Her eyes welled again, and she clamped down on her lip, drawing blood because she bit into it so hard. “I went to see a doctor about an abortion—I was REALLY scared! I was only 20, for God’s sake; you were only 22…neither of us was ready for a baby. I was sure you’d drop me if you found out.”
Jackson opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, not sure what he should say. Then he opened it again and still no sound came out. He sat down on the couch with a defeated look on his face, “you had an abortion?” he asked. “Why? Why would you do that? Furthermore, why would you think I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with you if you were pregnant with my kid!?” He sounded angry and hurt all at once, “did you even know me at all?”
She didn’t know how to answer that question, “I told you I made some mistakes. Leaving you was the first.” She said quietly as if that would soften the blow of the news he just received.
“You never even TRIED to talk to me…what was going through your mind!?”
“I told you, I was scared…terrified. I had no idea. I was young and dumb, to say the least,” she already felt immense internal guilt from the stupid decision; she really didn’t need Jackson to sit here and pile it on further.
“What then?” he asked, “you got an abortion, then what? It still doesn’t explain why you were gone for FOUR years.”
“Well, then I was ‘lucky’ enough to develop an infection. It nearly killed me and I ended up being in the hospital for something like two weeks afterwards because it was so bad. I guess that was your ‘god’ punishing me,” she stopped and looked into his eyes, “so you can quit trying to make me feel worse than I already do. I regret it, I really do.” She looked down, hoping the horribly painful conversation would soon come to an end.
Jackson lifted her chin with his finger, “tell me the rest,” he urged.
She turned her face away from his touch and, with another sigh, continued, “I wasn’t quite the same after getting out of the hospital. Went on a huge drinking binge…I just felt so guilty for what I’d done that I didn’t want to deal with it. Well, that only lasted about 4 months. I had been staying with my sister and her fiancé at that time and I felt like I just couldn’t deal anymore,” she paused, embarrassed by her past, she didn’t want to continue, but she owed Jackson an explanation, “I was home one afternoon while Celia and Marcus were at work and I was staring down the bottle of pain pills I never took that the doctor had given me after I left the hospital. I threw back a pint of whisky over an hour of contemplating and then opened the bottle. I don’t know how many I took, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to feel anything. After that, I somehow made it to the kitchen and found the biggest knife I could and just kinda went for it.”
Tears were running down her cheeks now, she wasn’t ready to admit her past to anyone, and here she was just spilling her life story to Jackson, the one person who had always thought highly of her…it’s a good bet he didn’t now.
She sniffled, “lucky for me, Marcus got off work REALLY early that day and walked in just as I dropped the knife. He saw me sitting on the floor, half dead from the combination of pills and whisky, sitting in a pool of blood. I don’t really remember the next several days, but it’s needless to say they basically had me committed because they were both afraid to leave me home unattended, for obvious reasons.”
Jackson was in complete and utter shock at what he had heard. He had a child…who she had aborted without even telling him about it and then she nearly died in a hospital….twice and no one ever contacted him to let him know what was happening. This was not the Cordelia he knew. His jaw hung agape as he sat there.
“Jax,” she said nearly in a whisper as Jackson stood up, “I’m sorry…more sorry than I could possibly express to you.” Jackson began backing slowly toward the door, hands in the air as if to say ‘I give up’. “Please,” she whimpered.
He just shook his head at her, then turned and left the apartment without a word, leaving Cordelia to once again bear her pain alone.
To Be Continued
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