There was an interior lounge where we, the pregnant women, waited. When we stood or changed positions, our gowns rustled like dry leaves. Nobody was showing yet, but I pictured their ghostly bulges. Some of them were just girls. I imagined their bellies as small nests made of organs webbed with bloody veins. There was an open secret between us. We were all there for the same reason, and women spoke plainly about their situations: The guy didn’t want it, case closed, or else he was flipping out because he couldn’t stand the thought of someone killing his baby. “He’s going crazy,” one girl whispered, “he won’t stop leaving messages.”

These women talked about their cravings and their morning sickness. I realized that some of them really thought of themselves as pregnant, even though they wouldn’t be soon enough, while I’d never thought of myself as anything but a woman getting closer to an abortion, carrying this weight until it lifted.

Each time they called a name, the other women looked around, wondering who it was. They’d shared the length of their terms and the nature of their cravings, but not their names. No one knew who was who. When my turn came, I stood and smoothed my gown, grabbing the back sleeves so it wouldn’t show my bare legs, goose-pimpled and jittery.

In the operating room, a short bald man stood up and said he’d be doing my procedure. He didn’t offer his hand. I noticed his scrubs had a small circle of blood on the breast pocket—as if a pen had leaked or a woman had bled. It was the size of a pickle cut crossways. I couldn’t stop staring at it. “Looking for my name?” he said. “It’s Rosengeld.”

He fitted my feet into place and smiled down at me like you’d smile at a beautiful painting. My toes nestled for purchase in the stirrups. Then he tested the machine—its ragged hum pulsing once, then again, before he shut it off—and unwrapped a new plastic tip from a sealed plastic bag. Another man knelt beside my right arm. “You’re going to feel a sharp prick,” he said. “Then everything will get blurry.”

He was right. Figures melted into voices. I could hear a general buzzing above and around me, and it had a quality like warmth, like a serious conversation after several glasses of wine. I felt hands pushing my legs apart, and then I heard the whirring start again, and then I felt a cramping pain drawn out like a long moan, but I didn’t feel like stopping it, even though it hurt, and I vaguely understood that this was what the sedative had done. It had not protected me, exactly; it had protected me from wanting to protect myself. It felt like tree roots had wrapped around my womb and gripped it tight.