08.22.26 [on the J train]

at my last clinic-escort shift i suggested to my friends that the anti-abortion protesters who show up once a month to livestream themselves weeping and singing at clients from across the street weren't coming, maybe, since they'd been around pretty recently, but maybe we should check their website just in case? sure enough, they'd scheduled one of their ultra-slow marches, so we stayed around for another hour as their police escort and then they themselves shuffled out to our dirty little block. the cops don't do much when they show up–they stay on our side of the street, checking their phones and chatting with each other, which is how things unfolded that morning as the churchgoers sang off-key and held up signs that became mystical out of order: DADS, COMMUNITY. eventually one of the cops, bored, approached us at our posts near the clinic door, saying that someone was having a "feminine emergency" down the block, maybe someone would want to check it out. nearly out of sight, collapsed and hidden between two cars, a dazed woman sat mid-miscarriage in a pool of blood. someone ran into the clinic to summon a doctor, and eventually, so eventually, they emerged with a wheelchair; before then a friend zeroed in on getting paper towels to clean the woman up while another remarked that her lexapro was working. the doctor needed to come NOW, i muttered, they didn't appreciate the urgency. an ambulance came and whisked her away. i watched the cops continue to chat with each other and the clinic's security guard–they'd never stopped–and the fundies keep singing. my friends said they'd tried to underplay what happened because they hadn't wanted to draw the protesters' attention to the woman. i went down the street to look at the pool of blood, which was–this is my reference–kubrickian in its size, and i took pictures. i thought about the cops shrugging off a complaint from our group when it made its way to them in a few weeks and approached them, cold and calm and a little out of my body. that woman was having a miscarriage, i said, she was sitting in a pool of her own blood and could have died and might still die, and there is no such thing as a gendered emergency, there is only someone dying, and if they ever saw a thing like that ever again they needed to call emergency services immediately. they looked shocked and fearful, and stammered apologies, saying that they thought she had "soiled herself," and i walked back to the door and was glad that i hadn't cried in anger, and sent the photos of the cops' badges and the pool of blood to our leader for inclusion in our complaint. send it to just me, she said, everyone else shouldn't have to see that.