Louie realized two things that day: that the waitress might not be an abortion doctor or even go to a pro-choice rally, but she was an activist all the same. And that you could not underestimate an anti. Had that sweet old grandma wanted to, she had been close enough to shank him.

When he had gotten inside the Center that day, he had broken out in a sweat. For the past ten years, he had never been careful. He didn’t leave the building until the end of the day. He ordered food in. As long as he stayed in the Center, it was a safe space.

Until now.

Harriet was crying. Her hand shook as she reached for her phone and typed out a text. To her husband, maybe? Her kids? Did she have kids? Why didn’t Louie know that?

Louie’s phone was locked up in Vonita’s office, along with his wallet. Who would he contact, anyway? He had no family left, no significant other—for this very reason. Because it was enough that he put himself on the front lines every day, doing the work he did. It wasn’t fair for someone else to suffer by sheer proximity. Dr. King’s words floated into his mind: If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live. Would he die, today, for his principles? Or had he already died years ago, by pledging himself to his work and cutting himself off from others who might get close to him? If his heart stopped beating today, would it just be a belated announcement of a death that had already happened?

Sometimes, at bars or conferences or weddings, he met women who were impressed by his bravado. They asked if he was worried about violence at clinics, and he shrugged it off. He’d say, Life is fatal; none of us are getting out of here breathing.

It was easy to make that joke, in response to a hypothetical question. But now?

He did not want to die, but if he did, he hoped it would be swift and not lingering.

He did not want to die, but if he did, he believed he’d been as good a man as he could have been.

He did not want to die, but if he did, he would have gotten more time than Malcolm or Martin had.

And yet. Goddammit. He wasn’t finished yet.

A high-pitched whine wheezed out of Harriet; Louie was sure she didn’t even know she was making the sound. He grabbed her hands and forced her to meet his gaze. “Harriet, you all right?” She shook her head, tears running. “Harriet, look at me.”

Louie could see over her shoulder into the hallway. He flicked his glance away from the nurse, scanning for movement, for shadows. Five minutes passed. Or fifteen. He couldn’t tell.

“Dr. Ward,” Harriet whispered, “I don’t want to die.”

He squeezed her hands. “Harriet. You just keep your eyes right on me, you hear?”

She nodded, swallowed. Her eyes fixed on his, wide and brown, trusting. He held her faith tight, even as he saw through his peripheral vision the silhouette that rose behind her in the doorway; the twist of the pistol; the grim slash of a mouth as the man’s features came into focus.

Louie’s leg exploded in pain. The world narrowed to the throb of his thigh and the fire licking through the muscle. Then Harriet fell on top of him. He sucked in the smell of gardenia on her skin, tasted the copper of blood.

Footsteps. Closer.

Louie pretended to be dead. Or maybe he wished it to be true.

—

IZZY CREPT DOWN THE HALLWAY, certain that she had fallen into a mirror universe of chaos and discord and gore. The shooter had left macabre breadcrumbs—shattered windows, smears of blood, empty shells. Every instinct told her to turn around and run in the other direction, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t heroism that drove her toward the supply closet but the fear of learning that she was not the woman she had always believed herself to be.

The procedure room door was ajar and she could see the rows of glass cabinets filled with gauze and tape. She could also see two bodies.

She fell to her knees, rolling the nurse over, feeling for a pulse and finding none. She did the same with the doctor, who moaned, unconscious. He had been shot in the leg and someone had tied plastic tubing around his thigh, a makeshift tourniquet. It had probably saved his life. “Can you hear me?” she asked, as she tried to tighten the tubing.

She was attempting to gauge whether she could drag him to safety when she heard the click of the hammer.

The shooter stepped out from behind the door, where he had been concealed. Izzy froze, angry at her own stupidity.

He was older than she was—maybe in his forties. He had brown hair with a neat part. He was wearing a buffalo plaid fleece jacket, even in this infernal heat. He looked … ordinary. The kind of man you let cut in the supermarket line because he only had a few items. The kind of man who sat next to you on the bus, said hello, and then left you alone for the rest of the trip. The kind of man you didn’t really notice.

