Izzy drew back, looking at her face. She nodded.

Izzy fussed with the edges of the tape where it met Bex’s skin. With her free hand, she reached beneath Bex’s hip and retrieved the scalpel she had hidden there after making the incision. She leaned closer, her hands folded between her and Bex, so that only the two of them could see Izzy retract the blade and slip it through the neck of her scrubs, tucking it into her bra.

—

ALTHOUGH HUGH HAD ORDERED THE police to clear the area, there were still stragglers. The media, who were too stupid or ambitious to leave. Gawkers, with their cellphones out, recording footage to post on social media. There were still a few of the protesters, too, although they’d moved a safer distance away to hold a prayer circle. Littered on the ground they’d ceded were the hallmarks of their beliefs: a sign that proclaimed ABORTION IS HOMICIDE; dolls painted with fake blood and abandoned in haste, limbs twisted on the concrete in their own miniature crime scene.

Hugh couldn’t remember the last time the cops had been called to an altercation here at the Center. For years the employees had coexisted with the protesters the way that oil and water settled in a jar: in the same space, but separate. Each side had an odd, grudging respect for the fact that in spite of the obstacles, they both showed up every day to do the work they believed needed to be done. The protest had mostly been nonviolent and civil.

Except, Hugh noticed, right now.

A ripple of surprise ran through the protesters, triggering some innate reflex he had for impending trouble. He turned around in time to see a young woman with pink hair break through their little sanctimonious tangle. It was the girl he had interviewed an hour ago, the employee who had called 911 after running out of the Center when shooting began. She stood toe-to-toe with one of the protesters, a tall, round man with a shock of white hair.

“Rachel,” the man said. “Please. Come pray.”

Hugh watched her poke the man in the chest. “Allen, you do not get to act like this wasn’t all your fault.”

He was mildly surprised to realize she knew him by name.

“He’s not one of us,” Allen replied.

“How can you even stand here and say that?” she cried. “If people like you didn’t spout the bullshit you do, people like him wouldn’t exist.”

Hugh took a step forward. “This is an active hostage situation,” he said. “You all need to go home.”

“I can’t,” Rachel sobbed. “Not until I know everyone in there is safe.”

“That’s why we’re praying. There’s someone pro-life inside,” said Allen.

Hugh ran a hand through his hair. “Clearly.”

The protester shook his head. “Someone else,” he clarified. “She’s a hostage.”

—

IN TENTH-GRADE DEBATE CLASS, JANINE had to debate Roe v. Wade. She stood to argue for overturning it, her knees trembling as she pressed them together, and saying that abortion was ending a life. She had lost the debate, according to her teacher, who was pro-choice. But afterward a girl named Holly came up to her and asked if she was busy Saturday morning. Which was how Janine wound up with her arms linked to those of two strangers who were part of Holly’s church, forming a human “life chain” that stretched for a mile.

Over the years, Janine had not wavered in her belief that life starts at conception. And yet, it was something she usually kept secret, because when you admitted you were pro-life people started looking at you like you were not so smart, or like you were part of a religious cult. Or they said they were personally opposed to abortion, but believed in a woman’s right to choose. That was like insisting, I’d never abuse my kid, but I’m not going to tell my neighbor he can’t beat his son.

Janine had kept coming back to this truth like a lodestone. It was what brought her to Mississippi to work with Allen. They were so close—only one clinic away from ridding the state of abortion facilities.

She liked the other protesters. In addition to Allen, there was Margaret, who had CP, and who said the rosary as patients passed. There was the professor, who taught at the university. Ethel and Wanda handed out blessing bags as the women walked into the clinic.

It had been Allen’s idea that as their youngest member, Janine should start a vlog in which she explained, from a millennial point of view, why abortion was murder. Her first installment was going to be called “Inside the Abortion Factory.”

She had wanted to get up close and personal. But she had never anticipated this.

Janine had nearly thrown up when the nurse, Izzy, cut into Bex’s flesh. Without anesthesia. With Bex wide awake. The skin beneath the scalpel had divided to become a howling mouth, red and angry.

Janine looked down at her arms, covered to the elbows in blood, and suddenly it all hit her. She had had her hands in another woman’s chest. She was trapped with a gunman who didn’t realize that one of his hostages was just as disgusted by abortion as he was. She started to weave on her feet.

Izzy looked up as Janine grabbed on to the wall for support. “Are you going to faint?” she asked.

Her own voice was distant and buzzy, like that of the conductor on a train you could never really hear. I have to get out of here. Izzy put a reassuring arm around Janine’s shoulders. “I have to get out of here,” Janine said more firmly.

“Let’s take some deep breaths,” Izzy said, with a note of warning in her voice. She flicked her eyes toward the gunman, who had turned around to stare at them.

“No.” Janine wrenched away. She walked toward the shooter, who held the gun at waist level, pointed at her. “Sir, excuse me, but I don’t belong here,” she said, smiling at him.

“Sit the hell down,” he growled.

“I’m like you, not them. I’m not a patient. I was here because … Well, it’s a long story.” She reached up and took off her blond wig, revealing a pixie cut of dark hair. “I think abortion is a sin. They kill babies here, and they deserve … they deserve …” She glanced around to find everyone in the waiting room staring at her in shock. “Please let me go,” she begged.

“Be quiet,” the shooter demanded.

“I promise I won’t—”

“Stop talking—”

“I’ll tell them you’re a reasonable man. A good man. With a good heart, trying to give a voice to the unborn.” She took a step forward, emboldened. “You and I, we’re on the same side—”

Janine saw the shooter lift his weapon. And then everything went black.

—

NOBODY MADE A MOVE TO help the girl who’d been coldcocked. Had he not been immobilized with a tourniquet, Louie couldn’t even say for sure that he’d have done it, the Hippocratic oath be damned.

She must have come here to try to trap them. For years, now the antis had infiltrated clinics, trying to find proof of the mythology that fetal parts were being sold and that employees were forcing women to terminate late-term pregnancies. The result? People believed them … so much so that it inspired violence. In Colorado, a man shot up a Planned Parenthood because he was certain they were selling baby organs and tissue.

Who knew what lies had driven the shooter here, today?

Louie knew all the protesters; it was really a matter of self-preservation. There were too many dark roads in Mississippi, too many places for his car to be driven off into a culvert, like they used to do to civil rights activists. So Allen had complimented him on his haircut recently. Wanda offered donuts to the staff every Monday. Raynaud, who wore the sandwich board with photos of body parts, didn’t make eye contact with anyone. Mark only came on Tuesdays and sat on his walker, his oxygen tank in tow for his emphysema. Ethel, who knit the booties and caps that went into the blessing bags, had once given Louie a pair of mittens at Christmas.