The protest outside the clinic was always changing. Even though the entire affair was officially in the hands of The Center for Family Life and Wellness (CFLW), it was really a group effort. A series of smaller groups – the Outreach Community, Teens for Life and Abstinence, the Go with God Alliance, and Priests for the Betterment of Women, among others – had agreed upon a site of protest underneath the supervision of the CFLW, so that with proper scheduling there wouldn’t be a single day or night for two straight weeks that the abortion clinic would be left to itself. Even when it was closed, a vigil of silence and sleep would greet the workers and patients as they came or went.
The idea was to get some extended media coverage so that any potential candidate for senator, governor or whatever would be able to see and say that there was a market in this given state for a pro-life message. For the protest to be successful, the utmost decorum had to be maintained. Picket signs about fire and brimstone would only give the media something to work with, so a memo went out to all the groups involved, asking that each one refrain from excessive noise, chanting, or prayer. It was decided that a humanist approach would work better than a religious one, because even though many Americans appreciated religious fervor, nobody liked being told that they were evil. There would be no inflammatory slogans, no pictures of fetuses, no rousing speeches, and generally very few of those things which make a protest enjoyable. Persistence, it was decided, would attract the most attention. The CFLW’s strategy was all about the slow burn. Americans, it was believed, still had a place in their hearts for stoic conviction.
What the whole thing amounted to was a lot of people standing around. Outside of a few vague signs saying “Life Not Death” or “Choose Life”, there really wasn’t much to complain about. Instead of praying, moments of silence. Instead of speeches, gentle media announcements. At all times, the protestors ensured that there would always be a clear path to the clinic between two crowds of silently watching people. To remove even the slightest sign of threat, the crowds stayed mostly in the parking lot to avoid trampling the grass, and a media spokesperson assured both the members of the abortion clinic and anyone watching the five o’clock news that, if necessary, the CFLW would pay to have the entire lawn reseeded. It was necessary that no fault be found, that all action be uniform and peaceful, so that if there were to be any mistakes, they would be committed by crusading counter-protestors throwing stones in the name of the uterus.
It was, of course, terribly boring. The cameras came when it started and planned to come back when it ended, but so long as nothing was happening, there was nothing to record. And so long as nothing was being recorded, the protestors themselves had nothing much to do. Depending on which organization was being represented that day, the crowd took on a slightly different tone within a few hours. The youth groups were slightly more restless, but all it amounted to was Frisbee throwing and frustrated abstinent flirting. Priestly groups were more behaved, solemn and discomforting. The most volatile crowds were the privately started community groups: retired malcontents, wealthy idealists, stay-at-home parents, and the fervent unemployed. Nothing ever happened, but every now and then the air rushed by with vicious remarks and veiled threats.
So when Marilyn Nesbitt walked to the abortion clinic, she walked through a large crowd of members of the Go With God Alliance, an organization known for parading crucifixes and American flags through various courthouses, waiting for someone to ask them to leave so that they could proudly declare that if you took away the crucifix, you had to take away the flag. They declared nothing to Marilyn Nesbitt, just as they had been told, but they stared at her with anger, fear, or woeful understanding. They made her very nervous.
“Oh,” she said apologetically. She placed her right hand on her belly, which appeared rather slim but which was hidden underneath a baggy shirt. “It’s just a tumor.”
Some of them damned her as quietly as they could, which wasn’t very quiet at all. Others let out audible gasps or murmurs, and their voices ran together. A few prayed to themselves as she walked into the building.
The clinic secretary watched Marilyn carefully. The entire place was on high alert because of the protest and had prepared for it well, since not only the media but the CFLW as well had told them about it in advance. Immediately upon receiving word, the clinic had sought advice from its chief contributor, the Responsible Woman’s Choice Foundation (RWCF). They had weighted their options. They could take legal action to keep the protest a set distance away from the clinic. They could organize counter-protests with the help of lesser sister organizations. There was, for instance, Women for Justice, a lively group which thought of protests as games of one-upmanship. A third option was to propose a friendly debate in the hope that the CFLW would refuse, allowing the clinic, the RWCF and any involved organizations to appear reasonable in light of the CFLW’s blatant disregard for democracy’s greatest asset, reasoned discussion.
But there was always the possibility that the CFLW would call their bluff and agree to a debate, which wasn’t what the RWCF wanted at all. And poorly managed counter-protests ended in fights, and depending on who started it, it could very well be the pro-choice advocates looking like fanatics and not the pro-lifers. And any legal action could simply make the protestors look like embattled but patient crusaders at the mercy of wily lawyers. There were too many chances that couldn’t be taken, especially if the CFLW was going to be as peaceful as it claimed it was going to be. The last viable option was to sit back and wait for the protestors outside to do something stupid. The first conglomerate to blink loses.
