You are standing on the corner of 4th and Walnut, waiting for the Philadelphia public transit system to decide if you're going to have this baby. Almost three weeks of sleepless nights led you to the certainty that you will never be able to decide. So you decided to leave it to chance, but you wanted the ultimate choice to be absolutely fair, a true 50/50 chance.
If the Southbound Bus arrives first, you will take it south down 4th and home and you will keep the baby. If the Westbound Bus comes first, you go to the Surgical Center of Planned Parenthood for the 4:30 counseling session, mandatory for any abortion procedure.
This 'wait for the bus'� decision came to you on the way in to work this morning. This was your best idea. Or at least it was your latest idea. Decision by bus. The coin toss was a disaster. Sure, it was a 50/50 chance each time, but you couldn't decide if it would be more fair with the best 3 out of 5 or 7 out of 13. You gave up at 25 tosses, when you couldn't remember of odd meant keep the baby or have the abortion.
You tried decision by waffle, promising that if the right side of the waffle came out of the toaster more brown than the left side, you'd go to Planned Parenthood. But even after you used a ruler to try to measure the dark brown surface area, the sides looked the same. Decision by socks was a dismal failure, too, when you reached into your sock drawer blindly and pulled out not a dark sock and not a light sock but your only pair of black-and-white striped socks.
You stare up 4th and down Walnut at the same time. No buses. A lady with a stroller meets your eyes as she struggles to wheel a chubby toddler onto the sidewalk. She brakes the gaze when the child giggles, dropping his binky on a Baby Gap blanket and staring up at his mother. She smiles at the baby. You look away. As far as you can see in each direction, there's no bus. There's cars and SUVs and about 500 worried, hurried people. No buses. The light turns green, and three cars honk. And you can hear a strange jingle noise from somewhere.
Your purse. Your phone is ringing. It's Dianne.
'Where are you?'� Dianne is irritated.
I'm on the corner, you say.
'Come on. Let me come pick you up. This is a stupid way to decide.'�
You hold the phone tightly, saying nothing.
'It's only been a couple of weeks since you found out. Give yourself a little more time to think about it.'�
It's been a month since you found out and three weeks before that since you got pregnant. That's seven weeks, or 49 days. And you only have 63 days to decide (nonsurgical abortion: a pill and a lecture). You talk low to Dianne, deflecting her questions, quietly putting her off. A young Italian man, 20-something, walks with a young boy toward the bus sign. The kid, maybe 6, stares blankly, snorting at the snot between his nose and lip. He uses the back of his hand to wipe what he can't suck back in. You wonder fleetingly if it's a 50/50 chance that the kid will eat his boogers.
'Well, you have another two weeks. Just let me pick you up.'�
You can hear the guilt in her voice, a frustrated bark. Right now she's talking low into her cell phone, probably head down over her desk, letting her hair fall to obstruct others' view. You see for a second that big, sunny smile of hers and the thumbs up she gave you at the bar 48 nights ago, when you and the big blond German hottie slipped out the front door and into a cab. Go for it, she mouthed, adding a WHOOP and a drunken wink. Your first sex in two years. Your second one-night stand ever.
Dianne, I've made up my mind, you say.
'No you haven't ' that's why I think you should'�' The kid on the corner picks his nose again, and he studies whatever he picked intently as his father smokes a cigarette. You wait for Dianne to take a breath.
I'll call you from the bus, you say. And hang up.
The phone goes back in your purse. When you look up, your heart triple beats. A bus. Far up on Walnut. The Abortion Express, Westbound for Planned Parenthood. It hurts to breathe for a second. Wait, you hear. Wait. I don't know if I want this. A little voice inside of you wails. WAIT. I'm not ready to decide. The rest of Walnut Street fades away as you watch that bus. It stops once, twice, again. You're dizzy. You can't imagine that you'll be able to move your feet up the steps when it stops in front of you. In a second, it's close enough to read the display.
Bus 42.
The other Westbound Walnut Street bus. Not your Westbound Bus. The one you said didn't count, because there was only one Southbound Bus and you could choose only one Westbound bus. It doesn't count. It's not the decision.
Nausea. Wet and clammy. A wave rushes over you as you watch the 42 bus pull away from the curb. Morning sickness in the afternoon. You sprint north on 4th, to the coffee shop on the corner. You clamp your hand over your lips as you enter, but in a careful way, a pensive way, so the counter lady doesn't know you're sick. Thankfully alone in the bathroom, you retch up acrid, watery coffee, pressing your palm against the cold stall to steady yourself.
When the nausea fades, you sit on the cool seat, checking your underwear as you pee. No blood again. Nothing. Not the slightest hint that your body will make the decision any more than your head will.
Your head's cleared some as you walk back to the corner. What did that voice mean? Why did you panic? The bus was coming; the decision was made. You should have felt relief. But you panicked. You panicked like you did when you looked around your tiny apartment and thought about having a baby by yourself. You panicked like you did about not having this baby and being 33 and maybe not getting another chance. You panicked about the clock running out and the responsibilities setting in and the fear of childcare, play dates, and breastfeeding, and being a lonely old lady.
You're almost to the corner. Already your eyes are searching for the buses. As you go to flick your eyes north toward the coffee shop, a familiar sound. Your eyes dart south. Beyond your stop on 4th, a bus pulls away. The Southbound Bus. The Homebound Bus. You just missed it. You glance down Walnut, and there's the Westbound Bus headed your way.
Decision by bus. A 50/50 chance. But wait. The Southbound Bus left. It's no longer a 50/50 chance. It's no longer decision by bus. There's now a 100 percent chance that the Abortion Express will arrive first. Your little voice explains it all.
Just like with the burnt waffle this morning, there's no hope for a fair decision now. The Westbound Bus stops on the corner across the street. You wait for it to pass before you set off for home on foot.
On the way home, you concentrate on the rhythm of your own foot falls. One, two, one, two. Another idea forms. There's a 50/50 chance that there's an odd number of steps between here and home. You pass yet another family scene, twin girls and parents, and you keep counting. Ten, Eleven, Twelve'�

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