Bleeding Time.

I don’t know what day it is, and if you ask me in the future I won’t remember. I won’t be able to tell you what the weather was like, whether I was cold, or even what I had for breakfast but I will remember the sense of something profound unfolding in front of me. The harder I tried to grasp it, the quicker it melted through my hands.

People buzz around me, asking me questions and presenting forms that require my signature. It’s a tedious yet necessary process.

I’m surrounded by people just like me, but I’m also very alone. There’s an isolation in losing something by choice and an even deeper isolation doing it on your own, surrounded by other people.

The girl in the bed beside me lay there with muted tears sliding down her face. She was staring into the distance searching hard for the future she wasn't going to have. I could hear her heart breaking despite her never making a sound.

There was blood on her gown and a painful story behind her eyes. She'd never tell it to anyone though.

I reclined back into my own hospital bed. It was surprisingly comfortable given my own discomfort. I subtly checked my own garment. No blood there.

Part of me wanted to reach my arm out, hold her hand and tell her she made the right choice. Squeeze my fingers around hers. Share some of my warmth with her. I didn’t though. This would turn out to be my only regret of the day, I just didn’t know it yet.

What I did know though, because I’d been here before, is that the decision we’d made in solitude was the right one. Even though it wouldn’t always feel like it. It was.

The chatter of the nurses hissed around us. The clock ticked down the inevitable, already in motion. My mind began to wander to the past... The past that I couldn’t change. You say it’s pro-choice and you’re right. You’re right until you’re faced with the mortality of the situation.

I glanced back to the girl on my left and a moment of sonder hit me, had she been here before? Had she worn that gown before? Did she know the sweetness of the nurse, or the questions she would be asked on repeat? Or was she unaccustomed to the sterile smells of this holding bay? Was she fearful of waking up in sin? Was she distressed with the blood, her blood, leaking through?

I wanted to tell her that she was okay to mourn, that her heart was still capable of love; perhaps even more so now. I wanted to tell her that her soul was still kind.

I wanted to ask her why she was sad, ask her why she was scared, why she was making memories she would later cry for. It seemed rudimentary though - I knew why. She was doing all of those things for the same reasons that I was.

We both lay motionless, shrouded in restraint thinking about the joint decision we had made alone; A decision that would stay with us, always.

She left before I did, and not once did she look at me. I’m not even sure she knew I was there. Shrouded in her emotions, she couldn’t see further than the path right in front of her. In front of us both.

We merely existed side by side in our isolated silence, waiting for our redemption. It's at that point I realised the choice was already made for both of us.

There was no pro-choice and there never had been.