The Waiting Room

His smile. They say the first thing you really notice about someone is there smile, and in this case, it was certainly true. His teeth were slightly overlapped with his front two, giving him a look that is he was as goth as his friends would have been vampiric. He wasn’t goth though- or emo, or a metalhead or even the edgy scene kid. In blue jeans and a tattered maroon hoodie, Daniel Wilson was the perfectly normal teenager.

Kit felt almost stupid in comparison with her tight black jeans and equally tight vest top over a body harness. She was almost skinny except for her tits and slight belly flab, dyed bright red hair looped to the top of her head in what was meant to be a flawlessly messy bun but instead reminded herself of a bird nest. She supposed she was being too hard on herself, but she was with lily and that seemed to just be the effect lily had on her.

Lily was one of those girls who could walk down the road dressed as a clown on cocaine and still make everybody feel comfortable. No matter her mood, state or behaviour girls and boys would clamour to get her to meet them and drink with them or just smile at them. The fact she had just given birth a few months ago only gave everybody an excuse to contact her. Kit loved the baby incredibly and had made sure that Lily’s dickhead baby daddy was very aware of the fact he was getting a clout for what he did when he denied all existence of her. If she actually ever saw him and all her old ‘friends’ again.

As much as she wanted Lily to be completely happy after everything she had gone through, seeing how both Daniel and his friend Matthew both just lit up at the mere sight of her made her heart drop. Lily could be as edgy, slutty, conservative or chavvy as she liked, boys would still stop and look at the actual personification of a beam of sunshine. Even all the love in with world couldn’t stop Kit hating her just a little bit for it every time.

The plan was a trip into town. They couldn’t go drinking since Lily was underage and Kit didn’t have her ID yet. It was just the time of year when a group of young adults would grab some energy drinks and some food and go hang out in some little hidden corner until it got too cold and then they just walked home. Daniel already had a can of –

“Wilson is that Monster ULTRA? You fucking nonce” Lily basically screams and takes a long drag of her hurried yet perfectly rolled fag.

Wilson chuckles slightly, raises his arm as if in challenge and declares “Fight me Cunt!”

Kit was pretty sure she was in love. It also became pretty obvious during the walk into town that Lily had invited Wilson to try and pair him with Kit, so she could focus on Matthew. Matthew and Lily had dated for a few months two years ago before the dickbag baby daddy. Lily subtly whispered to Kit that the two had hooked up a couple nights ago when they ran into each other on the way home from work. Kit tried not to judge Lily too much, but everyone knew that Matthew only lived this way because he lived with his girlfriend….three houses down the road.

Throughout the night It became even more obvious that Wilson just wasn’t interested in Kit- he was still focussed on Lily from the crush he had on her even before she dated Matthew. He also had a live-in girlfriend although he did keep mentioning how they were only together because he didn’t have the courage or the money to leave. He said it all so matter of factly that Kit wondered how many times he answered Matthews question of ‘ Why are you still with the bitch?’.

As Kit sat in the waiting room, she smirked softly to herself. She imagined Matthew asking Wilson the same question, about her this time. She imagined him amending it when he found out that she had dumped Wilson only a month prior, and then further cussing about her when Wilson sadly added with that downwards head tilt that Kit had already found someone else just a week after the breakup. Lily would have been there, adding to the slanderous cacophony. It was weird how no one else’s opinion mattered to Kit now. She simply wondered how she would ever live with herself in not even two hours’ time.

The aforementioned new boyfriend was sat downstairs in the other waiting room, reading Kits copy of one of Kits favourite books. She wasn’t stupid- she knew that as soon as she left that room, he put it down and continued messaging her mate Hayley. Hayley was a reasonably plain yet pretty girl who ruined all that as soon as she opened her mouth. So, it stands to reason that she could only try and be clever over text, hence why she messaged Kits boyfriend Harold at ungodly hours of the morning asking if he thought she was pretty. Kit would tell her shed bang her to the moon and back if it meant she went a night without being woken up by the buzzing.

Not for the first time, she wishes Wilson was here. Maybe she should have messaged him. But he hadn’t offered when she had informed him yesterday that she needed the surgical option instead, just repeated ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to come?’ while she sat there near tears in Hayley’s house. He had meant come to see her then- right? Right? She really should have messaged him. Begged him. Told Harold to stay at home….but she really had needed somebody. Just for the first bit. That first hurdle. Otherwise she may have just stood outside forever.

God knows her mother wasn’t any help. Kits mum had her young, at only 20, and was proud of the fact that she raised ‘such a girl’. This such a girl had multiple breakdowns about her inability to love properly, was thrown out the house at 16 years old, and had severe trust issues but hey nobody is perfect. Kit would sit there and smile as she got told she was getting fat, that her hair needed doing and her outfit was odd. Kit wanted to see her brothers and so put it up with but dear god the Facebook posts about her ‘precious babies’ makes her sick. She wasn’t her mother’s precious anything and her actions today made that very clear.

It would be a couple years, until Kit mustered the courage to demand a reason why her mother did what she did- and she got the usual gaslighting bullshit about why Kits decision hurt HER and that it made her so upset not to be a part of the decision. Kit also found out some things about her dad that day and his twisted reasoning about it.

It only took Kit 21 years to figure out she really didn’t need parents at all. Parents, hers and most of the ones she knew, where generally the most selfish narcissistic people on the planet. Her life goal suddenly changed from making something of herself to becoming the complete opposite of her parents. When she had a kid, she would be kind and she would listen and be there. She would support a child’s interest and if she ever even thought about calling her child a selfish cunt then she might as well just jump from the pedestal her own mother had created for herself.

Kit let out a low,shakey laugh. ‘When she had a kid’. As if she wasn’t sat here in the second waiting room of an abortion clinic, having just signed the consent form. She glanced up at the TV that was blaring out a sitcom with a laugh track for the time, just as the nurse popped her head in the door and called her name sadly. She wouldn’t even get to see the happy family ending.