Runaway Train

Rachel woke with a cramped neck and a pounding headache. That was nothing new. Since coming to Florida she had partied way too hard. Mornings often dawned with a price to be paid for her vacay indulgences. A pained smile curved her lips upwards before she even opened her eyes. It would all be worth it, when she was back home in Edinburgh with great stories to tell of her American trip.

Against the wishes of her current hangover, she peeled open her right eye. Using her hand to shield herself from the glare of a too-bright overhead light, Rachel peered around the room. Or rather, cabin. How did I get on a train?

It was a single sleeper berth, the space barely big enough to accommodate the fold-down bed. She’d taken a sleeper train down to Cornwall once, a graduation present from her parents before she started Uni. This trip to the States was supposed to mark a similar—albeit more portentous—milestone in her life. Her Ph.D. program in Scottish History began in a little over two months, and chances of getting away from the rugged north country would be few and far between. Her trip to the US was supposed to be filled with sun and sand and partying before she buckled down and got to work on building an illustrious academic life for herself. So, why in the bloody hell was she on a fewking train?

Swinging her legs off the mattress, Rachel sat up slowly, bracing herself against the gentle sway of the train. It was moving fast, on a straightaway between stops, no doubt. But a straightaway to where? Her dress from the party the night before was nowhere to be seen. However, a neatly-folded set of white scrubs, tunic and pants, were set on top of the little table which covered the tiny sink in the corner. As she reached for them, her stomach lurched.

The motion of the train, combined with the sadly-uncounted Margheritas she’d consumed at the seaside bar the night before, woke Rachel to an urgent need. Stumbling on the trailing edge of the fold-down bed’s sheets, she grabbed the platform’s underside and heaved the bed upwards into the wall pocket, flipped up the footrest over the concealed toilet, and heaved the foul contents of her stomach into the bowl.

“Oh. My. God! I am getting way too bloody old for this shite!”

But with her stomach emptied, reason was beginning to return. Rachel had no idea how exactly she’d gotten on a train. She had no idea where her clothes were, or her shoes or phone or anything else. Hauling herself up from the industrial carpet, she raised the lower edge of the blind covering the wide window in the sleeper compartment. Blinding white light filled the compartment and she closed her eyes, falling back onto the exposed banquette seat.

It couldn’t be.

She was in Florida, home of Mickey Mouse and bloody fewking flamingoes and the Everglades.

Or she was supposed to be.

How then, was the flat, featureless ground flying past the train’s windows covered in pristine, glaringly white snow?!?

***

As Rachel padded on slippered feet towards the dining car, a trio of heavily pregnant women—well, girls, really, the oldest maybe eighteen years old, and the youngest barely fourteen, if that—squeezed past her in the narrow corridor. Since the repeal of Roe v. Wade by the US Supreme Court in 2022, it had become nearly impossible for American women to access reproductive health care. The outlawing of all forms of birth control that followed upon the Republican takeover of the House later that year, with stiff criminal penalties for any form of family planning, had led to a surge in underage pregnancies. Girls carrying babies they weren’t prepared to care for had become an all-too-common sight in many American states. Very sad.

Rachel felt bad for those poor girls, glancing back over her shoulder as they headed into the next car. What were their lives going to be like? With a sigh, she slid open the door into the dining car. She had her own problems right now.

She needed to find an attendant to tell her where this train was headed, and how she could get back to Florida. The call button in her sleeper car had gone unanswered, so she’d gotten dressed in the white scrubs and headed out to find someone to give her some answers.

How had she gotten on this train in first place?

Where was the next stop?

And—perhaps most importantly—how was she going to get back to her hotel in Miami?

Perhaps it was time to cut back on the heavy drinking and do the touristy things her parents were expecting to hear about. Swimming with manatees. Doing the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World. Taking in a Cirque de Soleil show. Maybe it was time to settle down.

The dining car was packed with people eating breakfast. Her emptied stomach growled loudly. Food first, then find an attendant to get some answers. She stepped up to the bar to place her order.

The server, strangely enough, was also visibly pregnant beneath her white uniform. By choice, or was she another victim of the Supreme Court's ruling? Rachel smiled weakly. “Scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee, please,” she gave her order. The woman ladled a small mountain of eggs onto a clean plate and added six strips of bacon. Overly-generous portions, as usual in America. The server pulled a tray from a stack and set the plate on it, nodding for Rachel to move down the line. The next server added a smaller plate containing four full slices of toast dripping with butter, and added an entire pot of strawberry jam with a tiny sliver spoon sticking out of the top.

“Sorry,” the second server said, sliding the laden tray across the counter to Rachel. “No coffee. Milk or orange juice for cold drinks, herbal tea or hot chocolate if you want something warm.”

That was odd. Americans were enslaved by their caffeine consumption. Coffee was ubiquitous, especially at breakfast. Yet there was none to be seen on the drinks station. Rachel grabbed a large glass of freshly-squeezed OJ (thanks, Florida citrus growers!) and looked around for an empty table.

