Page 35 of Counting Backwards

He stood then and rang a bell so the nurse would come fetch me and return me to my room. Dr. Preston was right about onething: I didn’t understand what he’d said to me, not at all. How could these men think anyone would benefit from what they described? How had I ended up in a place of such great danger? The only thing that eventually became clear to me was that I had played right into their despicable hands.

13

Jessa

March 2022

On the way back to the city, I cranked up the volume on the radio to save myself the discomfort of conversation with Dustin. I didn’t want to get into any of the reasons I’d nearly cried in front of a potential client. To his credit, Dustin turned his attention to his phone. It had started raining hard during the time we’d been with Jacinta, and now, as we made our way back to the Belt Parkway, I felt anxious to get home. Even with all our recent arguing, I suddenly wanted nothing more than to sit beside Vance, curled up under his arm.

After we’d been driving for twenty minutes, Dustin reached out and silenced the song playing on the radio.

“You ready to talk about it?” he asked.

“Ugh. No, thank you.”

“My mom couldn’t have children,” he said.

Why’d he even ask if he was just going to charge ahead anyway? I didn’t bother to hide my exasperation. “And yet, here you sit, your mother’s son.”

“I’m adopted.”

I should’ve been polite after he revealed something personal, but I was so utterly uninterested in having this kind of conversation with him. No one seemed to understand why the idea of adoption didn’t adequately address my desire to have a child. It was a great option for lots of families out there, and maybe we’d end up going that route one day—but I wasn’t ready to talk about it. Or think about it. So instead, I lashed out.

“What makes you think you know anything about my life? Yay,” I said flatly. “You’re adopted. Want a gold star?”

He just raised his eyebrows in response.

I attempted to rein in my emotions. “Look, I’m not trying to disrespect you or your experiences here. I just... I just really, really want a child who’s biologically mine. A person like you, who’s grown up in what I’m assuming was a perfectly lovely and wonderful home with glorious parents who adopted you, probably couldn’t understand why I feel that way.”

“Then why don’t you explain it to me? Might be good to try it on a fresh set of ears.”

I was surprised by the sincerity in his tone. It actuallywouldbe nice, I thought, to talk to someone about everything I was feeling, someone who hadn’t heard it all from me before, someone who had zero stake in the outcome. But where would I even begin? When I was twelve years old, watching reruns ofBoy Meets Worldin the den off the kitchen, and the phone rang? I could still smell the Mallomars I’d been eating. Greta, the babysitter who came over if my parents went out at night, shrieked in horror from the next room. I remembered the way the cookie melted inside my clenched fist as I ran to the kitchen, where Greta stood with the phone to her ear, suddenly quiet, almost whispering, “Now what happens? Now what? Now what?”

Should I tell Dustin how I hadn’t touched foods with marshmallows ever since? Or maybe I should tell him about the timemy grandmother forced me to go bra shopping and the salesgirl kept referring to Gram as “your mother,” and I cried for so long in the fitting room they had to call security to unlock the door? Or the year after that, when the school sponsored a daddy-and-daughter dance and I helped four of my friends choose their dresses, only to spend the night at home, crying over old photos? No, the thing I probably should tell him was how with each passing day, as Vance and I tried and failed to conceive a child, it seemed less and less likely that I’d ever get back a piece of my parents.

But then I looked back over at him and couldn’t bring myself to share anything at all. Not with Dustin. The fact that he was suddenly acting like a good guy didn’t erase all the asshole moves he’d made in the past.

“Nah, that’s fine,” I said, turning the music back up.

***

That night, as I lay in bed beside Vance, I couldn’t sleep. My thoughts kept boomeranging between my own fertility struggles and everything that had happened to the women at Hydeford. I felt a crushing sense of sorrow for myself, but even more so for the other women. No matter what relief we sought in court, Isobel, Denise, and Jacinta would never birth more children of their own. There was no restoring what had been taken, no adequate consolation that could be granted after the fact. A lawsuit to stop the facility from harming any more women, a hefty monetary settlement—that was all I could offer these women, and I wasn’t sure I could even accomplish that. I needed the firm’s permission to file any new case, and the more I thought about moving forward with a class action, the trickier it seemed.

“Stop stressing and go to sleep,” Vance mumbled.

“I can’t.”

He flipped over to face me, our noses only inches apart on our pillows. Just enough ambient light flowed through the closed shades to help me make out the contours of his face, the sleepiness of his heavy lids.

“Honestly, Jess, you’re putting me over the edge here. You’re the one who wanted me to go for testing. Now it seems like it’s causing youmorestress.”

I resisted the urge to sigh dramatically in response to his off-base comment. Again, Vance and I were out of sync.

“It’s not the sperm test.” I flipped onto my back to stare at the dark ceiling. “I have to speak to Andrew in the morning,” I said, mentioning the firm’s supervising attorney. “I just... if he doesn’t go for it, I won’t be able to help those women. Not them, and not the women who come after them. I don’t know if he’ll trust me to do this. And then what? I can’t just do nothing.”

I’d finally come clean to Vance the day before about the nature of the medical abuse I suspected at Hydeford. If he started up again about how I couldn’t possibly be right about the clinic, I was going to lose it on him. I now had actual testimony from three different women, and hestillthought I might somehow be misinterpreting the situation. All I wanted from him was support, not judgment. Over the years he’d talked me through so many complicated work scenarios, helping me decide what to do. He had an uncanny ability to understand complex situations between partners and associates and how they related to the firm’s overall success, but I was beginning to wonder if all that collaborating we’d done had really just been Vance giving me instructions and me doing as I was told. Now that I was disagreeing with his directives, we were painfully out of step.

“It’s been four years, Jess,” Vance said, focusing on the topic I actuallydidwant to discuss. I felt my shoulders relax. “The only one who’s not over what happened with the Shantrane case is you.It’s going to be fine.” He reached for my hand beneath the covers and held tight.