“I could tell.”
After that they were absolutely quiet as the operation proceeded. The only sounds that broke the silence Were Dr. Kilembrio’s voice snapping out requests for “Scalpel . . . “Clamps” . . . “Airwick” . . . and the starchy releases that made the Airwick necessary. The doctor worked quickly and efficiently. Less than three hours later the operation was over. A few moments after that the patient regained consciousness and sat up on the operating table.
“Where am I?” Penny asked.
Dr. Kilembrio told her the address.
“But where am I?” Penny repeated.
“In Doctor’s operating room,” Miss Carridge told her.
“That’s not what I mean! Where am I?” Penny stared down at the unfamiliar body.
“Is postoperative shocking,” Dr. Kilembrio explained to Miss Carridge in a whisper. “They’re calling it disorientation. Very common after major operatings.”
“You’re right,” Penny said foggily. “I feel very disoriented. I can’t even seem to identify with my own body.”
“It isn’t your own body,” Miss Carridge told her. “Don’t you remember? Your own body was all burned up.”
“And so am I!” Penny decided. “What’s going on here? This isn’t the body I was in before either. That was a man’s body!”
“And complaining I thought you’d never stop,” the doctor reminded her.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Penny announced.
“So now you’re complaining you’re in a femme frame,” Dr. Kilembrio continued. “What is it you’re wanting’? There’s only two choicings, you know. Wouldn’t you rather be in the womanly torso?”
“I’ll tell you after I go to the bathroom.” Penny got down from the operating table and headed for the door to the john.
“‘Don’t forget to put the seat down,” Miss Carridge reminded her. “Things have changed.”
Penny returned quickly. “It really is much better designed,” she beamed. She caught sight of herself in the mirror over the operating table. “It really is a pretty good body,” she decided. Then she looked again, peering critically. “But I look a mess,” she observed. “I’m so pale. I need some makeup.”
“Your body left her purse over there before,” Miss Carridge told her, pointing.
Penny crossed over, picked up the pocketbook and opened it. There was an envelope lying right on top. She glanced at it casually. Then her eyes widened with surprise and she looked at it with obvious interest. “What a coincidence!” she explained.
“What is it?” Miss Carridge inquired.
“This letter here,-—The return address—It’s from a man I know very well.”
“How well?”
“Too well. It’s from Studs Levine! He’s the man who--ah—-was responsible for the condition which brought me here in the first place. He’s a soldier in Vietnam now. Evidently the girl who had this body before knew him too. Isn’t that a coincidence?” She started to take the letter out of the envelope.
“Holding everything!” Dr. Kilembrio explained. “Is ethics in the abortioning profession too, you know. I’m committing to keep my patients’ anonymity. I couldn’t be letting you go through her private effectings.”
“They’re hers now,” Miss Carridge reminded him. “I mean, they sort of come with the body, don’t they?”
“Nothing is coming with the body except the body!” Dr. Kilembrio insisted.
“That’s not true,” Miss Carridge reminded him quietly. “Is it, Doctor?”
Dr. Kilembrio looked at her and understanding broke out over his face. “I’m seeing what you’re meaning, Nurse Carridge,” he remembered. “Still, a certain amounting of privacy—”
“It’s too late anyway.” Nurse Carridge pointed to Penny who was busy perusing the letter.
“The louse!” Penny exclaimed. “From the way he writes, I can tell he must have been having an affair with the poor girl.”
“Is pretty good deducing,” Dr. Kilembrio murmured, flatulating reflectively.
“He was supposed to be in love with me!” Penny was bitter.
“That’s the way the sex is bouncing.”
“Oh! Wait!” Penny was still reading. “Ah, I guess it isn’t so bad. This is really a ‘Dear John’ letter—reverse gender, of course. He was letting her down easy. Hmmm, I wonder what he means by this about not accepting the responsibility for her predicament. What predicament?”
Penny looked up at Dr. Kilembrio with sudden suspicion. “Why did she come here anyway?”
“Why are you coming here in the first placing?” Dr. Kilembrio countered.
“She was pregnant!” The realization dawned on Penny slowly. “And she came to you for an abortion!”
Dr. Kilembrio confirmed it with a flatulent symphony.
“But why did she try to kill herself?”
“She didn’t try. She killed,” Miss Carridge reminded Penny.
“But why? Why didn’t she just have the abortion?”
“She was too far gone I could scraping,” Dr. Kilembrio explained. “She’s coming to me too late. Pregnant she’s coming, and if she’s leaving, she’s still pregnant yet.”
“And she couldn’t face it,” Penny comprehended. “So she killed herself!”
“As soon as Miss Carridge here is neglecting the eye on her, she’s making bang with the bullet in the brain while I’m in the johnny kidney-rinsing. That’s right.”
“And Studs Levine is the father!” Penny ruminated. “Do you know what that means?” She stared at Dr. Kilembrio and Miss Carridge with chagrin. “That means I’m right back where I started from. I’m pregnant by Studs Levine and I’m not married. Only worse! Now it’s too late for me to even do anything about it! Oh, this is awful!”
Neither doctor nor nurse could think of an answer for Penny. Dr. Kilembrio flatulated and sighed. When you’re an abortionist you accept the fact of human drama and tragedy all around you. Miss Carridge picked at a pimple and enjoyed it, just as she was getting a sadistic enjoyment from Penny’s fix.
Penny couldn’t think of anything else to say either. Evidently, she couldn’t escape her fate. But her mind persisted in trying. It kept ricocheting off her specific predicament and thinking of that story—the same story she’d thought about when it all started, when she’d realized she was pregnant by Studs the first time, in her very own body. It was such an unhappy story. It was—-
One of the saddest stories that Penny Candie had ever heard concerned a young, unmarried girl who became pregnant . . .