by John Irving
The car stood still, giving Mrs. Grogan a long view. Oh, the poor dears, she thought. They are not married, they have had this child together, either he or she is being disinherited--they have both, clearly, been disgraced--and now they have come to give up their child. But they are hesitating! She wanted to rush out and tell them: keep the child! Drive away! She felt paralyzed by the drama she was imagining. Don't do it! she whispered, mustering the strength for an enormous telepathic signal.
It was the signal Wally felt when he told Candy that she didn't have to. But then the car started up again--it was not turning around, it was heading straight for the hospital entrance of the boys' division--and Mrs. Grogan's heart sank. Boy or girl? she wondered, numbly.
What the fuck is going on? wondered Melony, at her bitter window.
Because of the harsh overhead light in the dormitory, Melony could see her own face reflected in the window; she watched the white Cadillac halt on her upper lip. Curly Day escaped across her cheek, and the pretty blond girl's arms enclosed David Copperfield at Melony's throat.
It was as close as Melony came to looking in a mirror. It was not that she was troubled by the heaviness of her face, or how close together her eyes were, or how her hair rebelled; it was her own expression that upset her--the vacantness, the absence of energy (formerly, she imagined, she had at least had energy). She couldn't remember when she'd last looked at herself in a mirror.
What troubled her, now, was that she'd just seen this familiar vacantness on the face of Homer Wells when he'd lifted the stationmaster's body--it wasn't the absence of strain, it was that look of zero surprise. Melony was afraid of Homer. How things had changed! she thought. She'd wanted to remind him of his promise. You won't leave, will you? she'd almost asked. You'll take me, if you run away, she'd wanted to say, but her familiarity with his new expression (because it was her nearly constant expression, she was sure) had paralyzed her.
Now who are these pretty people? she wondered. Some car, she thought. She'd not seen their faces, but even the backs of their heads had discomforted her. The man's blond hair had contrasted so perfectly with the smooth, tanned back of his neck that it had given her a shiver. And how could the back of the girl's head be so perfect--the bounce and swing of her hair so accurate? Was there some trick to aligning the length of the hair so exactly with the girl's straight but small shoulders? And it was positively graceful how she'd picked up young Copperfield and held him in her lap--that little runt, thought Melony. She must have said the word "runt" half aloud, because her breath fogged the window at that instant; she lost sight of her own mouth and nose. When the window cleared, she saw the car move on, toward the hospital entrance. People like that are too perfect to need an abortion, Melony imagined. They're too perfect to fuck, she thought bitterly. They're too clean to do it. The pretty girl wonders why she can't get pregnant. She doesn't know you have to fuck first. They're considering adopting someone, but they won't find anyone here. There's no one who's good enough for them, thought Melony--hating them. She spat straight into her own dull reflection and watched her spit run down the pane. She hadn't the energy to move. There was a time, she thought, when I would have at least gone outdoors and poked around the Cadillac. Maybe they would leave something in the car--something good enough to steal. But now, not even the thought of something to steal could move Melony from her window.
Dr. Larch had performed the first abortion with Nurse Edna's assistance; Larch had asked Homer to check on the contractions of the expectant mother from Damariscotta. Nurse Angela was assisting Larch with the second abortion, but Dr. Larch had insisted on Homer's presence, too. He had supervised Homer's ether application; Dr. Larch had such a light touch with ether that the first abortion patient had been speaking to Nurse Edna throughout the operation and yet the woman hadn't felt a thing. She talked and talked: a kind of airy list of non sequiturs to which Nurse Edna responded with enthusiasm.
Homer had put the second woman out, and he was clearly cross with himself for sedating the woman more heavily than he'd meant to. "Better safe than sorry," Nurse Angela said encouragingly--her hands on the woman's pale temples, which she instinctively smoothed with her soft hands. Larch had asked Homer to insert the vaginal speculum, and Homer now stared darkly at the woman's shiny cervix, at the puckered opening of the uterus. Bathed in a clear mucus, it had an aura of morning mist, of dew, of the pink clouds of a sunrise gathered around it. If Wally Worthington had peered through the speculum, he would have imagined that he was viewing an apple in some pale, ethereal phase of its development. But what is that little opening? he might have wondered.
