MERCY

Mercy smokes a cigarette and hates it and throws down on the ground where it gets wet on one end and expands through the side, no saving it. She lights another. She is pregnant and she does not know it and she won't know it for a few more weeks and then she will lose it and this will be the catalyst for her suicide attempt, Patrick #1 does not want anything to do with it and Patrick #2 denies anything and who is the father and who the fuck cares says Caroline who kisses her softly on the lips and says we will get through this and she will get through it with Caroline's help but that is not yet.

A friend of Mercy has a dead baby inside of her, is carrying around the dead carcass of a child that she cannot expel from her body yet. They have a date for her to go to the hospital to induce a labor to birth a dead child. Is it still considered birth if it kid is dead says her friend because birth implies life and this fucker is fucking dead she says and she lights a cigarette. Her stomach is so big and protruding and she looks pregnant, there is no denying it. Mercy stands with hers and smokes a cigarette with her. People who pass on the street are extremely anxious, watching a pregnant woman smoke. One couple looked like they wanted to stop and talk to them about how pregnant women shouldn't smoke and how it is so dangerous for the baby blah blah blah and Mercy's friend is saying this aloud to her, look at those assholes, they seem so fucking concerned with my business, go busy yourself with all of your yuppie as shit fuckers, she says to Mercy. She rubs her belly. You know he stopped movin and I knew before the Drs. told me. I knew he was dead.

Mercy tries to puff and puff on the end of the cigarette that was lit but then keeps extinguishing itself. Her father smoked when she was young but then quit when he started to get better gigs. Nobody likes a smoking queen, yuck he says. Mercy wishes she didn't smoke, she struggles with quitting.

Patrick #1 took her home one night from a date early because he said that her hair smelled too much of smoke and if she wanted to take a shower and re-style her hair he would come pick her up and take her out.