Free Forget Me Not by Isabel Wolff

washed my hands, a girl came out of a cubicle. She looked about fourteen. Her mother – who looked no older than me – was leaning against the basin, arms akimbo, an expression of pained resignation on her face. As I followed them back to the counter with my cup I wished that I had someone with me – but who would it have been? Not Xan, obviously, even if he weren’t on a plane, crossing five time zones to reach the other side of the world. Not Cassie. She’d be no comfort at all. Would I have wanted my mother? No. Not least because she’d been there herself but had worked it all out. I had a sudden hankering for Granny Temple, who was always practical and kind – but she’d died in 2001.
    As I took my seat again, near to a wall-mounted TV – This Morning was on: they were cooking something revolting-looking with red lentils – I remembered my consultation with my GP. It was already too late for the method where you take a pill; so it had to be the early surgical technique.
    ‘It takes five minutes,’ my doctor had said reassuringly. ‘And the recovery time is quite short – just a couple of hours. Now, are you sure about it?’ she asked, as she signed the letter which would state that my mental health would be impaired by my proceeding with the pregnancy.
    ‘Yes. I’m quite sure,’ I lied …
    I am heartbroken about Xan, I repeated to myself now, like a mantra. If I have his baby I will never be able to get over him. Having his baby when he doesn’t want me to feels wrong. I do not wish to bring a baby into the world with no father …
    What was my fourth reason? I couldn’t remember. What was it?
    ‘Anna Temple!’ I heard. I stood up. ‘You’ll be going down to the ward next,’ said the nurse, ‘but first go to the locker room, take everything off, put your belongings in a locker, put on a paper gown and wait.’ I did as I was told. Then, clutching the back of the gown, which felt uncomfortably breezy and exposed, I sat down with two other women in the waiting area. I felt suddenly self-conscious about my bare feet. The polish on my toes was chipped and there was a ridge of hard skin on my heels. But the thought of prettifying my feet in preparation for an abortion made me feel even more sick than I already did.
    I picked up a leaflet about contraception so that I wouldn’t have to catch the eye of either of the other two women who were waiting with me.
    ‘Anna Temple?’ said another female voice now, after what seemed like a week but was probably twenty minutes.
    I followed the doctor down the draughty corridor into a cubicle.
    ‘OK,’ she said as her eyes scanned my form. ‘We’ll just run through a few things before I perform the procedure.’
    ‘Could you tell me how it works,’ I said.
    ‘Well, it’s quite simple,’ she replied pleasantly. I noticed a speculum lying on a metal tray on the trolley next to her and some syringes in their wrappers. ‘You’ll be given a local anaesthetic, into the cervix, and once that has worked, the cervix is gently stretched open, and a thin plastic tube is then inserted into the uterus, and the conceptus …’
    ‘Conceptus?’
    ‘That’s right. Will be eliminated from the uterus.’
    ‘The conceptus will be eliminated from the uterus,’ I echoed.
    My head was spinning. I closed my eyes. I was ten weeks pregnant. The ‘conceptus’ was over an inch long. It had a heart that had been beating for five weeks now – a heart that had suddenly sparked into life. It had limb buds, which were sprouting tiny fingers and toes, which themselves had even tinier nails. It had a recognisably human little face, with nostrils and eyelids; it even had the beginnings of teeth …
    The doctor began to tear the wrapper off a syringe. ‘If you could just hop up on to the bed here …’
    I stood up. ‘I need to go.’
    She looked at me. ‘You need to go?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, there’s a bathroom at the back, by the fire exit.’
    ‘No,’ I said weakly.