Until he stormed into a clinic holding a gun.

There had been several times in the past Izzy believed she might die. When there wasn’t food for a whole week. When the heat was cut off and the temperature dipped into the teens. Yet she had known, as a kid, that there was always something you could do: eat from the neighbor’s trash; sleep in layers of clothes, nested between your siblings. As a nurse, she had cheated death on behalf of her patients, reminding a stopped heart of how to beat or breathing for someone with her own lungs. Nothing had prepared her, however, for a situation like this.

Izzy wanted to beg for her life, but she couldn’t; she was trembling so hard that her mouth wouldn’t form words. She wondered if the girl and the woman in the waiting room would survive; if they would tell the press how brave Izzy was, running toward the sound of the gunfire just so that she could help others. She wondered how long it would take before Parker heard. She wondered if the people who would have come to their wedding would come to her funeral, instead.

“Get away so I can finish him,” the shooter said, and she realized that his weapon was pointed not at her, but at the doctor.

There are moments in your life that change you. Like when Izzy stole a hot dog from a gas station, because she hadn’t eaten in four days. When she opened a savings account. When, three years ago, she walked into Parker’s cubicle in a hospital.

She wasn’t going to die without putting up a damn good fight.

Izzy threw herself square in front of the doctor’s body, spreading her arms as if she could create a shield.

The shooter laughed. “I have enough bullets for you both,” he said.

I can’t stop a bullet, Izzy thought. But I can stop him from firing one.

Izzy forced herself to look him in the eye. He was a basilisk; she could be turned to stone. But he was also a gunman in an abortion clinic; presumably he was pro-life. She gathered all the threads of courage she could find, and drew them together into a fierce knot. “You can’t shoot me,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”

Ten a.m.

AS BEX PULLED INTO THE PARKING LOT OF THE CENTER, a protester jumped out in front of her car. Bex slammed on the brakes. He shouted, waving his hands over the hood. In the passenger seat, Wren watched, wide-eyed. “I thought you said they had people to help you get inside,” Bex said to her niece. “I don’t see anyone in a pink pinny.”

“Maybe it’s too early,” Wren said. As Bex moved at a snail’s pace into the lot, Wren craned her neck. In the rearview mirror Bex watched the man go back to the others on the far side of the fence. An elderly lady poured him a cup of coffee from a thermos.

Bex pulled into a parking spot and flexed her hand on the steering wheel. “You could walk me in,” Wren suggested, her voice small.

Bex looked at her, tortured. She’d do anything for Wren. “Honey, I …”

“Forget it. You can wait in the car. It shouldn’t take very long.”

Bex drew in her breath. “I believe a woman should do whatever she wants with her own body, I do. But I can’t say I’d personally make that choice.”

“You do remember I’m not here to get an abortion?” Wren said.

“Well, of course. But …”

She couldn’t say what she was thinking. That even if Wren was headed inside for a completely benign reason, there were still other women in there, maybe women who hadn’t had aunts to bring them here, who had run out of options. Women who were creating secrets they would hide from others. It made her sick to her stomach.

Wren set her unfinished chocolate crème donut on the console between them. “Don’t get any ideas,” she warned.

Bex watched her walk toward the Center. But then a truck crossed her field of vision. It stopped dead in front of her Mini, blocking her view.

Bex honked her horn and gestured: What the hell? The man in the truck glanced at her dismissively. She wondered if he was lost. He was alone in the car; there was no woman with him who might have an appointment.

She saw Wren reach the chain-link fence and the line of pro-lifers. One woman leaned over, reaching for her.

Oh, hell no.

Bex was out of the car and huffing toward the Center faster than green grass through a goose. She caught up with Wren and looped her arm around her niece, anchoring her tight to her side.

Wren turned, surprised. “But—”

“No buts,” Bex said firmly. “You’re not going in there alone.”

—