"How's it look?" Larch asked.
"It looks fine," said Homer Wells. To his surprise, Larch handed him the cervical stabilizer--a simple instrument. It was for grabbing the upper lip of the cervix and stabilizing the cervix, which was then sounded for depth and dilated.
"Didn't you get what I told you?" Homer asked Dr. Larch.
"Do you disapprove of touching the cervix, Homer?" Larch asked.
Homer reached for the lip of the woman's cervix and seized it, correctly. I won't touch a single dilator, he thought. He won't make me.
But Larch didn't even ask. He said, "Thank you, that's a help." He sounded and dilated the cervix himself. When he asked for the curette, Homer handed it to him.
"You remember that I asked you if it was necessary for me to even be here?" Homer asked quietly. "I said that, if it was all the same to you, I'd just as soon not watch. You remember?"
"It's necessary for you to watch," said Wilbur Larch, who listened to the scrape of his curette; his breathing was shallow but regular.
"I believe," said Dr. Larch, "that you should participate to the degree of watching, of lending some amateur assistance, of understanding the process, of learning how to perform it--whether you ever choose to perform it or not.
"Do I interfere?" Larch asked. "When absolutely helpless women tell me that they simply can't have an abortion, that they simply must go through with having another--and yet another--orphan: do I interfere? Do I?
"I do not," he said, scraping. "I deliver it, Goddamn it. And do you think there are largely happy histories for the babies born here? Do you think the futures of these orphans are rosy? Do you?
"You don't," Larch said. "But do I resist? I do not. I do not even recommend. I give them what they want: an orphan or an abortion," Larch said.
"Well, I'm an orphan," said Homer Wells.
"Do I insist that we have the same ideas? I do not," Dr. Larch said.
"You wish it," said Homer Wells.
"The women who come to me are not helped by wishes," said Wilbur Larch. He put down the medium-sized curette and held out his hand for a smaller one, which Homer Wells had ready for him and handed to him automatically.
"I want to be of use," Homer began, but Dr. Larch wouldn't listen.
"Then you are not permitted to hide," Larch said. "You are not permitted to look away. It was you who told me, correctly, that if you were going to be of use, if you were going to participate at all, you had to know everything. Nothing could be kept from you. I learned that from you! Well, you're right," Larch said. "You were right," he added.
"It's alive," said Homer Wells. "That's the only thing."
"You are involved in a process," said Dr. Larch. "Birth, on occasion, and interrupting it--on other occasions. Your disapproval is noted. It is legitimate. You are welcome to disapprove. But you are not welcome to be ignorant, to look the other way, to be unable to perform--should you change your mind."
"I won't change my mind," said Homer Wells.
"All right, then," said Dr. Larch, "should you, against your will, but for the life of the mother, for example . . . should you have to perform."
"I'm not a doctor," said Homer Wells.
"You are not a complete physician," said Dr. Larch. "And you could study with me for another ten years, and you still wouldn't be complete. But regarding all the known complications arising in
the area of the female organs of generation, regarding those organs--you can be a complete surgeon. Period. You are already more competent than the most competent midwife, damn it," said Wilbur Larch.
Homer had anticipated the extraction of the small curette; he handed Larch the first of several sterile vulval pads.
"I will never make you do what you disapprove of, Homer," said Dr. Larch, "but you will watch, you will know how to do what I do. Otherwise, what good am I?" he asked. "Aren't we put on this earth to work? At least to learn, at least to watch? What do you think it means, to be of use?" he asked. "Do you think you should be left alone? Do you think I should let you be a Melony?"
"Why don't you teach her how to do it?" Homer Wells asked Dr. Larch.
Now there's a question, Nurse Angela thought, but the woman's head moved slightly in Nurse Angela's hands; the woman moaned, and Nurse Angela touched her lips to the woman's ear. "You're just fine, dear," she whispered. "It's all over now. You just rest."
"Do you see what I mean, Homer?" Dr. Larch asked.
"Right," Homer said.
"But you don't agree, do you?" Larch asked.
"Right again," said Homer Wells.
