Brian and Melissa got in the car and started to buckle up. Brian felt somewhat relieved that the whole ordeal was over.

“Well, that didn’t take long.”

Melissa was quiet and turned her face toward the window as he pulled out of the parking lot.

What was he supposed to say? He wanted to know if it hurt, if the people were nice to her, what they said about how she’d feel in the next few days. But from her silence and the way she stared out the window, he decided to focus on finding his way back to the interstate.

Twenty minutes later he gripped the steering wheel and mustered the courage to speak.

“You okay?”

Still staring out the window, she began to shake her head.

“Are you hurting? What’s going on? Talk to me.”

Silence. Then a little girl’s voice. “I didn’t do it.”

Brian shifted in his seat, his heart rate increasing. “What are you talking about? What do you mean?”

Melissa put a hand to her face, and he heard her soft sobs. Finally she said, “I couldn’t do it, Brian.”

“Are you kidding me?” he said, then said it again louder when she kept crying and didn’t respond. “Melissa, I gave you $220!”

She was crying harder now, tears and sobs and no holding back, her body shuddering.

“Melissa, I can’t get that money back! I sold my radio so we could do this. What were you thinking?”

He had sacrificed so much for this. He had given her a chance at a future and what had she done? She’d thrown it away.

“Come on, answer me! What were you thinking?”

“I want to go home, Brian,” she whispered.

“Well, do you want to have a kid in high school? Is that what you want?”

“Can we please just go home?”

“Is that what you want?” he yelled. “What are you going to do?” He couldn’t hold back his anger and the sense of betrayal he felt. How many times had they gone over the plan? She had agreed. He had given her all that money. They were united as “we,” and now she had done something on her own, on a whim, an impetuous decision. She’d just walked out of the clinic.

He turned to her and banged the steering wheel. “Melissa, what are you going to do?”

She shook her head and sobbed. Finally she whispered, “I don’t know.”

Back at the apartment, Melissa collapsed on the couch, wrung out like a dishrag. All the emotion had leaked from her on the drive home, and she felt she’d let Brian down. He was cold and distant as they walked into the apartment, and as she watched him open the refrigerator and stare inside, she just felt numb.