The next morning was cold and bleak, as the sun had yet to rise. The early morning noises felt overgrown and ominous, leftovers from an unusually black night. I opened the car door for Bridge, the chill in the air seeped deeply into my bones, the weight of our decision, of what we had to do, heavy on our hearts. The sadness emanating from her made me hesitate opening my own door. I would have given anything not to sit inside the car with her. Maybe it was the fact that I knew I was forcing her to do something she didn’t want to do. Maybe sitting next to her was a reminder of that. Either way, I was a selfish asshole and I knew it.
The chill in the air made me shiver. I got in, started the engine and blasted the heat. Bridge had curled up into herself, the leather creaking beneath her, a little ball of a girl, her long blonde hair in a messy bun on her head, not a stitch of makeup on her face and her eyes red from crying the entire night.
“It’s okay, Bridge,” I assured her, pulling out onto the long drive that led from the house to the main street.
She curled up tighter, resting her head against the freezing window, staring out into the dark morning. Six in the morning and we felt so alone on the road, only the occasional city truck or passerby would grace us with a roar as they crawled past us, their tailpipes puffing into the frosty air. It was a farce that California was seventy year round. In the winter, we occasionally got fifty- or sixty-degree temperatures, which doesn’t seem that low, but when the sun is vacant, it feels like it could snow and the cold bites your fingers with stiffness. That morning it felt like my entire body was numb with that same stiffness.
My stomach ached and my mouth went dry when we pulled into the clinic’s parking lot, a seemingly opaque haze fell in a fog over its surface. I pulled into a space near the front and got out, wrapping my jacket tighter around my chest and walking to Bridge’s door. When I opened it for her, she just sat there. I had to lean in and unbuckle her belt.
“Come on, Bridge,” I said softly, her dazed eyes stared ahead of her into nothing. Her expression gave away that she saw the same.
I grabbed her upper arm gently and guided her out of the car. She leaned into me and I locked it with my key fob.
When I opened the door to the clinic, it appeared, for lack of a better word, used. The chairs were old, fading and peeling their pleather cushions. The walls were, at one time, white but had dulled and stained yellow. The ceiling was missing a few fiberglass tiles; some were present but cracked or missing large chunks where protruding wires fell at strange angles. The floor was a checkerboard pattern of light blue and white vinyl tiles. A bronze trash can from the seventies rested near the door beside a low fiberboard table full of magazines whose subject matter contradicted the very purpose of the clinic itself. The chairs lined the walls, and there was a row of two seats in the center.
There were four people already in the waiting room, a couple who sat against the wall nearest the door and two girls around the same age on the opposite end of the room from them. I sat Bridge in a chair toward the center, facing the couple, and approached the window. An older woman in her fifties slid back the glass partition.
“Yeah?” she asked, smacking her gum.
“Uh, we had an appointment today at seven a.m.”
“Name?” she asked, picking up a clipboard.
“Bridget Blackwell.”
She checked a list then grabbed yet another clipboard and handed it over. The pen was attached to the top with a chain. “Yeah, fill this out. We’ll call you.”
She pushed the partition closed without a second glance and I sat next to Bridge.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t do this at a hospital, Bridge,” I told her. “The whole point of this is to be discreet so people don’t find out.” She nodded. “You need time to recover before school starts too.”
“I know, Spencer,” her worn voice told me.
I looked at her then noticed the guy in front of us. He was laughing at something on his phone while his poor girlfriend looked terrified, her arms pressed tightly against her abdomen. He looked up at me and smirked, gesturing with his head toward his girl before rolling his eyes, an attempt at camaraderie. When I didn’t bite, he went back to his phone with a picture of a naked girl on the cover, and obnoxiously laughed at whatever text he’d gotten. All he made me want to do was kick his ass and tell the girl to run as fast as she could.
I began filling out the paperwork while Bridge sat bent into herself on the chair. Halfway through the tedious process, I looked over again to check on her and looking at her hair triggered something. For some reason, I was bombarded with memories of when she was little. She had this ridiculously curly hair, and it was always wild about her face, regardless how hard my mom tried to contain it. She’d put it up in some sort of clip but sure enough, five minutes later, it was a blonde halo around her face.