Delayed Gratification

I'm sprinting down the side of the road, staccato breaths equal parts huffing and laughing. The wooden sandwich board I'm hauling is extremely cumbersome and walloping my knee every other step I take. It's gotta be something like 20 pounds.

The man behind me is hollering obscenities. My head's on a swivel, looking for a place to ditch it. Someone in an oncoming car warns, "Watch your back!" So I know he's after me.

I only have a few seconds to make some sort of decision. A side road materializes, and I skirt down it. Like the universe is bestowing a dramatically ironic gift, there is a creek running under the bridge beneath me. I smile, wide and winsome.

 

I'm a runner. Running's one of the few things I'd consider an indelible part of my fledgling identity, having done it competitively since middle school. Runner. Sister. Writer, if you ask me on a day when I'm feeling particularly confident or pretentious.

As most 20-somethings, though, I've been amidst a bit of a quarter-life crisis as of late. I'm in love, but hope for the other aspects of my life has been largely dwindling. Careerism's scary, making my day job feel like more of a chore than what I thought would be a passion. Self-doubt's pouring over my psyche like melted butter over an English muffin—filling every nook and cranny—which makes writing an exercise of reluctant grit nearly every time I sit down to do it. Running's been promising at least, with some recent lifetime bests achieved while repping my local track club, but that's success I know I can't maintain without a difficult, disciplined training regimen.

All this while being constantly inundated, every time I open Instagram, with either the engagement, wedding, and/or monthly baby-progression photographs posted by former classmates, promulgating bucolic lives of peace and purpose, or pictures of undulating, alcohol-fueled debauchery from members of that same generational cohort, proof of their valuation of pleasure above all else.

I see all of this and know we all just want security in some sense. Feeling good feels good. So when the social, political, and economic climate feels dire, of course we're going to seek gratification as instantly as we can. For some, it's marrying the person we met less than a year ago. For others, it's endlessly escaping with social media. Or partying every night. Up until a few months ago, I was predominantly guilty of the latter.

In this era of fried dopamine receptors, I've been working on choosing delayed gratification. So when I found out I was pregnant a few weeks ago, I decided to get an abortion.

 

All of the other suites in the business center were unoccupied, likely because of the optics associated with having Planned Parenthood as your next-door neighbor. PP's in the suite at the very end of a comically long hallway. The halls were white and austere, and I heard every step I took, Severance-esque. My boyfriend—half the reason I was there, genetically speaking—had wanted to come with me for support, but this appointment fell in the middle of business hours, and he had a meeting. So I entered the suite alone.

A girl about my age checked me in. Her lanyard was covered with buttons proclaiming statements in pink like HANDS OFF OUR BODIES. Her shirt had rainbows on it. She directed me into an ancillary waiting room, and told me with an empathetic smile that the lights would turn on when I walked in. Motion-activated.

Indeed, when I entered, overhead strips illuminated the empty room. Two dozen chairs, a water cooler, a few ominous posters. In stark block lettering against a heather background: Abortion is legal. It is still your right.

Tedious, anxious waiting. Monday morning. 9:09, first one there, providers still getting set up in the back. I sat. I twiddled my thumbs. I checked my phone but then remembered I'm trying not to check my phone as much and chucked it back into my bag. I stood. I bit my lip. I walked around.

Many silent minutes passed, then finally Janelle popped open the door and called my name. Big and warm, fun energy. I smiled meekly, wondering if she remembered taking my blood a few days ago. And a few days before that.

This was my third appointment here. At this point, I had already undergone a full medication abortion cycle. Mifepristone. Misoprostol. The shit that's always getting banned. Hearing the providers say the drug names felt like when the characters say the name of the movie in the movie.

But my first time in here, they hadn't seen anything on the ultrasound. The provider told me it was common this early on in a pregnancy, but they weren't going to rule out my pregnancy was ectopic—dangerously growing outside my uterus. That was a week ago, and over the last few days I'd been having weird, unnerving pain that meant something was off. So they'd asked me to come back in.

Per protocol, Janelle stepped into the bathroom with me, but this time she just handed me the plastic cup and winked, "You know what to do."

I smiled.

Position, angle, release, cut. I placed the filled cup in the secret little metal chamber, somehow reminiscent of those slots under the bank teller security dividers.

Then, I was back in the exam room, Winnie the Pooh-ing under a thin paper blanket.

Janelle came back in and started to ask me the perfunctory questions, casual and lighthearted. With her eyes trained on her computer screen, she asked if I'd been "down, depressed, or hopeless" in the last two weeks.

I'd only been dating my boyfriend for a few months, but we'd fallen in love quickly. Well, I suppose the unplanned pregnancy might've given that away. Anyway. Just one of those "when you know, you know" situations. I'd been aggressively single for a long time before that, a perpetrator and perpetuator of our generation's pervasive hookup culture. We both never thought we'd meet another person like the one we did.

