Page 55 of Torment

I swallowed hard. “The pills that make you have a miscarriage?”

Jolie nodded. “Yes. Anyway, you know how we were all raised at New Eden. We were told that one of the worst things you could ever do was end a pregnancy in any way, and that our job as women was to have babies no matter when or where we had to do it. But when we were all there in that hospital, with the shock of what had happened to us and the fact that there was this whole new world out there, things were just… different. I didn’t judge any of the girls who chose to take the pills. I understood. I knew it was a difficult choice, but it was theirs.”

“And you?”

“I said no. I told the doctor I hadn’t been raped. I said the father of the baby would arrive any minute, and we’d be able to talk about what we wanted to do then.” Jolie paused and sniffed as tears filled her eyes. “I was so sure you’d be there for me. Like you promised.”

My heart lurched. “What did you do?”

“I waited. At first I thought maybe you were just busy with the FBI. Then a week went by and you still hadn’t shown up. I was still certain you were coming, though, so I kept on waiting.”

Guilt twisted around my guts, wringing them out. “But I never came.”

She shook her head. “I asked the FBI agents to get a message to you. At first they told me they didn’t even know where you were, but then they eventually said they’d tracked you down. One of them told me they’d pass on messages for me. So I left you a few of them and kept on waiting. After a couple more weeks of silence, I started to worry. You still hadn’t come for me, and I couldn’t find any other way to contact you. And then…”

She trailed off. There was another long silence, filled with tension. Dread built in me with every second that passed, and I began to feel lightheaded.

She finally spoke up again. “After four weeks, I started to figure out what was happening. It broke my heart, but I…” She paused and swallowed hard. “I understood. I did my best to put myself in your shoes. You were a successful guy. You could get anyone or anything you wanted. Even though you said you loved me, I figured once you got what you wanted and exposed the cult, you finally realized the enormity of it all and what a sacrifice you’d have to make to be with a girl like me. I was completely fucked up, and I didn’t know anything about the real world. It would’ve been too hard for you to deal with. So I realized then and there that you weren’t coming back for me. Ever. That was it. It was over.”

My chest began to ache. How the fuck could this happen? Why didn’t anyone tell her where I was?

“Then I really started to freak out,” she went on. “I was only eighteen. I was exhausted and sick, and I had no money, because this was a long time before any of the well-wishers started donating to us. I had no real support system, either, other than a bunch of girls who were in the same fucked up boat as me. I didn’t know the most basic stuff about the world. I didn’t even know how to use a phone, let alone drive or do any of the other stuff I would need to do. I was so overwhelmed. So terrified. I thought… maybe if you were with me, I could make it work, because I’d have you there to help. But you were gone. You weren’t coming to help me with anything, and I had to accept that.”

Tears were dripping down Jolie’s cheeks now. She didn’t meet my eyes.

“It wasn’t an easy choice. I know you hate me for what I did, but I want you to at least try to understand how hard it was for me. I cried every time I thought about it,” she said. She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep, shaky breath before continuing. “In the end, I knew I couldn’t go through with the pregnancy. Not alone. I knew there was a time limit on how long there was for the pills to be available, and it was running out. So I went back to the hospital and found the doctor who’d tried to discuss all the options with me. I told her I’d changed my mind, and I needed what she offered me five weeks earlier. She didn’t give anything to me right away. She said she wanted me to see a counselor first, just to make sure I was truly okay with my decision. At the time, I was. At least I thought I was. It was horrible and heartbreaking, but at the same time, I was sure it was the right choice. I couldn’t be pregnant when I was like that. I couldn’t cope. I just couldn’t.”

“What happened then?” I asked gently. She was obviously terrified of my reaction to her story, though she didn’t need to be.

My parents had talked to me and my siblings about abortion when we were teenagers, and they’d told us that no matter what our stance was on the issue, we should try not to judge because unless we went through it ourselves, we had no way of truly understanding what it was like. It was a trial by fire for women, and sometimes they didn’t even know where they stood on the issue themselves until they were directly confronted with some sort of pregnancy crisis.

What a shitty, unfortunate trial to go through.

An old friend of mine had actually been staunchly against it when she was younger, but when she went through an unplanned pregnancy—something she’d always claimed would never, ever happen to her given how careful she was—things were suddenly different. It took walking in those shoes for her to see it, but when it came down to it, she said she was glad to have a choice in the matter, even though she wound up keeping the pregnancy.

I’d always been in the pro-choice camp myself. I didn’t think termination was a decision that a woman should make lightly, but I also didn’t think it should be viewed as some sort of terrible deep dark secret that she felt the need to beat herself up over for years and years. Unless she decided to use it as a literal birth control method, I would never judge her for choosing that option, and I didn’t think she should spend her days haunted by traumatic feelings of guilt and regret.

Then again, I knew countless others vehemently disagreed with that outlook, sitting firmly on the opposite side of the fence. I was also raised very differently to Jolie. Given her upbringing, she was bound to be haunted by such a decision again and again, even if the logical side of her reaffirmed that it was probably the right choice for her to make at the time.

“I waited another week just to make sure I was really okay with my decision. Then I took the pills. That’s when everything went wrong,” Jolie said, her last few words spilling out between choked, frightened sobs.

“How?”

“I was told the miscarriage would feel like a heavy period. Some bleeding and cramps. Nothing too severe, especially as it was so early-stage for me. But it wasn’t like that for me at all.” She took another deep breath. “Apparently in very rare cases, some women have bad reactions to the medications. I was one of them. I ended up lying on the floor screaming in agony with blood pouring out of me. I was in the hospital for four days after that. It hurt horribly, and there was just so much blood. More than I ever thought was in my whole body, all bucketing out of me. I had a strange fever too. It made me feel delirious. And then I… I…”

“You what?”

She wiped her cheeks. “I started wondering if my father was right all along. Wondering if I was being punished for what I did by some sort of higher power. I kept thinking that I should’ve waited longer. Should’ve tried harder to get in contact with you so you’d know I was pregnant. Obviously you wanted nothing to do with me… but it was still yours. You deserved to know about it, even if you ended up wanting to make the same choice that I did.” She sniffed and wiped away another set of tears from her cheeks. “I started having terrible nightmares where you would come back to me and find out what I did. You would be furious and do all sorts of awful things to me. After a while, I tried to push it all down, but it always came back up.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… most days, I was okay. I was calm and rational, and if I thought about it, I’d tell myself I did the right thing considering the circumstances. But then some days I spiraled and had massive panic attacks instead. I felt so guilty.” She paused and took another shaky breath. “It’s like that for me with a lot of things. I’m torn between my old world and new world, even after all this time. It gets so confusing, and sometimes it feels like I’m spinning completely out of control. When that happens, I feel like I’m nothing but the sinner my father always said I was. Like I deserve pain and suffering.”

I felt sick at the way she blamed herself. It wasn’t her fault. If anything, it was my fucking fault for putting her in the situation to begin with.

Eight years ago, she was a sheltered girl raised in a cult, and I was a worldly playboy. I knew birth control existed. She didn’t. I should’ve been responsible and wrapped it up when I was with her, but I was fucking careless and reckless. I was so horny and desperate and obsessed when I was with her that all thoughts vanished from my mind except: I want to fuck this girl so bad I’d chew my own arm off if that meant I could have her.

That wasn’t any excuse for my behavior, though.

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