You damn sullen self-centered self-pitying arrogant untested know-nothing teen-ager! thought Wilbur Larch, but instead of any of that, he said to Homer Wells, "Perhaps you're having second thoughts about becoming a doctor."
"I never really had a first thought about that," Homer said. "I never said I wanted to be a doctor."
Larch looked at the blood on the gauze--the right amount of blood, he thought--and when he held out his hand for a fresh pad, Homer had one ready. "You don't want to be a doctor, Homer?" Dr. Larch asked.
"Right," said Homer Wells. "I don't think so."
"You've not had much opportunity to look at other things," Larch said philosophically; his heart was aching. "It's my fault, I know, if I've made medicine so unattractive."
Nurse Angela, who was much tougher than Nurse Edna, felt that she might cry.
"Nothing's your fault," Homer said quickly.
Wilbur Larch checked the bleeding again. "There's not much to do here," he said abruptly. "If you wouldn't mind just staying with her until she's out of the ether--you did give her rather a wallop," he added, looking under the woman's eyelids. "I can deliver the Damariscotta woman, when she's ready. I didn't realize you didn't like the whole business," Larch said.
"That's not true," Homer said. "I can deliver the Damariscotta woman. I'd be happy to deliver her." But Wilbur Larch had turned away from the patient and left the operating room.
Nurse Angela glanced quickly at Homer; it was a fairly neutral look, certainly not withering, or even faintly condemning, but it wasn't sympathetic either (or even friendly, thought Homer Wells). She went after Dr. Larch, leaving Homer with the patient making her way out of the ether.
Homer looked at the spotting on the pad; he felt the woman's hand graze his wrist as she said groggily, "I'll wait here while you get the car, honey."
In the boys' shower room, where there were several toilet stalls, Wilbur Larch put cold water on his face and looked for evidence of his tears in the mirror; he was no more a veteran of mirrors than Melony was, and Dr. Larch was surprised by his appearance. How long have I been so old? he wondered. Behind him, in the mirror, he recognized the pile of sodden clothes upon the floor as belonging to Curly Day. "Curly?" he asked; he'd thought he was alone, but Curly Day was crying too--in one of the toilet stalls.
"I'm having a very bad day," Curly announced.
"Let's talk about it," Dr. Larch suggested, which coaxed Curly out of the stall. He was dressed in more or less fresh clothes, but Larch recognized that the clothes weren't Curly's. They were some of Homer's old clothes, too small for Homer now, but still much too large for Curly Day.
"I'm trying to look nice for the nice couple," Curly explained. "I want them to take me."
"Take you, Curly?" Dr. Larch asked. "What nice couple?"
"You know," said Curly, who believed that Dr. Larch knew everything. "The beautiful woman? The white car?"
The poor child is having visions, thought Wilbur Larch, who picked Curly up in his arms and sat him down on the edge of the sink where he could observe the boy more closely.
"Or are they here to adopt someone else?" Curly asked miserably. "I think the woman likes Copperfield--but he can't even talk!"
"No one's adopting anyone today, Curly," Dr. Larch said. "I don't have any appointments today."
"Maybe they've just come to look," Curly suggested. "They're just gonna take the best of us."
"It doesn't work like that, Curly," Dr. Larch said, alarmed. Does the child think I run a pet shop? Larch wondered. Does he think I let people come here and browse?
"I don't know how anything works," Curly said, and he started to cry again.
Wilbur Larch, with his fresh memory of how old he looked to himself in the mirror, thought for a moment that his job was too much for him; he felt himself slipping, he felt himself wishing that someone would adopt him--would just take him away. He held Curly Day's wet face against his chest; he shut his eyes and saw those spots he saw most regularly when he inhaled the ether, only those spots quite harshly reminded him of the spotting he was familiar with from his many viewings of the sterile vulval pads.
He looked at Curly Day and wondered if Curly ever would be adopted, or if Curly was in danger of becoming another Homer Wells.