But that meant that only very recently did I ascend from an epoch of escapism and mental struggle—survival mode—to a higher rung up Maslow's Hierarchy. In other words, since realizing it was salvageable, I'd been trying to figure out how to make my life enjoyable, with the added challenge of not using instant gratifiers to do so. Thus, I'd been feeling rather listless, stratified within a new goopy continuum and unsure how to ground myself.

To save time and awkwardness, I just answered no.

Interview over.

Then, she needed to get my beta level again. This was to measure how much pregnancy hormone I was producing so they could compare it to a few days prior. If it was high hCG, that meant there was still something growing in me. The fear was an ectopic pregnancy. Essentially, a higher pregnancy score meant I'd have to go straight to the hospital.

My hands were embarrassingly sweaty at this point, leaving matted imprints on my shirt hem. "I can be a bit of a baby when it comes to needles," I reminded her, watching her prep the rubber band and vial. The high school cross country anemia checks have permanently scarred me, so before this whole abortion ordeal, I'd avoided getting my blood drawn for an entire decade.

"Don't worry," she assured. "I remember, you got good veins."

I got woozy at the word veins and looked away. As the needle slipped in, I word-vomited, "So, how'd you get into this line of work?" like a child in a crowded elevator.

She laughed. "I was actually a patient here, years ago," Janelle explained, and I was definitely not thinking about the needle in my arm when she said this. "A nurse helped me through a really hard time then. I bounced around a bit after that, but eventually got my degree, became a nurse, and now I'm here."

Janelle untied the rubber tourniquet, slipped the needle out of me, and stuck a little cotton ball on my arm. It hadn't even really hurt. "That's probably the best story you could've told me," I chuckled.

I recommend telling everyone you're a baby when it comes to needles. You learn more about people that way.

Janelle smiled, shrugged, and said my provider will be with me shortly, before leaving me alone in the room again.

I sat. I twiddled my thumbs. I wondered how my boyfriend's meeting was going. If he was preoccupied.

The provider came in. Catherine, same one as last time. Kind, frank. "So, your urine test came back positive again," she explained. "We're gonna do another ultrasound. But if we don't see anything in there, we're sending you to the hospital."

I shuddered an "Okay," and laid back.

The first ultrasound I'd done was relatively quick. In-n-out, nothin' to see here. But she was taking her time with this one. Every couple of seconds, the machine made a camera-capture noise.

I propped my head up a little bit, straining my neck. "Are you, like, seeing stuff?" Like a fallopian tube exploded like the butt end of a stick of dynamite, maybe?

I watched Catherine hesitate, open her mouth then close it then open again. "Yeah, so," she said, "it looks like you're actually further along than when we started. I'm seeing a gestational sac now. Which means the abortion failed."

She went on to explain it's not uncommon. Recommended going through another round right away, but said I could also wait a bit if I wanted the suction procedure instead, if I wanted. Et cetera. But I was still over here reeling from the fact that not only did I suddenly not have to get shipped off to the hospital for a cracked egg or punctured tube, I was also apparently more pregnant than before the abortion.

Fuck, could I even abort correctly?

Without really thinking, I said I'd just do another medication abortion, (wrongly) thinking it'd have less of an impact on my training since there'd be no surgery to heal from. With that, Catherine scooped up the film roll of images the ultrasound machine had printed and went to retrieve more meds and forms.

As she was skirting out of the room, I glanced at the photographs in her hand, and caught a glimpse—a wicked, universally cruel glimpse—of a small black smudge hovering in the middle of my uterus's gray background.

A splotch, in the shape of a little bean.

All of my liberal rationality shattered as my psyche internally screeched, That's your baby! That's your baby and you're killing it!

My soul lurched for the bean, but I remained physically frozen as Catherine exited the room.

As soon as I was alone, I was bawling. Pregnancy mood swings, maybe. I knew it was just an amalgam of tissue, no bigger than a sesame seed. But I just instantly felt so much guilt. I'd been drinking the last few weeks. Going on roller coasters (don't ask). Then I throw a cocktail of abortion medications at this ball of cells—my ball of cells—and it still hung on through it all. A resilient amalgam of tissue. Like mother, like amalgam. Unfortunately.

 

Three weeks ago now, I'd noticed my period was late. I half-jokingly picked up a test at the drug store on my way home from work one day.

My boyfriend and I decided to take time to make a well-thought-out choice. Research on finances and ethics and the physical impacts I'd deal with from either hypothetical choice, Mifepristone or Mommy. On the one hand, we really did love each other. If we were gonna pick someone to raise a kid with, it'd be each other. We both care about being ethical people, and would only want to put good kids out into the world. But of course, we're broke, and hardly not-kids ourselves; so choosing Option No Baby, we thought, was choosing the path of chasing our dreams, of working hard these next few years so we can do the whole family thing intentionally down the line. Delayed gratification.

