort at 5 p.m. on Tuesday. I was debating whether I should hug him or kiss him, but he picked me up and twirled me around until we were both laughing and dizzy.
We went upstairs and didn’t come out again for two days. The first night had its fair share of awkward moments, but they were dodged by me letting him take the lead. He talked me into a drink to loosen us up. A few sips couldn’t possibly hurt the baby, I reasoned. When he brought out a baggie full of vials and pills, I had to hold myself back from freaking out. Instead of asking if he was insane, I explained that I wasn’t a typical big-city teen. My mother had sent us to Catholic school, and she’d made us get jobs to build character and help contribute to the family from a young age. Thankfully, Ted didn’t seem to care that I wasn’t into drugs. He didn’t push me to try anything. He said he didn’t know my partying style yet and wanted to come prepared. That he brought drugs to celebrate my pregnancy was a red flag, but I assumed he needed time to change his ways.
By the end of the second night, I couldn’t get out of bed, I was in so much pain. I did everything to hide it. We watched TV while cuddling, and I prayed it would pass. At first, I was sure I’d had a flare-up of IBS from the rich food he was ordering. When I ruled out gas, I thought it was a urinary tract infection from all the sex we’d been having. But my instinct told me it was something worse.
While Ted slept soundly, I experienced the worst physical pain of my life. Sobbing and scared, I writhed around the bathroom floor, the cold tile offering the only relief I could find. I thought something was wrong with me. Really wrong, like I might die. I prayed to God to let my stomach tear or my appendix burst, as long as my baby was safe.
I was so exhausted and embarrassed by the time Ted woke up that I told him he could leave. I called through the door like it was nothing but a stomach bug. I have the late shift at the bar and it doesn’t make sense to go home and come back, so I’ll shower and get ready for work here. He said he was sorry I didn’t feel well and blew me a kiss goodbye.
Twenty minutes later I was in the hospital, bleeding into my black uniform pants at an alarming rate. I could no longer deny that I might be having a miscarriage, and for the next five hours I obsessed over the fact that the Universe was telling me I didn’t deserve anything good, that God was punishing me for being so unlovable.
“You’ll have to contact your OB to complete the termination in the next forty-eight hours,” the discharge nurse said. “We don’t do D&Cs unless the mother’s life is in danger.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to scan the paperwork to understand what she was saying.
“I’m not sure why you came in here. Yours was a normal response to the pills. If you had read the directions, or contacted the clinic who gave them to you, you wouldn’t have wasted our valuable resources. We’re all overworked.”
“I came in here to save my baby from miscarriage. Isn’t that what happened?”
I will never forget the way that nurse studied my face, unsure if I was an idiot or there was something clinically wrong with me.
“You can’t change your mind after you’ve taken both doses of the pills,” she said.
The last time I saw Ted’s face flashed in my mind then, how happy he was when he left me on the floor of the hotel bathroom. He knew what was happening. He blew me a kiss goodbye.
FARAH
Once Andi said the nurse was upset, I knew how the story ended. I had the extra beat to take in everyone’s reactions. Shock rippled from one face to another.
“He forced an abortion on you?” Aimee exclaims.
Margot faints then. Her knees buckle and her torso folds. She lands on the grass with a wet thump. I look at Ted, all of us do, but he doesn’t move. If looks could kill, Andi would be long gone.
Adam is the one who moves toward Margot. He lays her out flat from the awkward angle she’s crumpled in. Watching Ted, I move closer to Margot.
“I’m checking her vitals,” I say, crouching next to her. Ted doesn’t even glance over. He’s locked on Andi.
Margot’s heart rate is a little slow, but nothing concerning. She’s breathing fine. But this is her second fainting spell in as many days. She’s not well.
“How?” Aimee asks. “How is that possible?”
I stand from Margot’s side, and Adam sits down and puts her head in his lap. I explain.
“The first night he must have slipped mifepristone in her drink. It blocks progesterone and stalls the pregnancy. The next night when she could barely move, that was the misoprostol; it empties your uterus.”
“Farah, stop it right now,” Ted says.
On one hand Ted’s veiled threat should frighten me. This is a man who took advantage of a vulnerable young woman and then violated her in ways I cannot fathom even reading on the worst dark-web threads. And yet, all I feel is my doctor’s God-complex. I am invincible. I stare him in the eyes and continue my explanation.
“The second drug can be taken one of three ways, but it can’t be swallowed like the mifepristone. It has to remain under your tongue or in your cheek for thirty minutes. It can also be inserted vaginally.”
Aimee’s hand had been slowly creeping toward her mouth as the story went on, but now it flies down to her side and her hands press together into fists. “You lured her to a hotel room, assaulted her by drugging her drink, and then stuck pills inside her under the pretense that you were making love to the future mother of your child?” she asks.
“I did nothing,” Ted says.
I check Margot’s vital signs again and notice she’s awake. I don’t know how much she’s heard, but she appears to be in shock. She stares at the sky above as the rain pelts her face.
“I need to see what I have upstairs for supplies,” I say. “I can’t be sure I’m getting her pulse right with the chaos around us.”
There have been times in the five or six years I’ve known Margot that I’ve thought Ted must be the perfect husband. He’s quiet but not boring, supportive but not condescending, loving but not possessive, and most importantly, he’s tolerant of Margot’s neuroses. I’ve thought, Why can’t I fall in love with someone like that? I married Joe, the guy who is always the center of attention, who has a story for everything, whom everyone wants to crowd around. And now I might have feelings for Aimee, another person who shines in the spotlight. What I wouldn’t do for an easy and simple Ted, I thought as recently as last night when Ted skipped the Moon Men event to stay by his wife’s side.
Hindsight is twenty-twenty when it comes to guys like that. Either they die peacefully at an old age surrounded by generations of love, or they are exposed for the psychopaths they are, and spend the rest of their lives in jail. It’s too soon to tell which direction this one is going in, but my gut tells me to believe Andi and Rini. They have nothing to gain by lying, unlike Ted, who has everything to lose if the truth comes out.
As I run toward the house, the wind picks up and I can feel that things are about to get much worse.
MARGOT
I sit up and my vision goes black. The voices around me come in and out like I’m opening and closing a door between us. I blink my eyes and my head spins.
“Did I pass out again?” I ask.
“This time there was no airbag,” Adam says, helping me sit up.
