She went back into the operating room and then the next woman came into the operating room. She was the ‘one’ coming the Mexican girl had mentioned earlier. I didn’t know what she looked like because she had come since we’d been there.
‘Has she eaten today?’ the doctor said.
‘No,’ a man said sternly, as if he were talking about dropping a hydrogen bomb on somebody he didn’t like.
The man was her husband. He had come into the operating room. He had decided that he wanted to watch the abortion. They were awfully tense people and the woman said only three words all the time she was there. After she had her shot, he helped her off with her clothes.
He sat down while her legs were strapped apart on the operating table. She was unconscious just about the time they finished putting her in position for the abortion because they started almost immediately.
This abortion was done automatically like a machine. There was very little conversation between the doctor and his helpers.
I could feel the presence of the man in the operating room. He was like some kind of statue sitting there looking on, waiting for a museum to snatch him and his wife up. I never saw the woman.
After the abortion the doctor was tired and Vida was still lying there unconscious. The doctor came into the room. He looked down at Vida.
‘Not yet,’ he said, answering his own question.
I said no because I didn’t have anything else to do with my mouth.
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘Sometimes it’s like this.’
The doctor looked like an awfully tired man. God only knows how many abortions he had performed that day.
He came over and sat down on the bed. He took Vida’s hand and he felt her pulse. He reached down and opened one of her eyes. Her eye looked back at him from a thousand miles away.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘She’ll be back in a few moments.’
He went into the toilet and washed his hands. After he finished washing his hands, the boy came in with the bucket and took care of that.
The girl was cleaning up in the operating room. The doctor had put the woman on the examination bed in the operating room. He had quite a thing going just taking care of the bodies.
‘OHHHHHHHHHH!’ I heard a voice come from behind the gym door where the doctor had taken the teenage girl. ‘OHHHHHHHHHH!’ It was a sentimental drunken voice. It was the girl. ‘OHHHHHHHHHH!’
‘16!’ she said. ‘I-HHHHHHHHHH!’
Her parents were talking to her in serious, hushed tones. They were awfully respectable.
‘OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!’
They were acting as if she had got drunk at a family reunion and they were trying to cover up her drunkenness.
‘OHHHHHHHHHH! I feel funny!’
There was total silence from the couple in the operating room. The only sound was the Mexican girl. The boy had come back through our room and had gone somewhere else in the building. He never came back.
After the girl finished cleaning up the operating room, she went into the kitchen and started cooking a big steak for the doctor. She got a bottle of Miller’s beer out of the refrigerator and poured the doctor a big glass of it. He sat down in the kitchen. I could barely see him drinking the beer.
Then Vida started stirring in her sleep. She opened her eyes. They didn’t see anything for a moment or so and then they saw me. ‘Hi,’ she said in a distant voice.
‘Hi,’ I said, smiling.
‘I feel dizzy,’ she said, coming in closer.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘Everything is fine.’
‘Oh, that’s good,’ she said. There.
‘Just lie quietly and take it easy,’ I said.
The doctor got up from the table in the kitchen and came in. He was holding the glass of beer in his hand.
‘She’s coming back,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good.’
He took his glass of beer and went back into the kitchen and sat down again. He was very tired.
Then I heard the people in the outside gym room dressing their daughter. They were in a hurry to leave. They sounded as if they were dressing a drunk.
‘I can’t get my hands up,’ the girl said.
Her parents said something stern to her and she got her hands up in the air, but they had so much trouble putting her little brassiere on that they finally abandoned trying and the mother put the brassiere in her purse.
‘OHHHHHHHHHH! I’m so dizzy,’ the girl said as her parents half-carried her, half-dragged her out of the place.
I heard a couple of doors close and then everything was silent, except for the doctor’s lunch cooking in the kitchen. The steak was being fried in a very hot pan and it made a lot of noise.
‘What’s that?’ Vida said. I didn’t know if she was talking about the noise of the girl leaving or the sound of the steak cooking.
‘It’s the doctor having lunch,’ I said.
‘Is it that late?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I’ve been out a long time,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We’re going to have to leave soon but we won’t leave until you feel like it.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Vida said.
The doctor came back into the room. He was nervous because he was hungry and tired and wanted to close the place up for a while, so he could take it easy, rest some.
Vida looked up at him and he smiled and said, ‘See, no pain, honey. Everything wonderful. Good girl.’
Vida smiled very weakly and the doctor returned to the kitchen and his steak that was ready now.
While the doctor had his lunch, Vida slowly sat up and I helped her get dressed. She tried standing up but it was too hard, so· I had her sit back down for a few moments.
While she sat there, she combed her hair and then she tried standing up again but she still didn’t have it and sat back down on the bed again.
‘I’m still a little rocky,’ Vida said.
‘That’s all right.’
The woman in the other room had come to and her husband was dressing her almost instantly, saying, ‘Here. Here. Here. Here,’ in a painful Okie accent.
‘I’m tired,’ the woman said, using up two thirds of her vocabulary.
‘Here,’ the man said, helping her put something else on.
After he got her dressed he came into our room and stood there looking for the doctor. He was very embarrassed when he saw Vida sitting on the bed, combing her hair.
‘Doctor?’ he said.
The doctor got up from his steak and stood in the doorway of the kitchen. The man started to walk towards the doctor, but then stopped after taking only a few steps.
The doctor came into our room.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘I can’t remember where I parked my car,’ the man said. ‘Can you call me a taxi?’
‘You lost your auto?’ the doctor said.
‘I parked it next to Woolworth’s, but I can’t remember where Woolworth’s is,’ the man said. ‘I can find Woolworth’s if I can get downtown. I don’t know where to go.’
‘The boy’s coming back,’ the doctor said. ‘He’ll take you there in his auto.’
‘Thank you,’ the man said, returning to his wife in the other room. ‘Did you hear that?’ he said to her.
‘Yes,’ she said, using it all up.
‘We’ll wait,’ he said.
Vida looked over at me and I smiled at her and took her hand to my mouth and kissed it.
‘Let’s try again,’ she said.
‘All right,’ I said.
She tried it again and this time it was all right. She stood there for a few moments and then said, ‘I’ve got it. Let’s go.’
‘Are you sure you have it?’ I said.
‘Yes.’
I helped Vida on with her sweater. The doctor looked at us from the kitchen. He smiled but he didn’t say anything. He had done what he was supposed to do and now we did what we were supposed to do. We left.