Enter

A woman in front of a building; what is she doing there?

The whiteness of the building hurt her eyes. Somehow, despite hearing about it, despite reading about it and even seeing a few pictures, she hadn’t expected it to be so white.

Clinical.

She supposed it was just that; a clinic, a place for people to come with problems and leave again, hopefully without them.

But this clinic dealt with one particular problem only, and it was why she was here.

-

The employee taking a smoke break had seen many women like her. Initially confident, thinking this was what they wanted, to be free again; but then, when confronted, doubt started to settle in. Half of them never even made it to the front door. There was, it seemed, something terrifying about those glass double doors.

Maybe because once you went through those doors, your decision had been made; and there was no turning back. (There was, of course, but most of them didn’t realize that.)

And then the women invariably started to wonder what life would be like if they didn’t enter; how they would continue to live, with an unwanted decision (although, standing in front of those doors, many women started to wonder if it even was unwanted).

Some of them turned back. They touched their stomach comfortingly, trying to converse with the barely-there person inside. Some of them stood indecisively for hours, staring at the whiteness, not knowing what to do.

But there were some that entered, with or without doubt, and didn’t look back to that brief state of confusion that had held them earlier, outside.

She admired those people. They had a strength in them. They all had, of course, for making any such decision required strength. But those who entered anyway, even if the odds were against them… those were the ones she did this for.

-

She noticed a woman, in white nurse-like dress, standing outside, smoking. She was tempted; the urge to light up a cigarette still hadn’t been extinguished, but she had made a promise to herself, and so she would resist.

The employee looked at her, too, and for a moment she felt connected to this unknown stranger;  by their shared gender, their shared pains, no matter how dissimilar they were. This was a woman who had seen life as she had; at least partially, for every woman shared experiences and feelings.

Womanhood.

Hadn’t that gotten her into this in the first place?

With a sigh, she reverted her eyes back to the ominous doors.

It was time.

And without a glance back, with her hands swinging by her side, she entered.

Author's Note

Funny story: the first lines, I wrote with the Sacré-Coeur in Paris in mind (that building really impressed me). And then it turned into an abortion clinic...