Unfortunately, at this time of day all of the tables were occupied. She was about to give up and head back to eat in the sleeper car, but then she spotted an empty seat in a four-person booth. “Mind if I join you?” she asked hesitantly.

Americans were ridiculously impressed by anyone with a UK accent, which had served her well on her travels. It held true again when the three people already eating their breakfasts at the table looked up with welcoming expressions.

“Absolutely!” an older woman, mid-forties Rachel guessed, said, sliding an empty juice glass out of her way so she could put down her tray. “Scottish?”

Rachel smiled back at her. “How did you guess?”

The woman sighed. “I spent some time in Scotland, with my husband. Before our first child was born. I always wanted to go back, but with a growing family…”

“Oh? How many children do you have?” Rachel asked politely. “I’m Rachel, by the way. From Aberdeen originally.”

“Claire,” the woman stretched out a hand and Rachel shook it briskly. “We have eight so far,” Claire said, “soon to be ten.” She leaned back in her seat and patted her large baby bump. “Twins.”

Rachel could hardly contain her shocked look. She didn’t want to be impolite, but that was a lot of kids. “Uhh, congratulations?” she said.

Claire smiled weakly but didn’t say anything more. Rachel turned to look at the two others across the table as she scooped up a forkful of the steaming eggs. She was suddenly ravenous. As she chewed, she noticed that the man and woman—in their late twenties, near her own age—were both wearing white scrubs, as she was.

As Claire was. And as, she suddenly noticed, everyone else in the dining car was wearing.

“Why the…” she waved her hand up and down to indicate the uniform apparel.

The man grimaced behind his neatly trimmed beard. “Easier to launder,” he said. “Paul,” he stuck out his hand in introduction. “They dress us all the same. Only the sizes are different.”

Until then Rachel had assumed that somehow, in the fog of blackout drinking, she’d somehow boarded the sleeper train, unconscious of what she was doing. She realized now that something very weird was happening. “Where exactly is this train going? I boarded in Florida, but the ground outside is covered in snow. I need to get back there, to Miami. My flight back to Glasgow leaves in just four days—”

The other woman, seated across from Rachel, laughed, a jarringly sharp bark. She waved a triangle of buttered toast at Rachel in an odd salute. “Minette,” she said, introducing herself. “From Calgary. I boarded in Tampa. ‘Come to Florida for the fun and sun! Leave with—'” Tears welled up from eyes already red and swollen. She crammed the point of the toast into her mouth as if she wanted to choke herself with it.

Rachel shivered, a chill racking her body. “What exactly is—”

But Minette had thrown down the remains of her toast and was sliding out of the booth. The bump at her waist wasn’t as large as Claire’s, or the girls Rachel had passed in the corridor. But it was there.

When Paul followed Minette into the aisle between the tables, Rachel gasped. His baby bump was much larger. But how—

He followed the direction of Rachel’s eyes, covering the swelling at his waist protectively. He smiled ruefully. “Hi! I’m Paul and I’m trans,” he said in a theatrical tone. The attitude dropped as he took pity on Rachel, confusion written across her face. “I hadn’t transitioned fully. No bottom surgery. I was gang-raped behind my apartment complex one cold, dark night. They thought they’d teach the tranny a lesson.”

Rachel was speechless. Not just that other humans would do something so horribly violating to another person. But that Paul, living in Florida, was being forced to carry through a pregnancy resulting from rape.

It was obvious what she was thinking. Paul placed a hand on her shoulder and leaned in close to her ear.

"Baby girl," he said gently, "there's no getting off this train. This is the freakin' U. S. of A. Female bodily autonomy is a thing of the past."

As they headed for the door, Rachel swallowed back a fresh wave of bile. Her fork clattered loudly as it dropped onto her plate, her appetite gone.

Claire reached over and covered Rachel’s hand with hers, patting it comfortingly.

“It’s always a shock, for you new girls,” she said. “Let me guess: you came to America on vacation, fun in the sun. Drinking and dancing and screwing. And now—”

“Rachel?” The man in the white coat who stopped beside her seat wasn’t pregnant like Paul had been. As she peered up at him, she read the name on the white coat. Dr. William Sandvers, OB, GYN.

Rachel was finding it increasingly difficult to draw a proper breath. Maybe it was the speed of the runaway train, carrying her to a destination she wasn’t ready to visit. After all, she wasn’t American. She was a citizen of the UK, about to begin her Ph.D. program. Starting a family was not in her near future.

The laws here didn’t apply to her. Did they?

Could they?

She needed to get off. She needed to get home where she could make her own medical decisions.

“It’s time for your first prenatal exam,” the doctor said. “If you’ll just follow me?”

There really was no way off this train.

***

Thank you for reading! Likes, comments, shares, follows, and pledges are always cherished.

Please feel free to read the commentary I wrote recently about the effects of the repeal of Roe v. Wade here on Vocal.media: