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Nancy stares at the set up in front of her. It looks like something Jonathan would use to develop his photographs.
She’s surprised that for all the finicky instructions on the box, the test doesn’t need time to develop in a red-room. It does need time, though. And lots of it.
Twenty six hours ago Nancy told Steve about her missed period. The nausea and discomfort in her breasts.
Two hours ago he’d pulled up to her and Jonathan as they walked to the Byers house to study. Since it was Friday the kids were holding an all night Dungeons&Dragons tournament that Nancy did not have the patience to deal with.
Steve had looked between Nancy and Jonathan before gesturing for them to get in. When Nancy was settled in shot gun Steve handed over a plastic bag with the test inside.
One and a half hours ago Nancy had peed into a tray and mixed up a practical chemistry lesson in the Byers bathroom.
She and the boys had been sat on Jonathan’s bed for the past half hour, the nervous energy that had kept them pacing around Jonathan’s room for the preceding hour dissolving slowly into resignation.
They had been checking in on the test every few minutes. Waiting to see their royal screw up confirmed in the ring of red dye that was supposed to form in the test tube.
When it’s Jonathan’s turn to check Nancy nudges him off the bed and fidgets impatiently with the sleeves of her sweater. When Jonathan comes back he doesn’t need to say anything.
His face is drained of blood and he has a far away look in his eyes. A look Nancy hasn’t seen since… well since things had settled down over six months ago.
Steve swears and runs a hand back through his hair before flopping backwards on the bed. Nancy doesn’t feel how she thinks she should. She doesn’t feel any surge of protectiveness or love.
She just feels detached from her body and an oppressive sense of wrongness settles in her gut.
Jonathan wanders over on unsteady legs to sit beside her at the foot of the bed.
“We’re fucked.” He says, the phrase almost elegant in it’s simplicity.
“Only one of us has to be.” Steve replies and when Nancy looks at him he’s gesturing between himself and Jonathan, “And I mean. I’m the dog here. I think it’d be more believable if-”
He chokes on whatever he was going to say next.
Nancy scowls at him, “Don’t be a self sacrificing shit, Steve.”
“I mean, I could do it.” Jonathan tries, “I could get a job down at the record store and make some money. Nancy you could stay home and take care of… the baby…”
Whatever colour that had returned to his face promptly drains again. “Adoption could work.” He suggests hurriedly.
Nancy shakes her head immediately at the suggestion, her stomach lurching. “I couldn’t do that.”
Steve sits up with a groan and stares at Nancy, “What do you mean you couldn’t do that? It’s our best option.”
“You’re not the one who’ll get ostracized for nine months.” Nancy snapped back. “And… I’d just be wondering if it was okay. If I did the right thing, y’know?”
Steve’s nose scrunches up in understanding. He scrubs a hand over his face.
Nancy reaches out and puts a comforting hand on his back before looking back to Jonathan.
He hasn’t said much since he realised this time next year he could be a father. Depending on what story they decided to go with.
He looks thoughtful. His eyebrows are almost obscured beneath the mop of hair on his head and Nancy thinks that he’s overdue for a haircut.
“What are you thinking?” she asks.
Jonathan starts at Nancy’s voice, loud in the silence that had descended over the trio. He looks sheepish. “There’s… always the third option.” He ventures.
“Termination?” Steve’s voice takes on an incredulous quality, “No. I don’t want that.”
“I mean, I don’t really think it matters what you want.” Jonathan says.
“I’ll ask them to up my hours.” Steve says, turning his gaze on Nancy, “You’ll stay home and take care of the baby and I’ll bring in enough for us.”
Steve’s attempt to set out their lives for the next eighteen years sends a spike of absolutely not lancing up Nancy’s spine.
“Or,” Nancy snaps, “I could get a job and you could stay home and take care of it.”
Steve cycles through a number of expressions, each one more pained than the last, before shutting up.
They sit on the end of Jonathan’s bed in silence. Both the boys are perched unsteadily beside her.
Nancy breathes out shakily. “So, we’re decided.”
“How is it better than adoption?” Steve tries again.
Nancy doesn’t think his heart is really in it. She wraps her arms around herself and gives him an answer anyway. “Because that way I’m not spending the rest of my life waiting for a kid to show up at my doorstep asking questions I can’t answer. I’m not looking at kids at the playground wondering if that’s my kid.”
