“You’re not fine,” I hiss at Allie, moving closer to her. “This wasn’t an accident. This was a cry for help, and I’m here, Al. I’m listening. Tell me what’s going on so I can help.”

Her alabaster cheeks stay propped in a pleasant grin, un-eroded by the streaks of salted pain that are now streaming from her eyes.

“I thought I could escape, Crow. The right way. To something better.” Her voice trembles, but her prim smile doesn’t so much as flinch. “But they wouldn’t let me in. Because of what I did. Even though it was long ago, and it wasn’t my fault. So this was another way out.”

Her hands hover over the sooty black hole on her belly. The black belly hole has been there since 1998, but I couldn’t see it, and Allie couldn’t speak of it. Until now.

It wasn’t the abortion. It was what came after. It was all the stuff she didn’t think of when she took Char’s advice. Abortions were technically legal and available in the big city of Halifax then, but that didn’t make them easy to get. Especially for a twenty-one-year-old university student who couldn’t shell out the seven hundred bucks for the Morgentaler. Instead, Allie had to convince the stodgy old man doctor at the university health clinic — who also happened to be a prof in the pre-med program she was trying to get into — to refer her to the Termination of Pregnancy Unit at the hospital. And then wait weeks to actually get in for an appointment, and hope to God that everyone at that hospital would forget who she was by the time she was through school and doing her residency there. Allie was already nine weeks when she found out. Her courses were getting tougher to handle, especially the biology class that was covering human fetal development in excruciating detail. Her mother was getting sicker. The casual fuck buddy who knocked her up was a resident assistant in her dorm, and he was getting annoyed and impatient. She needed it over.

She asked Char to loan her the money, but Char had a better idea. “The trick,” she told Allie, “is to just be a basket case. Say the word ‘suicidal’ and watch how fast they get that shit done.”

So Allie pinned her hopes on Char’s scheme. She’d play the basket case card, do what needed to be done, and move on with her life like nothing had ever happened. She went to the stodgy old man doctor at the university health clinic and told him she was pregnant, and suicidal because of it. Just like that, she got a prescription for Prozac and the procedure done, no questions asked. Which would have been more or less fine, had it ended there. But it didn’t.

Within days, the stodgy old man doctor went to the pre-med program admissions committee and questioned Allie Walker’s suitability for pre-med, what with her history of mental illness. Then, he met with the annoyed and impatient and now uncomfortable resident assistant in Allie’s dorm and told him that the girl in room 307 was suicidal. This made the RA more annoyed and impatient and uncomfortable, since he was the one who knocked her up. So there were meetings about Allie Walker. Discussions about Allie Walker. Conclusions about Allie Walker.