This post originally appeared on March 4th, 2014.
My first day at the clinic, a man commits suicide by jumping off a building across the street.
It’s a bright but deceptively cold March morning, the sky an unbroken cornflower blue dome. I don’t see him; I’m trying, futilely, to find a sun-warmed patch of sidewalk for my critically under-socked feet, and my back is turned. Soon, the street fills with first responders, and police officers erect a barrier around the sidewalk where the man’s body lies. I stand awkwardly with a few other escorts in my white lab coat, issued by the clinic to help women differentiate us from the protesters. It’s tight over my winter puffer and makes my arms stick out like the Michelin man. While we watch, silent and grim, two protesters sidle up to me, a man and a woman, just close enough for me to hear them but far enough away that it wouldn’t appear to an observer that they’re having a conversation for my benefit. Which, I discover, they are.
“Isn’t it a shame?” the woman says loudly, looking in the direction of the sirens. “Everyone rushes to help this person who’s already dead, but no one comes to help the babies.”
“That’s all they care about, death,” the man answers. “Culture of Death! They love death!” He finally turns to me. “They are escorts of death! escorts of death!”
“What do you think happened to them,” the woman wonders, “to make them love death so much?”
Across the street, someone covers the body with a white sheet, like in the movies.
One of the more experienced volunteers comes over to rescue me, and gives me a smile-grimace.
“Welcome to escorting,” she says.
Read more Saturday Mornings With Abortion Protestors: On Being a Clinic Escort at The Toast.