“And this way she won’t pee when she laughs.” Jonathan adds. At the twin looks of horror he shrugs and adds, “It’s a thing mums do."
After another few minuets of sitting in silence Steve excuses himself to dispose of the mess in the bathroom. Nancy lays back on the beds and Jonathan lays down beside her. He’s stiff and awkward next to her, trying his best to avoid touching.
“I’m not diseased.” Nancy tells him.
After a beat his hand finds hers and he gives it a reassuring squeeze. Steve comes in a while later to find them like that.
Try as he might, they found out long ago that Jonathan’s single bed couldn’t accommodate three teenagers, so Steve sits up near the head. His legs hanging off the side. Nancy reaches up to wrap an arm awkwardly around his waist.
“Quick question,” Steve says, “How the fuck do we afford this?”
*
The next day the three of them are gathered on Nancy’s bed. They sit cross legged in a circle and pool their money together.
Steve lays out the left over money from his summer job. It’s not much considering he spent most of it on Jonathan and Nancy. Adding to Nancy’s birthday and Christmas money from the past couple years, and some coins Jonathan found in the cushions of his couch, they come to a total of ninety three dollars and thirty cents.
“You think they do discounts?” Steve tries lightly. Nancy socks him in the arm for his troubles.
They hadn’t known where to turn for the procedure, but after some digging through discarded school packets, Nancy had found some handouts from the mandatory sex-ed classes that gave them a place to start.
Jonathan scrubs a hand through his hair and looks despairingly down at the money. “I think we need to tell our parents.”
“No.”
“But Nance-”
“What are you gonna tell them? Good news Mum and Dad, I’ve been fucking this girl with another guy so now you only have to pay for a third of an abortion?”
Nancy knows what she’s saying is cruel, but she figures she’s entitled to it. Until she sees Steve wince.
She pulls a face, “I’m sorry, you know I didn’t mean-”
Jonathan puts a quieting hand on her thigh and a comforting hand on Steve’s knee. “I think my mum would understand.” He says.
“No offense Jonathan, but I don’t think your mum would be able to help us all that much in the money department.” Nancy tells him.
Jonathan shrugs, “A little is better than nothing.”
“I’ll see what I can get out of my folks.” Steve says, “I doubt they’d help much. You got yourself into this situation so you get yourself out.” He imitates bitterly.
Nancy doesn’t ask if this is a situation he’s been in before.
“I don’t want to tell my mom.” Nancy says instantly. She can already see the disappointment on her mother’s face.
Steve lowers his eyes, tries to make eye contact, “We’ll see what we can do,” he puts a hand over Jonathan’s, “But I can’t promise it will be enough.”
I can’t promise we can keep this from you mom, he means.
Nancy nods her head slowly and Steve wraps an arm around her and presses his lips to her scalp, her previous comment forgiven as the words of a desperate woman.
Jonathan gathers the money together and puts it in his wallet. He reaches over the edge of the bed and comes up with their calculus homework. Steve groans against Nancy’s head and holds out a hand for it.
*
Joyce had known exactly who Jonathan was talking about when he’d started the awkward dance of asking his already struggling mother for the money for an abortion.
Even with Hopper’s income they didn’t have much left over from feeding a family of five and so Joyce had hemmed and hawed, saying she would need to talk to Hopper about it.
Citing that he would realise at their weekly budgeting sessions that fifty dollars had up and walked away. Then she changed her mind and said she just wanted to talk to Nancy about it.
And that’s how the two of them ended up sitting across from each other at the Byers’ small kitchen table.
Joyce takes a sip of the coffee she holds between her hands. The smell of it makes Nancy’s stomach lurch. She doesn’t say anything and instead fidgets with the hem of her blouse.
It had been easier with Steve’s parents. Or, his father at least. Mr Harrington had just shoved the fifty dollars at Steve with a low warning to never, ever tell Mrs Harrington.
“I never wanted to marry Donnie,”
Nancy’s head jerks up from where she had been studiously studying the wood grain of the table.
“But then I fell pregnant with Jonathan and I didn’t see any way out of it.” Joyce continues, her voice low and careful.
Nancy’s eyebrows draw up in concern. Nancy opens her mouth to say… she doesn’t know what. Words of comfort maybe, but Joyce holds up a silencing finger.
“And then as I was planning on leaving again Will came along.” Joyce smiles sadly, “It was like Donny knew.”
Joyce fidgets her hands on her cup and takes a quick sip. Her gaze darts about the room, a nervous habit Jonathan had inherited.
Joyce clears her throat.
“And then, when Will was nine and Donnie….” She clears her throat, “I was planning on leaving. And… and it happened again. I knew I would never be able to support three kids on my own. He knew it, too.”
She gives Nancy a strained little smile, “My uh. My sister could see what was happening and when I told her I was pregnant she offered to take the kids for a few days and give me the money I needed.”
Joyce fishes around in her pocket and pulls out a wad of cash, “I’ll fudge the numbers.” Joyce whispers, almost conspiratorially, “Jim doesn’t have to know it’s gone.”
Nancy holds her hands up, almost as if defending herself against Joyce’s generosity. “I-I can’t.”
Joyce pushes it towards her.
“You can and you will. This is at least somewhat Jonathan’s fault and usually I’d make him take responsibility but,” Joyce shrugs, “This is not a teaching moment. Take it. It’s not enough to cover everything, but you’re resourceful kids.”
Nancy’s hand darts out to take the money without much more encouragement. She licks her lips. “You can tell Hopper, if you need to.”
Nancy knows she could leave now. Knows Steve and Jonathan are waiting outside in Jonathan’s idling car, waiting to hear how things have gone. She has what she came here for. Joyce wouldn’t mind. But…
“Was it scary?” Nancy asks, unsure if she wants to hear the answer.
“Terrifying.” Joyce says, “I was about ready to get up and leave. With everything I’d heard, I thought I’d bleed out on the table.”
Nancy feels her face drain of colour, “Everything you’d heard?”
“Just the sensationalism the newspapers were reporting. Botched abortions doing more harm than good. Sacred the shit out of me.”
Joyce lets out a bark of laughter and reaches over the small table to take Nancy’s hand. The skin of her palm almost unbearably warm from where it was wrapped around her mug.
“But once I was on the table I knew that I’d do anything for my kids,” Joyce’s eye contact is fierce and unwavering, “And I did. It was scary but I was okay. I can’t remember much between getting on the table and them putting a mask on me, and waking up in recovery. The next couple of days were painful and I was so glad to be staying with my sister... You can stay here if you want.”
Nancy closes her eyes. “You don’t regret it?”
Joyce huffs a laugh, “No. Not one bit. I wondered, sometimes, what she’d be like.”
“You knew it was a girl?”
Joyce pats her chest with her free hand, “In here. I loved her so much. I couldn’t bring her into my situation with Donny. I couldn’t keep the boys in it either.”
Joyce is quiet. For a while they sit like that, Joyce’s hand clasped over Nancy’s in the middle of the table. Nancy wonders if she’s a bad person for not feeling anything for the thing growing inside her.
“I guess I don’t have to wonder about what it would be like having a daughter anymore.” Joyce continues. Her eye-line moves up beyond Nancy, and Nancy knows exactly what she’s looking at.
The family portrait Jonathan had shot with a timed camera and developed so carefully in the red-room. Jane smiling widely in between Jonathan and Will, Hopper with an arm around Joyce and a hand on Jonathan’s shoulder.
Something else occurs to Nancy and she can’t help but ask. It’s something that’s been bothering her.
“And you were fine with it. Religiously?”
Joyce shrugs, “I’ve never been devout. But I did talk to a Rabbi… years afterwards, and he said there was nothing forbidding it in the Talmud. My life was in danger and I did what was best for me and my family.”
Nancy never knew Joyce was Jewish. She had also never heard her speak so candidly about what had happened with Donnie. There was no reason for the two of them to talk about it.
Now she had and, as uncomfortable as it made her, Nancy almost felt closer to Joyce than to her own mother.
“Thank-you, Joyce.” Nancy says softly.
Joyce pats her hand and jerks her head towards the front door where the low rumble of Jonathan’s car can be heard.
“Put the both of them out of their misery, will you?” Joyce says.
Nancy decides not to ask Joyce how she knew Steve was out there, too.
*
One hundred and eighty seven dollars.
That’s how much they’ve managed to scrounge up in the two painful weeks since she first took that test.
Nancy scribbles over the number on the paper in front of her.
They’re still fifty dollars short which is not a good thing to be with such a time sensitive problem. Nancy lets out a slow breath through her nose and quietly curses their stupidity.
Thanks to the fact she’s been studying with Steve or Jonathan or both of them at least twice a week for the past three months, none of them are really sure how much longer they’ve got before their window closes.
Even if she fell pregnant later in the estimated time frame, there’s no way that Steve’s after school job at the mall would be able to cough up the money they needed.
There’s no way they can think of to get that much money in so little time.
Even forcing the kids to hold an adorable middle schooler lemonade stand would probably earn twenty dollars at most, and that’s before the kids unionized and took their share, as has happened before.
Nancy groans and tears up the paper in front of her.
There’s nothing for it.
“I’m going to tell my mom.” Nancy whispers into the receiver, keenly aware of said woman banging around in the kitchen just around the corner.
“Oh, uh. Would you like Steve and I to come ‘round? Just in case…”
Nancy shakes her head. She doesn’t want to think what her mom would say to two boys showing up to her house defend Nancy’s honour. One of whom is, as far as Nancy’s mum is aware, her ex, “Just get ready to stage a rescue mission if you don’t hear from me in a couple hours.”
“Okay…” Jonathan says, “We’re picking up a few VHSs if you want to watch anything…?”
“Alien.” Nancy says immediately.
“Topical.” Steve chimes in from where he must have his head pressed close to the telephone.
“Fuck off.” Nancy says, just a bit too loudly.
“Language!” Nancy’s mom calls out from the kitchen and god it must suck to only be known as someones mom.
“Sorry!” Nancy calls back. She puts the phone back on the hook and leans her head against the cold plaster of the wall. She takes a few steadying breaths. “Actually, mom, there was something I needed to talk to you about.”
When Nancy enters the kitchen Karen has the divot between her eyebrows that she usually reserves for when Mike is trying to avoid telling her about something he’s broken.
She must have heard something in Nancy’s voice because she’s turned away from the pot of… something simmering on the stove.
“What’s wrong?” she asks. Straight to the point.
Nancy steels herself. “I need an abortion.” She says, deciding it’s no use trying to dance around the subject and making her mom worry that Nancy’s finally murdered Mike or one of his friends.
Karen puts down the dish cloth she was drying her hands with and pulls out a chair. Sits down. “How much?”
“We only need fifty more dollars.” Nancy says quickly.
Karen lets out a heavy breath through her nose and Nancy realises abruptly where she gets it from. “Steve or Jonathan?”
Blood rushes to Nancy’s face, making it prickle uncomfortably. “I- what? I don’t-”
“You don’t know, do you?”
Embarrassed tears prickle at the corner of Nancy’s eyes. She’s not ashamed of them, but she is, inexplicably, irrationally, ashamed of herself. And angry at her mom.
Ashamed that she got herself into such a complicated situation that is she doesn’t ever want to broach with her mom but now has to because her body betrayed her. Angry that her mom could see through her so easily.
“Just because you’re disappointed doesn’t mean you can force me to live like this.” Instantly on the defensive and expecting the worst. Maybe she should have taken the boys up on their offer.
Karen smiles up at her, sad,from her spot at the table. Nancy doesn’t move any further into the room. Everything in her ready to flee.
“I’m not disappointed. Not in you anyway.” Karen pushes her hair back from her face and stands up. She leaves the room without another word.
Nancy sags where she stands. She doesn’t know what her mom is doing. They’ve never been great at communicating with each other.
A few moments later Karen comes back in, a fifty dollar note in hand. She sets it down on the kitchen table and goes back to the thing on the stove.
“Remember when I was pregnant with Holly?” she asks suddenly.
Nancy nods, confused at the direction the conversation has taken, “And you were throwing up water?”
“And I was throwing up water,” there’s a shaky smile in her voice. “I almost couldn’t do it.”
“You were thinking about-”
“It was almost my only choice. The doctors were urging your father and I to terminate. I was that sick. I was starving and dehydrating. There’s only so much they can do.”
Nancy frowns, “You hid it so well.”
Her mother laughs, “Yeah, I tried. We asked for another week. Another week to see if the vomiting would go away on it’s own. Or to see if they could put together the right cocktail of medicine.”
