Unwed 💍

Chapter Twenty-Two: In The Still Of The Night

The screaming began a couple of hours after Izzy came back to the room. It was faint at first. Faint enough for Izzy to pretend it wasn't there. Then it got worse. The moaning turned torcherous. She'd wrapped her pillow around her ears and sung to herself, all the while fighting the panic that threatened to push her over the edge. She tried to tell herself that Gloria was lucky. Soon it would all be over. Even if she had to stay a little longer, she'd be able to recover her body, and eventually her life.

It was as if their dormitory room was cased in a block of ice, all was still, no one moving, not even a breath escaped any of the girls. Finally, the moaning stopped. A cautious sigh from across the room cut into the silence.

"Do you think it's happened yet?" Dottie whispered, confirming Izzy's suspicion that the little girl was not asleep.

From across the room, Francine moved around in the dark, her hand fumbling across the dresser for what Izzy presumed was her glasses. The room was pitch black. It was too risky to turn on a light, the nuns often patrolled the halls, and would notice the glow under the doorway.

Francine cleared her throat. "I've read it can take hours," she said in a low voice. "Sometimes days."

Izzy cringed, wishing that Francine would keep what she'd read to herself. She propped herself on her elbow. "I think it's over," she said. "I can't hear her anymore."

Dottie stumbled across the room, her bare feet smacking the ground, until her hands were grasping near Izzy's feet. She sat down at the foot of the bed. "Gloria is really pretty," she said, her voice squeaking in the dark room. "I'll bet her baby will be pretty too. I bet it will have golden hair like hers."

Izzy grew uncomfortable at the mention of the baby. She'd come to the conclusion that her survival depended on ignoring the fact that a life was growing inside of her own body. If she dwelled on the baby, imagined its face, something inside her would break when it came time to give it away.

She jerked the light sheet from her and swung her legs around the bed. It was getting harder to pull herself up with her bulging belly in the way. Muscles she didn't know she had throbbed painfully in her groin. She felt her way towards the windows at the back of the room, dragging her legs to avoid stubbing her toe on a bed frame. The floor was cool against her bare feet. She grasped the thick curtains and pulled them open. The glow cast from the moon lit the room enough to see the faces of the other girls.

Izzy walked slowly back to her bed and sat next to Dottie. "The first thing I'm going to do when I get home is to go to Sam's Place and order a chocolate malt," she said, trying to keep all of their minds off what was happening downstairs. "Then I'm going to go ride the ferris wheel at Reeds Lake Park. After that, I'll watch all of the movies I've missed. Oh, how I miss going to the drive in."

Unintentionally, her last words brought Donnie's face to her mind and their last night flashed before her eyes. Looking back, she suddenly felt that the old Izzy was an ignorant little girl. Feelings of embarrassment and shame replaced the anger she'd once felt. How could she have been so stupid? So blissfully unaware? If she could get one chance to change a moment in her past, she wouldn't hesitate to change that one, massive mistake when she'd agreed to have sex with him for the first time. It was horrifying how one bad choice could change a person's entire life.

It was a night she knew she'd always remember, no matter how hard she tried to forget. The type of night where no amount of clothes could keep her warm. So cold, the air took her breath away for an instant when she set foot out of the front door. She'd pulled the scarf her mother knit over her mouth as she walked hand and hand with Donnie to his car. Her father and mother were gone at a social, they knew she was going out with Donnie, but they thought they were going with friends. Looking back, Izzy wished her father had been there to stop her.