As a result, the clinic enacted a policy of immense hospitality, sometimes even bending over backwards to accommodate the protest. A private agreement was made between the director of the protest and the director of the clinic that the lengthy sit-in could be held on the lawn and in the parking lot of the clinic, so long as no one harassed the employees or patients. “I have no intention of harassing anyone,” the protest director said. “I’m sure you don’t,” the clinic director said.
Each group built its own rolodex of local media outlets, in case there should be anything worth seeing. The RWCF put up money for extra security to observe the protest, both inside in uniform and outside in plainclothes, so that the smallest crime could be brought to account immediately. Everyone inside was to keep an extra eye open. “These pro-lifers were capable of anything,” the RWCF warned. It wouldn’t even be out of the question for a stray nut to try to blow up the place, even if it meant hurting his compatriots. Admittedly this was a dim possibility, because the CFLW ran a tight ship, but there was no way to stop random emotional outbursts. In the past the clinic had suffered bricks through windows and various graffiti, and once a man had been found throwing himself at the front door in a drunken rage during the middle of the night. They were even told to watch out for pranksters, like pregnant women pretending to be patients only to declare mightily that This Baby Is A Human Life and No One Is Going To Take It/Him/Her Away! A long list of suspicious behaviors was distributed to all employees.
The focus wasn’t so much on protecting the sanctity of the clinic as it was on catching the protestors doing something outlandish and publishable, so when Marilyn walked in underneath a wave of noise from outside, the secretary kept an extra eye on her. “Marilyn Nesbitt,” the young woman said.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Yes . . . Marilyn Nesbitt . . . 12:30 . . . I’m having a tumor removed.”
The secretary looked up and sensed a trick. “You don’t come here to have tumors removed.”
“But this is where the doctor sent me.”
At this point a security guard came in and asked her to leave. “But it’s just a tumor,” she said as she was gently led towards the door. A yelling throng greeted her on the way out, and even though the yelling was indistinct by the time all the noise made its way inside, the secretary thought she heard cheering, and she thanked the guard for helping her out.
A doctor stepped out. “What’s going on?”
“One of the protestors snuck in. She said we treated fetuses like tumors.”
“Oh, no,” the doctor said as if thinking about something else. “That’s an entirely different operation. She came to the wrong clinic.”
The cheering that greeted Marilyn on her exit was sporadic and inadvertent. Everyone knew that they weren’t here to yell, but some couldn’t help themselves. Two people shouted: “Even they wouldn’t take her!” and “It’s not a fucking tumor, bitch!” Marilyn seemed fairly puzzled. She had come here to get an operation that was denied her. Now she was in the middle of a rally. Immediately after the yelling, a round of shushing kept the crowd quiet. Because everyone had to be quiet in order to be taken seriously. The protest couldn’t be loud or a call to arms. It was meant to be a show of support for the powerless.
When everything settled again, Marilyn was able to walk through a path in the middle of the now-silent crowd to the parking lot and her car. Aside from the buses that had brought all the protestors, her car was only accompanied by the cars of the employees. By the time she got there, another murmur ran through the crowd. In response to the scene inside the clinic, two security guards stepped out to walk up and down the path in the middle of the demonstration. The secretary had assumed that Marilyn was a plant of the CFLW, so she came to the conclusion that the protesters was getting restless. She followed orders and called the media to let them know what kind of lunacy those pro-lifers were up to. But one of the protestors also called the media, thinking that the RWCF had planted Marilyn to make the crowd irritable and had now sent out security guards to make everything worse, and the newsmen had to know what the pro-choicers were up to. Marilyn, in the meantime, had gotten to her car unmolested. No one paid attention to her anymore, because all of the focus was now on the uniformed guards who walked back and forth without touching a person or saying a thing. The guards held back, and the crowd held back. Both sides waited for the other.
Marilyn stood motionless by her car. Only a few people towards the back of the demonstration watched her out of curiosity. She wasn’t acting like a defiant abortionist. She looked manic. The two or three people watching her became saddened and confused as Marilyn placed one hand on the car for support and sobbed uncontrollably. Most looked away to leave her some time with whatever she was feeling, but one suburban mother couldn’t help herself and walked over to Marilyn, who was sinking lower and lower to the ground.
“What’s the matter?” the mother asked.
“I’m dying,” Marilyn said. “It’s cancer.”
“I don’t understand. That’s an –”
“I want it out.”
“Don’t you know what that place is?” The mother stopped, searching around among her things and offering Marilyn a tissue. “I’m sorry,” she continued. “My name’s Liz.”