She turns down the gas on the stove and keeps stirring. “Eventually it let up enough that I was able to keep the pills and water down.”
Nancy pockets the money Karen laid out on the table as she walks up behind her. Nancy reaches over and hugs her.
Karen lets out a surprised gasp and turns fully into the hug. It’s been a while since they’ve done this. Hugged. Nancy can’t remember why that is, exactly.
“I’m not disappointed in you Nancy,” Karen says, “Even if I don’t understand what’s going on with you and those boys, and God knows I don’t. I just...” She sighs again and her breath tickles the hair on Nancy’s neck.
“I’m disappointed I made it so hard for you to come to me. That your first thought was that I would be disappointed.”
Nancy doesn’t reply. They stand like that until Nancy’s shoulder aches and the thing on the stove stars burning.
“Oh, shit!” Karen hisses and she lets go of Nancy to turn back to the smoking… whatever.
“Language.” Nancy says as she dodges out of the way of a swat on the shoulder.
*
Nancy grimaces at the cramp that makes it’s way through her lower abdomen. It’s the type of pain that makes her almost miss the monotony of her menstrual cramps. Almost.
She’s curled up on the lounge at home, a hot water bottle clutched to her stomach. Steve and Jonathan on either side.
The boys had taken turns driving on the long trip to Indianapolis. Switching out every couple of hours to sit in the back. Nancy, as the undisputed navigator and snack distributor, sat shotgun.
After two hours of waiting at the clinic, the procedure had been quick and, with the twilight anesthesia, painless. She’d woken up disoriented and groggy in a recovery.
A nurse had given her a once over and explained what the next few days would entail, along with a list of things she would need to go to the emergency room for if they happened.
They’d gotten back to Hawkins just as Nancy was flagging from the pain and due for her next dose of paracetamol.
Karen had given Jonathan and Steve permission to stay for the weekend and that’s how they found themselves camped out in the lounge, binging movies, and deflecting Mike’s declarations of unfairness.
“You need a new one?” Jonathan says from where he is to Nancy’s right, his toes tucked under her thigh. He gestures to the cooling hot water bottle.
“Please,” she says as she hands it over.
Steve holds out a bowl to Jonathan as he wriggles out from where Nancy has been laying on him. “Could use a top up.”
The dregs of chocolate ice cream are melted and slosh sadly against the ceramic. Jonathan takes Steve’s bowl and, without being asked, also takes Nancy’s.
Steve pats Nancy’s thigh as he slips off the lounge towards the small pile of VHSs they have been steadily working their way through.
“I’m thinking… Star Wars.” Steve says plucking the movie out of the pile. He ejects the previous VHS, Alien, and throws it over to Nancy for rewinding.
“I’ll just change before we start.” Nancy says, stretching out her stiff legs before she starts off towards the bathroom.
The pad she has on is pretty much done when she peels it away from her underwear. The blood even starting to soak through to the adhesive side.
Nancy pulls a face as she throws it in the sanitary bin, and fixes herself up with another one.
She’s been having to change them pretty regularly for the past few hours, but she thinks the flow is starting to slow.
She passes Jonathan in the hall. He has a bowl of ice cream in each hand and her hot water bottle tucked under one arm.
She snags the hot water bottle from him and he inclines his head in thanks.
They get settled on the couch just as the opening scroll begins. Nancy tucked up against Jonathan’s chest, her socked feet on Steve’s thighs. He rests a hand on her ankle and nods a thanks when Jonathan hands over a bowl of ice cream.
Jonathan keeps his eyes fixed steadfast on the small screen of the television as he snakes an arm around Nancy. It takes Nancy a second to realise what he’s doing, and by the time she does he’s already stolen a spoonful of her ice cream.
She whacks at him halfheartedly before being drawn back into the movie. She settles against Jonathan and relaxes into Steve’s touch.
It feels like a good end to an overwhelming couple of weeks. She hadn’t been sure what she would feel after the procedure, but right now all she felt was a great and abiding sense of relief.
She hadn’t yet thought about what could have been. She feels so indifferent to the possibilities. She’s happy with how things are.
Going to school and coming home and stressing about tests. Teenage things. Normal things. Not Upsidedown monsters or babies. Things she actually knows how to deal with.