Chapter Two
Fourteen years ago
The clinic was a mere storefront squeezed between two businesses, a tax service firm on the right side and a taqueria on the left.
Leanna Rivera pushed her long, dark-brown mane of hair from her eyes and removed the sunglasses as she stepped through the swinging glass door.
The waiting room was already full of women, some with their partners, but no one looked up. They were in various stages of pregnancy. Hers was still early enough to not be noticeable, and the man who knocked her up wanted it to remain so.
He was, after all, married and a powerful politician, and she had to face this trauma alone. No surprise there, but couldn’t he have paid for a more private facility?
Leanna let the door clatter back in place and swallowed back a wave of nausea. She reached to rub her belly but jerked her hand back as if what was inside was a ticking time bomb.
“If you’re here for surgery, please take a seat,” the receptionist said, also without eye contact. “We’re backed up this morning because one of our health care providers had a fender bender.”
“Shouldn’t I get processed so you can put me on the list?” Leanna asked, placing her paperwork on the counter.
The receptionist made a lazy gesture at a wire basket filled with forms.
Leanna wasn’t sure if she should put hers on the top or the bottom. She could feel the surreptitious stares of the other women in the room, so she picked up the pile and slipped hers in last place.
Her heartbeat stuttered, her abdomen roiled with tiny flutters, and she suddenly wished she could take back the papers and run out the door screaming.
Instead, she pressed her nausea down, found a dog-eared magazine, one of those teenage pop star rags, and squeezed herself into a plastic folding chair near the water dispenser.
It was directly across from a long, narrow hallway which ended with a dark-brown door.
The door opened momentarily, and a nurse came out. She picked up a bunch of forms from the wire basket.
A few heads turned toward the nurse as she called a name and asked the patient to go into the prep area. A young woman, further along than Leanna, waddled after the nurse and entered a side door which was painted green.
Leanna wondered how long it would take to clean up the mess from one patient to the next. Guilt shot up her throat, and she blinked back tears. Since when had a baby turned into a mess to be cleaned up?
Minutes crawled by, not that Leanna was timing it, but no one emerged from either the green door or the brown door.
She could sense the fidgeting of the woman next to her and hear the sighs of the one huddled with an older man patting her back. Was that her father or the man who knocked her up?
No matter. She didn’t stare, and no one stared at her.
The brown door opened, and the nurse emerged. Without looking to the right or left, she again picked up a bundle of forms and called a name. The girl with the older man got up. He walked with her to the green door, kissed her on the cheek, and she wiped a tear before disappearing into the prep area.
At that moment, Leanna realized the horror of this mundane scene. Once she entered the green door, it would lead to the room with the brown door, and then she would exit out back without being seen.
Two people went through the green door, but only one emerged alive.
Her belly fluttered low over her bladder, and this time, she put a calming hand over it.
Don’t worry, baby. I’ll take care of you. I promise.
Choking back bile, Leanna pushed from the rickety plastic chair. It toppled, but she didn’t want to spend a second longer inside the clinic of death.
She popped out the front door and crashed into a man carrying a pile of takeout boxes. Tacos, enchiladas, tostadas, rice, beans, salsa, and guacamole splattered all over the sidewalk.
“Sorry, so sorry.” Leanna covered her mouth. “Let me pay for it.”
The man wearing black leather despite the hundred-degree weather sneered in her face. “I don’t take money from baby killers.”
She couldn’t see his judgmental eyes, hidden behind dark glasses, but she could feel the sting of his words.
He whirled around, kicking the Styrofoam takeout boxes. Sunlight glinted off his belt buckle, and the face of a lion, complete with curly mane, snarled at her.
Leanna snarled back and shouted after him, “I came out the front door.”