“Marilyn. Thank you.” The two took some time to collect themselves. A rush of noise ran over the crowd as a news van pulled up, but the second everyone saw the cameras, they remembered they had to be on their best behavior.
“Don’t you know what that place is?” Liz continued. “It’s an abortion clinic. Right?”
“What?”
“Maybe they do exams or something. But it’s an abortion clinic.”
“That’s where the doctor sent me.”
“I’m with the protest, and the Center doesn’t monkey around with general clinics.” Liz smiled at her own logic. “The Center’s good about that sort of thing.”
Marilyn was unimpressed. “But that’s where the doctor sent me.” She took out a crumpled piece of paper with an address written on it.
“So it’s . . .”
“Do you mind if I sit down?” Marilyn opened the passenger door and sat down sideways, her feet on the pavement and her right side pressed up against the back of the chair as she leaned her head on the headrest and closed her eyes. “Yes I have cancer.”
“Ovarian?”
“Probably.”
“Don’t you remember what the doctor told you?”
“She said a lot of things. I was nervous. We got in an argument.” Marilyn opened her eyes to look Liz over carefully, then she closed them again. “I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
A man with a clipboard walked up to them. He said he was from the local news and saw them standing apart from the crowd and wanted to know if they’d like to do an interview. Liz declined for the both of them, but the man tried talking to Marilyn instead, who opened her eyes to look at him. Liz grabbed the man on the shoulder and told him, “Leave her alone, okay, she’s got cancer.” Puzzled, the man walked away as Liz brought her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that.” She placed a hand on Marilyn’s car. “You’re right, you shouldn’t tell me things.”
“It’s all right,” Marilyn said.
“Do you want me to leave?”
“No, please, stay. I don’t want to leave just yet.”
The scene was dangerously calm. Even though the two guards had settled into a position in front of the clinic’s front door, the crowd didn’t trust them at all. They stared quietly at the entrance and muttered various remarks that were only meant to be heard by the people around them. Everyone pretended to hear nothing and think nothing, so when a few of them broke down and agreed to be interviewed for the news, everyone else kept an eye on the speaker to make sure only the right things were being said.
“I’m real sorry about the cancer,” Liz said. By now she had sat down on the ground next to Marilyn’s feet and leaned back against the car. The sun had made the pavement warm.
“I don’t know why she sent me here. It was a strange meeting.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“A lot of things.” There was some commotion as the crowd became bored with the newsmen and pushed them around until they went back to the van to regroup. “I’m trying to think,” Marilyn continued. “I’m trying to remember what happened. Maybe there was a mistake. Or I copied the wrong address. I went in, and I had all these symptoms and I looked them up and I thought, ‘O my God I have cancer.’ So I go in and I tell her and she runs all these tests and a week later she gives me this address.”
“Was that it?”
Marilyn struggled with what she wanted to say. Liz could see her feet shifting back and forth. “She told me that the blood test said I was pregnant, but sometimes that happens when you have . . . what did you call it . . . ovarian cancer or something.”
“Is that true?”
“I think so.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“On the website I looked at.”
“What website?”
“I don’t remember. But that’s what it said.” Marilyn perked up suddenly. “That’s what must have gone wrong. Because I told her I wasn’t pregnant, I had cancer, but with the blood tests and all, and I told her I wanted to get rid of it, she was looking at me funny, she must’ve been confused. I can probably just go back and she’ll refer me to the right place. Jesus, I was scared there for a second, I got pushed out and everyone was yelling at me and I got to the car and said, ‘Marilyn, no one’s going to help you. Marilyn, you’re going to die.’ And it all started hurting down there and I was so scared. But it all makes sense now. Thanks.” Marilyn stood up so she could close the passenger door and walk around to the driver’s side. “Thanks a lot for your help. It all makes sense now.”
Liz hurried off the ground. “Are you sure you’re not pregnant?”
“I can’t be pregnant.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have cancer.” Marilyn blinked. Liz could see that something wasn’t getting through and the only way to get it through was to force it. Which she didn’t want to have to do.
“But what if you don’t have cancer and are just pregnant?”
“I can’t be pregnant.” Marilyn stopped looking at Liz and opened the driver’s side door. She put her keys in a pocket and didn’t go in. She only looked at the seat and held onto the door.
“Why can’t you be pregnant?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t need to know everything,” Marilyn said. She let go of the car door and walked away, holding her open palms in the air as if she were casting off both Liz and the car. She didn’t seem to realize she was walking in the direction of the clinic. Suddenly she yelled. “I just want it out!”
The protestors heard the shouting and recognized the woman that had made them angry walking to the clinic again. The newsmen felt a wave of tension and ran back from their news van to follow the woman who, if they remembered right, had cancer. Despite their better instincts, people started shouting. Liz didn’t know what to do and stayed behind.
At the sudden commotion, one of the guards said something into his walkie-talkie. When he was finished, the both of them looked at each other and walked in Marilyn’s direction. The repressed anger reached a breaking point. People were disgusted with what they were seeing. “She don’t need no fucking escort!” a protestor yelled.
One of the guards broke off to deal with the heckler as the other approached Marilyn. Back by the clinic two more guards stepped out and the mob didn’t take it very well.
“Sir,” a guard said, “I’m going to ask you to calm down.”
“Ma’am,” the other explained, “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“I don’t need to calm down. I ain’t gonna hurt her. I’m just saying you don’t need to be here, pal.”
“I’m not causing any trouble, I want it out, I just want it out.”
Liz walked slowly towards the action as Marilyn tried to get around the guard, who easily restrained her. The mob couldn’t tell how to react. “What the hell is that, buddy? Can’t you even help one of your own?”
“Sir, I’m asking you to calm down.”
“I don’t need to calm down! You need to calm down! You don’t need to be here!”
“Just let me go, please let me go, I just want to get by.”
“Let her go!” Liz yelled. Her walk had turned into a run, but the crowd was already closing in on the scene. The heckler pushed the guard, who promptly maced him and anyone standing nearby. “Let her go! She’s not doing anything!” The mob went right for the guard with the mace. “Get it out of me!” A stream of security knocked open the front door and immediately set upon everyone with mace and tasers. Soccer moms and malcontents ran frantically wherever they could, some joining the fight, others trickling away as if they’d never been there. The mob had already closed completely around Marilyn, but Liz tried to push through anyway.
Everyone was pushing somewhere. Most threw their weight around to no purpose, just to make some room, but one group burst into the clinic for protection, trying to explain that they weren’t in it for this kind of violence. The group immediately behind them, however, wanted to tear the clinic apart. So the secretary, the doctors, the errant protestors and the one remaining security guard desperately defended the clinic at every door and window.
Outside, the small army of guards had successfully routed the protestors with considerable help from their tasers. By the time the police arrived, most of the mob had been driven into the backyards and jungle gyms of the surrounding neighborhood. Liz kept looking for Marilyn and stayed out of everyone’s way. She asked all the news crews that were pouring in but no one could spot her. Finally, after flirting her way past three policemen, she got back to the parking lot and saw that Marilyn’s car was gone. She could only hope that Marilyn was driving it and not someone who had stolen her keys. She walked back to her assigned bus and sat down in a seat towards the back. It wasn’t going to leave for hours yet. Too many people had scattered or were being questioned by police. But so long as Liz could fall asleep, maybe she could dream it was moving.
Marilyn cried as she drove. “No one’s going to help you,” she said, and she turned on the radio so she wouldn’t have to listen to herself. It was only the news. The CFLW was canceling the protest but blaming the RWCF’s shoddy security for the violent outburst. The RWCF blamed the CFLW for not being in control of its brother organizations, but both groups agreed to chip in for clean-up, therapy, and any other necessary procedures to make things right again. They found it easier to allow each other to take the high road out of their own mess.
Marilyn turned to a music station, but it annoyed her, and even when the news had nothing to do with her, it annoyed her. Every now and then she’d hit the steering wheel or the dashboard. She turned the radio off and on and then off and then on again. Stoplights infuriated her. So did people and cars and dogs and the growing pain in her lower abdomen. Somebody tried to pass her on the left, and as the car pulled alongside, she yelled “Fuck off!” as loud as she could out the window and hit the gas. There weren’t many police cars around, they had mostly been diverted to the clinic, so the only authority that noticed her careening down the street and blowing a stoplight was the automated camera set up at the intersection. “Goddammit! Goddammit!” and the pain in her abdomen swelled horribly until she couldn’t take it anymore and pulled her car into a deep empty alley.
The pain burst out of her in sudden blasts. She stumbled out of the car and was about ready to dig into her body with her own fingers to rip out the tumor and smash it on the wall. But the pressure building up inside her doubled her up in a stairwell and she could hardly tell what was happening for the next untold expanse of time except for tearing, pushing, pulling, and ripping at everything on her and around her and biting down on her tongue so hard to keep from screaming that she tasted blood in her mouth. At some point it ended, and Marilyn was breathing. She stood up laboriously and walked back to her car without looking at what she had left behind, if it was anything at all. The tumor was out, or maybe it wasn’t, but she didn’t care right now. She would get in the car, she would not go to the hospital, not yet, and she would do her best to keep from bleeding to death.
It was just a tumor, she thought, and it needed to get out.