But at a time when I already felt so hungry for purpose and reassurance, Option Baby could provide such an immediate and obvious raison d'être. Put all of my dedication and drive toward being a good mom, build a good domestic existence. A golden hour Instagram life, all mine.

(Author's note: Throughout this entire ordeal, I did recognize how lucky—how stupidly, geopolitically privileged—I was, to be able to make this hard choice at all. How grateful I was for the rights my state assures me, knowing others have to escape to mine to even access choice. Knowing autonomous choice should not be a privilege.)

 

Here I was, staring teary-eyed at the exam table I had just been propped up on a few moments prior, being forced by the universe to double down on my choice: to choose, paradoxically, the less secure option. Forced by the same universe—clearly one with a sense of humor—that just flashed this scintillating image at me, my last chance to switch to the seemingly more secure option. To go with instant gratification. An assured purpose in life, right now.

The bean shape is seared into my mind.

Catherine re-entered as I wiped my wet cheeks, setting a familiar set of pills on the counter next to me, then handing me a thin orange folder.

"We do have to have you fill out some of the paperwork again," she said, frowning with sympathy, "since you're technically making the decision again."

 

Upstate for a work conference. Escaped during the lunch break to avoid networking and forced small talk. October chilly, and I'd only brought a tank top and shorts to change into, so all of my extremities were covered in goosebumps from the wind. Squirrel-gray sky. The trees lining the road swayed leaves of muted, rustic vibrance.

My body didn't feel like it was mine yet. It had been over a week since I was last able to run. Yesterday had been the first day where I'd been able to walk around and not feel like I was going to pass out, so I decided today was a litmus test of a run. If I could go for an hour and not pass out, regardless of pace, then I could start back up with training again. I was still bleeding. But I'd been told it I wouldn't stop for at least a few more days. Expected. Meant this one was working.

I did some loops around the forested campus, feeling helter-skelter and just off. But a few miles went by, and I made my way off the campus. Started to get into a groove. No lightheadedness today. Maybe, hope is possible.

Just running down a flat road, the gray of the asphalt only a few shades off from the sky. A few businesses are tucked away in between trees on either side of the road. A monotonous route.

On the lawn of one of these businesses is a man, staring at the building. As I approach, I sense he's trying to be somewhat intimidating, but even from the other side of the road I can tell that he's swaying unsteadily in a way that only people over the age of 50 do. Behind him—double-sided, so cars coming from either direction can read his hand-painted messaging—is a wooden sandwich board.

Both sides read UNBORN LIVES MATTER. LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION. He is standing in front of a Planned Parenthood office.

Internally, I expel a barrage of curses at this man. Monday morning. He'd taken hours out of his day to go make women—moms with a litany of kids who couldn't fathom affording another, college students attending the SUNY across the street wanting an education before they even consider starting a family, and girls like me—feel bad for choosing. Particularly, to make them feel their lives matter less than the amalgam of cells inside their uteruses. To make their already difficult choices more difficult.

I putter along for a few hundred more meters. Then shake my head. Turn around, cross the street.

Half a mile away, yet I can still see the white sign in the distance, proudly displayed on the shoulder. I run toward it, and with every step I take, the right choice becomes clearer and clearer.

 

When I get close enough, I see the man is still standing on the lawn, staring at the facility. Back turned to me. I don't say a word or look at him. Without breaking stride, I scoop the sign up into my arms, and fucking haul.

The thing is heavy. I'm moving as quickly as I can. Maybe a second later, I hear "HEY! YOU BITCH, YOU COME BA—"

I'm sprinting down the side of the road, staccato breaths equal parts huffing and laughing.

Someone driving by hollers a warning at me that he's coming, so I veer down a side street as soon as I see it.

I am now on a bridge. Under it, there is a creek.

The path ahead of me is uncertain, and scary, and will be very hard. There is no assurance things will go right; that I will be fast again, or achieve any of my dreams.

But no matter what, I will be able to look back and know I at least gave it a shot. Braved the risk of delayed gratification. And so when the universe decides, down the line, that it's time to give me another amalgam of cells, I'll be able to make the choice again. And it probably won't be as hard.

I smile. With all my might, I huck the wooden sign into the creek. It parabolas through the air, then crunches onto the wet rocks below.

A red car is swerving toward me when I turn around. I hop out of the way, flash a smile at the incredulous man in the driver's seat.

I sprint away laughing to myself, wondering what will piss this guy off more: seeing his hours of hand-painted hatred crushed to smithereens in a creek, or knowing he was outrun by a girl recovering from an abortion.