“ I’m going to kill it. I need it out. Out, out, out. It has to get out. I want it out, I need it out of me. I’m going to kill it.” She was drunk and hysterical and I had no idea what time it was. “I’m not even going to tell the bastard. He’ll hate me.”
I came to my senses and managed to put the pieces together. I did my best to calm her down, to reassure her that God loves her and that I would help her find a way to take care of the baby.
“He never loved me anyway.”
I told her that her parents would still love her and so would her church family. Which I knew might’ve been a lie, at least the church part.
“Please don’t tell anyone. Promise me you won’t tell anyone.”
I told her to go to bed and promised to talk to her in the morning, knowing she might not even remember that we had talked, much less what I said to her. Then I hung up.
I was a sophomore in college. She was still in high school. And yes, I promised not to tell. And yes, a baby is now dead because of my foolishness.
At first I was proud of myself. I talked her down over the following days. I pled with her, I reasoned with her, I cried with her. She agreed to have the baby. But I also convinced her to tell her boyfriend, who then convinced her to go kill the baby. I didn’t know about that until she was in the car on the way to Planned Parenthood.
“I’m halfway to Indianapolis. It’s too late.”
“What? Wait. No, it is not too late. Stop right now. Turn around. Come to Bloomington. Or I’ll come get you. Don’t kill your baby. I will h—”
Click.
Too late? She called just to tell me it was too late?
I sat there staring at the wall in my dorm room. Who could I call? Her mom? Did she even tell her mom? Why had I never talked to her mom?
I know why I never called her pastor. Just a few months earlier the youth pastor at her church had been fired for sexual involvement with students in the youth group. Her senior pastor patched things up and saw to it that he had a position in another church within the year. As a youth pastor.
And so I had no idea what to do. So I didn’t do anything. I just cried.
