What Could I Say?
In the end it
wasn’t my decision and several times I tried to talk her out of it , and
especially after we had learned that she was further along than she originally
thought, this required us to travel to New York city and make arrangements with
the Bronx Midtown Hospital or something like that, as the name escapes me, to
have the abortion she sought, but it wasn’t really so much of a hospital, as it
was a butcher shop to some degree.
Mona and I had
to arrange alibis for each other to cover the fact we would be gone for three days.
I had 74 VW, I had just bought and it was a cherry red without a spot of rust
on it, and even back then I was getting 34 miles per gallon out of it and it
ran flawlessly. I told Mona’ s parents we were headed to our fishing lots in southern
Ohio, and I told mom that I was spending the weekend with Mona’s parents as
they were headed out of town and we were going to stay at their place and watch
the animals and work on cleaning her horse stalls out as she had horses.
Plausible excuses to get away and no one except Mona’s mom seemed to notice
that Mona was starting to show, and had gained weight. She never confronted Mona but instead let her
deal with it on her own. It had to be that weekend, or never she told me as at
last we came to the conclusion we needed to get it done and over with.
A hurricane, I
think it was Camille, had moved up the east coast and we were headed into the
heart of the rain and madness as we set out. It just seemed as if it was
another one of those trials in your life to show how determined you could be.
We were both nervous as Mona was only 22 and I the same, still youngsters,
although old enough to make our own decisions. Mona and I had plenty of time to
talk and discuss what we were doing even though we still in uncharted
territory. We had some information about the hospital, the costs and where we
could stay the night we arrived in New York City. Neither of us had been there
before so this was all new to us, and would have been exciting if it wasn’t for
the underlying theme to it all. Add pouring rain and darkness for six of the
eight hours driving, and speeding idiots the closer to the city you get, and we
were glad to just get there alive in the little red VW.
We found our
motel and it was just a few blocks from the hospital and we had a 2 o clock
check in the next day at the hospital, so we just settled into our room and listened
to the nightlife in the hallways just outside our room. Apparently a roomer had
decided to overstay his welcome in the room beside us, and eventually this led
to the police banging the guy’s head into the outside of our door, as they
extricated him from the room with accompanying shouts of profanity and then
finally some silence. When we could hear the commotion we thought of little,
except making sure we were safe, now it was quiet we were left to our thoughts
of what we were to do, and believe me I would have rather had the noise. Again
I tried to persuade her to give us a try and she insisted she could do that
better if we didn’t have this hanging over us. Feeble logic at best, but when
you are young and don’t know how things are supposed to be, or are going to
turn out, that young intuition is all you have to run on. Fact and flawed you
still just have to run with it, and we did.
We didn’t get
much sleep, and soon we found our way to the hospital the next day and I paid
the fee and received our receipt and we sat in a waiting room as the nurse
would take the young mothers to be, as they called them , up to their room ,
and us expectant fathers would wait till our mother to be, was settled in their
rooms, and then we could visit one last
time that night before they were shooing us out the door , and locking it
behind us as they tended to our women in private. Someone had asked if he could stay with his girlfriend who was
visibly upset over all that was going on, and even I could sense that in Mona,
that she too was hesitant about all this, and this old haggy nurse said “Hell
no , she says you are part of the reason this young girl is here now. Look
around, there are fifty girls here tonight to do the same thing, you don’t think
we have our hands full.” She said as she ushered him out the front door. Just
come along tomorrow and be a good daddy and pick her up and take her home. And
buy some boots before you go wading in this mess again. The message hit home.
I didn’t know
what to do after I left Mona in the room and headed out the front door, I
walked the streets and came upon the Bronx zoo and walked through park
observing little, besides empty cages , their inhabitants temporarily moved to
other quarters for the winter with the exception of an old bear who looked
awful uncomfortable as a snow had started to fall on the heels of an easterly
heading north and pulling cold air from Canada on its heels into lower reaches
of New York, and was just coating everything with a virgin layer of snow
covering the dirt and trash of the city,
including this poor old bear who looks like he was left behind and that no one cared. I stood and talked to him and
found him the most amicable of all types of inhabitants in New York City at the
time. I talked and he listened as I told him of my troubles and he would sigh
as if he had heard it before, too many times. It really wasn’t so much like he
had a choice as the iron bars were thick and if he was to get on the other side
he still had to go a ways to go before he could actually say he was free. The
snow was clinging and wet and soon I felt he was tired of my company as he made
a move for his manufactured den , and soon was out of sight leaving me standing
there mumbling to myself in a city of millions, alone in the crowd. I sloughed
off the winter and made a hike for my motel and found a liquor store along the
way to buy me a small bottle of whiskey to help me drown my sorrows in, as I
headed back to the motel hoping that Mona was alright and soon we would be
headed home.
Another night at
the motel , only it was me alone this time in the room, but soon the whiskey numbed my brain as it and
the coke and ice, slid down way too easily, leaving the noises in the night
just outside my room. A small inconvenience at best if you had the TV up loud
enough, and even better since the voices in my head that had been screaming, “This
is crazy,” soon ebbed off into a gentle song lulling me into a false sense of
comfort, but still remained just under the edge of my skin.
A phone call from
Mona the next morning, assured me all
was done and over with, and that I needed to get the fog out of my head as she
really wanted out of there, so we could begin to heal ourselves from this
ordeal if at all possible. I will continue this tomorrow as I still have plenty
to say, and maybe by breaking it up into the exact amount of days it took me to
do the deed, will give you some insight as to how big Hell must be. If it takes
at least 3 days to cross it and start to recover, then it must be a big place,
for me it was huge. The biggest I had ever seen, but then I was young and the
trials of life were just beginning. Some say that Heaven and Hell exist here on
earth, as it is the trials and tribulations we experience as we move along that
defines us in perpetuity. At times I believe this, this was one of those times.
If all things happen for a purpose and no one even you knows what that purpose is,
then how will you ever learn to not make the same mistake again, or stop
another from doing the same? We need to understand and by writing about this so
many years later, I am finally starting to understand, though I will never know
for sure why it was her and I that had
to go through this. What lessons can be learned when fate takes its dirty hands
and walks all over your life, except to not do that again? Fate has made sure
that it will never happen again as this severely had an impact on the both of
us, and our paths have never crossed since.
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