Nurse Angela paused by the door to the boys' shower room; she listened to Dr. Larch comforting Curly Day. She was more worried about Dr. Larch than she was worried about Curly; a kind of stubborn goading had developed between Dr. Larch and Homer Wells that Nurse Angela had never expected to see existing between two people who so clearly loved and needed each other. It distressed her that she was powerless to intervene. She heard Nurse Edna calling her and was grateful for the interruption; she decided it would be easier to talk to Homer than to Dr. Larch; she'd not decided what should be said to either of them.
Homer watched the second abortion patient emerge from the ether; he moved her from the operating table to a portable bed; he put up the safety rails on the bed in case the woman was groggy. He looked in another room and saw that the first abortion patient was already sitting up, but he decided both women would rather be alone for a moment, and so he left the second patient in the operating room. It wasn't time to deliver the Damariscotta woman, anyway, he was sure. The tiny hospital felt especially cramped and overcrowded to him, and he longed for a room of his own. But first, he knew, he had to apologize for hurting Dr. Larch's feelings--it had all just slipped out of him, and it made him almost cry to think that he had caused Dr. Larch any suffering. He went straight across the hall to the dispensary, where he could see what he thought were Dr. Larch's feet extending off the foot of the dispensary bed; the dispensary medicine cabinets blocked the rest of the bed from view. He spoke to Dr. Larch's feet, which to Homer's surprise were larger than he remembered them; he was also surprised that Dr. Larch--a neat man--had left his shoes on and that his shoes were muddy.
"Doctor Larch?" Homer said. "I'm sorry." When there was no response, Homer thought crossly to himself that Dr. Larch was under an unusually ill-timed ether sedation.
"I'm sorry, and I love you," Homer added, a little louder. He held his breath, listening for Larch's breathing, which he couldn't hear; alarmed, he stepped around the cabinets and saw the lifeless stationmaster stretched out on Larch's bed. It did not occur to Homer that this had been the first time someone had said "I love you" to the stationmaster.
There'd been no better place to put him. Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela had moved him out of the operating room. It would have been cruel to expect one of the abortion patients to tolerate his presence, or to put him alongside the expectant mother, and certainly it would have been upsetting to the orphans if the stationmaster had been stretched out on one of the dormitory beds.
"Goddamn it," Homer said.
"What's that?" L
arch asked. He was carrying Curly Day and calling to Homer from the dispensary door.
"Nothing," Homer Wells said. "Never mind."
"Curly's been having a very bad day," Dr. Larch explained.
"That's too bad, Curly," Homer said.
"Someone's come here to adopt someone," Curly said. "They're sort of shopping."
"I don't think so, Curly," Dr. Larch said.
"Tell them I'm the best one, okay, Homer?" Curly asked.
"Right," said Homer Wells. "You're the best."
"Wilbur!" Nurse Edna was calling. She and Nurse Angela were chattering at the hospital entrance door.
They traipsed out to see what was going on: the doctor, his unwilling apprentice, and the next-to-oldest orphan in the boys' division.
There was a small but busy crowd around the Cadillac. The trunk was open and the handsome young man was dispensing presents to the orphans.
"Sorry it's not the season for apples, kids," Wally was saying. "Or cider. You could all use a little cider!" he said cheerfully, handing out the jars of honey, the crab-apple and apple-cider jelly. The eager, dirty hands were grabbing. Mary Agnes Cork, the next-to-oldest orphan in the girls' division, was getting more than her share. (Melony had taught her how to dominate the front of a line.) Mary Agnes was a popular name with Mrs. Grogan, and Cork was the county in Ireland where Mrs. Grogan had been born. There'd been a number of little Corks in the girls' division.
"There's plenty to go around!" Wally said optimistically, as Mary Agnes put two honeys and one crab-apple down her blouse--then reached for more. A boy named Smoky Fields had opened his jar of apple-cider jelly and was eating it out of the jar with his hand. "It's really good on toast, in the morning," Wally said cautiously, but Smoky Fields stared at Wally as if toast was not a regular item on his diet or reliably available in the morning. Smoky Fields intended to finish the jar of jelly on the spot. Mary Agnes spied a horn-rim barrette on the convertible's back seat--it was one that Candy had put aside. Mary Agnes turned to face Candy, then dropped a second jar of crab-apple jelly at Candy's feet.