There were various certificates showing the medical degrees the doctor had obtained and what schools he had graduated from. There was a door that opened directly into an operating room. A teenage girl was in the room cleaning up and a young boy, another teenager, was helping her.
A big blue flash of fire jumped across a tray full of surgical instruments. The boy was sterilizing the instruments with fire. It startled Vida and me. There was a table in the operating room that had metal things to hold your legs and there were leather straps that went with them.
‘No pain,’ the doctor said to Vida and then to me. ‘No pain and clean, all clean, no pain. Don’t worry. No pain and clean. Nothing left. I’m a doctor,’ he said.
I didn’t know what to say. I was so nervous that I was almost in shock. All the colour had drained from Vida’s face and her eyes looked as if they could not see any more.
‘Two hundred and fifty dollars,’ the doctor said. ‘Please.’
‘Foster said it would be two hundred dollars. That’s all we have,’ I heard my own voice saying. ‘Two hundred. That’s what you told Foster.’
‘Two hundred. That’s all you have?’ the doctor said.
Vida stood there listening to us arbitrate the price of her stomach. Vida’s face was like a pale summer cloud.
‘Yes.’ I said. ‘That’s all we have.’
I took the money out of my pocket and gave it to the doctor. I held the money out and he took it from my hand. He put it in his pocket, without counting it, and then he became a doctor again, and that’s the way he stayed all the rest of the time we were there. He had only stopped being a doctor for a moment. It was a little strange. I don’t know what I expected. It was very good that he stayed a doctor for the rest of the time.
Foster was of course right.
He became a doctor by turning to Vida and smiling and saying, ‘I won’t hurt you and it will be clean. Nothing left after and no pain, honey. Believe me. I’m a doctor.’
Vida smiled 1/2: ly.
‘How long has she been?’ the doctor said to me and starting to point at her stomach but not following through with it, so his hand was a gesture that didn’t do anything.
‘About five or six weeks,’ I said.
Vida was now smiling 1/4: ly.
The doctor paused and looked at a calendar in his mind and then he nodded affectionately at the calendar. It was probably a very familiar calendar to him. They were old friends.
‘No breakfast?’ he said, starting to point again at Vida’s stomach but again he failed to do so.
‘No breakfast,’ I said.
‘Good girl,’ the doctor said.
Vida was now smiling 1/37: ly.
After the boy finished sterilizing the surgical instruments, he took a small bucket back through another large room that was fastened to the operating room.
The other room looked as if it had beds in it. I moved my head a different way and I could see a bed in it and there was a girl lying on the bed asleep and there was a man sitting in a chair beside the bed. It looked very quiet in the room.
A moment after the boy left the operating room, I heard a toilet flush and water running from a tap and then the sound of water being poured in the toilet and the toilet was flushed again and the boy came back with the bucket.
The bucket was empty.
The boy had a large gold wristwatch on his hand.
‘Everything’s all right,’ the doctor said.
The teenage girl, who was dark and pretty and also had a nice wristwatch, came into the doctor’s office and smiled at Vida. It was that kind of smile that said: It’s time now; please come with me.
‘No pain, no pain, no pain,’ the doctor repeated like a nervous nursery rhyme.
No pain, I thought, how strange.
‘Do you want to watch?’ the doctor asked me, gesturing towards an examination bed in the operating room where I could sit if I wanted to watch the abortion.
I looked over at Vida. She didn’t want me to watch and I didn’t want to watch either.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll stay in here.’
‘Please come, honey,’ the doctor said.
The girl touched Vida’s arm and Vida went into the operating room with her and the doctor closed the door, but it didn’t really close. It was still open an inch or so.
‘This won’t hurt,’ the girl said to Vida. She was giving Vida a shot.
Then the doctor said something in Spanish to the boy who said OK and did something.
‘Take off your clothes,’ the girl said. ‘And put this on.’
Then the doctor said something in Spanish and the boy answered him in Spanish and the girl said, ‘Please. Now put your legs up. That’s it. Good. Thank you.’
‘That’s right, honey,’ the doctor said. ‘That didn’t hurt, did it? Everything’s going to be all right. You’re a good girl.’
Then he said something to the boy in Spanish and then the girl said something in Spanish to the doctor: who said something in Spanish to both of them.
Everything was very quiet for a moment or so in the operating room. I felt the dark cool of the doctor’s office on my body like the hand of some other kind of doctor.
‘Honey?’ the doctor said. ‘Honey?’
There was no reply.
Then the doctor said something in Spanish to the boy and the boy answered him in something metallic, surgical. The doctor used the thing that was metallic and surgical and gave it back to the boy who gave him something else that was metallic and surgical. Everything was either quiet or metallic and surgical in there for a while.
Then the girl said something in Spanish to the boy who replied to her in English. ‘I know,’ he said.
The doctor said something in Spanish.
The girl answered him in Spanish.
A few moments passed during which there were no more surgical sounds in the room. There was now the sound of cleaning up and the doctor and the girl and the boy talked in Spanish as they finished up.
Their Spanish was not surgical any more. It was just casual cleaning-up Spanish.
‘What time is it?’ the girl said. She didn’t want to look at her watch.
‘Around one,’ the boy said.
The doctor joined them in English. ‘How many more?’ he said.
‘Two,’ the girl said.
‘¿Dos?’ the doctor said in Spanish.
‘There’s one coming,’ the girl said.
The doctor said something in Spanish.
The girl answered him in Spanish.
‘I wish it was three,’ the boy said in English.
‘Stop thinking about girls,’ the doctor said, jokingly.
Then the doctor and the girl were involved in a brief very rapid conversation in Spanish.
This was followed by a noisy silence and then the sound of the doctor carrying something heavy and unconscious out of the operating room. He put the thing down in the other room and came back a moment later.
The girl walked over to the door of the room I was in and finished opening it. My dark cool office was suddenly flooded with operating room light. The boy was cleaning up.
‘Hello,’ the girl said, smiling. ‘Please come with me.’
She casually beckoned me through the operating room as if it were a garden of roses. The doctor was sterilizing his surgical instruments with the blue flame.
He looked up at me from the burning instruments and said, ‘Everything went OK. I promised no pain, all clean. The usual.’ He smiled. ‘Perfect.’
The girl took me into the other room where Vida was lying unconscious on the bed. She had warm covers over her. She looked as if she were dreaming in another century.
‘It was an excellent operation,’ the girl said. ‘There were no complications and it went as smoothly as possible. She’ll wake up in a little while. She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’