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Gina wrapped her arms around her swollen belly, as if to cradle the expanse would prevent the next wave of pain. It did not, and the pain once again overtook her senses and she felt herself separating inside.

"Hang on," her friend told her. "We're almost there."

Gina looked over at Martin, his hands gripping the wheel, his face lit up by passing headlights, then sliding once again into darkness. She wanted to say, "Thank you, Martin, for being here, for doing this for me. Thank you for all the time you spend with me, for being the only one who hasn't passed judgment on me."

But she couldn't get the words out. The pain was too intense; it racked her body, a body she could feel morphing into something alien to her.

They were at the hospital now. Voices and hands were all over her and she was wheeled away. She tried to call out for Martin, but she couldn't say anything. All Gina could do was groan and scream and yell that it hurt.

Belts were strapped to her belly, her veins stuffed with needles. She heard words: fetal distress, breech, cesarean.

A nurse propped her up and stuck a needle in her spine. Her body turned to dead weight.

Through the pain, through the fog, through the terror, came a moment of clarity. The child inside her would now be taken out, and taken away. This body, her body, would be returned to her.

She heard a cry, and then nothing, nothing but the murmurs of the medical team, and someone said, "We're going to give you some morphine now."

Gina woke up in another room, a small room with no door. A nurse looked in and said, "How are you feeling? Can you feel your legs yet?" Gina could not and stated as much. The nurse assured her that was normal. "Go back to sleep," she told Gina.

She woke up in a hospital room, one with a television and another bed. Martin sat on the other bed, reading a magazine. She watched him through her foggy eyes. Gina liked the way he looked. Martin was tall, thin, with brown eyes and glasses and long dark hair. He looked like a hippie. Martin looked up from his magazine and smiled at her.

"How're you doing there, Gina?" he asked.

Gina tested her legs, shifting them slightly beneath the thin blanket. "I'm okay." Then she asked, "Was it a boy or girl?"

"I don't know."

"What happens now?"

Martin took off his glasses, cleaned them with the hem of his t-shirt. He didn't look at her. "The lawyer will come with some paperwork in a couple of days. They have to wait, you know, to make sure you're not going to, you know, change your mind." He

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