The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966

by Richard Brautigan

  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?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The girl got me a chair and put it down beside Vida. I sat down in the chair and looked at Vida. She was so alone there in the bed. I reached over and touched her cheek. It felt as if it had just come unconscious from an operating room.

  The room had a small gas heater that was burning quietly away in its own time. The room had two beds in it and the other bed
where the girl had lain a short while before was now empty and there was an empty chair beside the bed, as this bed would be empty soon and the chair I was now sitting in: to be empty.

  The door to the operating room was open, but I couldn’t see the operating table where I was sitting.

  My Second Abortion

  The door to the operating room was open, but I couldn’t see the operating table from where I was sitting. A moment later they brought in the teenage girl from the waiting room.

  ‘Everything’s going to be all right, honey,’ the doctor said. ‘This won’t hurt.’ He gave her the shot himself.

  ‘Please take off your clothes,’ the girl said.

  There was a stunned silence for a few seconds that bled into the awkward embarrassed sound of the teenage girl taking her clothes off.

  After she took off her clothes, the girl assistant who was no older than the girl herself said, ‘Put this on.’

  The girl put it on.

  I looked down at the sleeping form of Vida. She was wearing one, too.

  Vida’s clothes were folded over a chair and her shoes were on the floor beside the chair. They looked very sad because she had no power over them any more. She lay unconscious before them.

  ‘Now put your legs up, honey,’ the doctor was saying. ‘A little higher, please. That’s a good girl.’

  Then he said something in Spanish to the Mexican girl and she answered him in Spanish.

  ‘I’ve had six months of Spanish I in high school,’ the teenage girl said with her legs apart and strapped to the metal stirrups of this horse of no children.

  The doctor said something in Spanish to the Mexican girl and she replied in Spanish to him.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, a little absentmindedly to nobody in particular. I guess he had performed a lot of abortions that day and then he said to the teenage girl, ‘That’s nice. Learn some more.’

  The boy said something very rapidly in Spanish.

  The Mexican girl said something very rapidly in Spanish.

  The doctor said something very rapidly in Spanish and then he said to the teenage girl, ‘How do you feel, honey?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, smiling. ‘I don’t feel anything. Should I feel something right now?’

  The doctor said something very rapidly to the boy in Spanish.

  The boy did not reply.

  ‘I want you to relax,’ the doctor said to the teenage girl. ‘Please take it easy.’

  All three of them had a very rapid go at it in Spanish. There seemed to be some trouble and then the doctor said something very rapidly in Spanish to the Mexican girl, He finished it by saying, ‘¿Como se dice treinta?’

  ‘Thirty,’ the Mexican girl said.

  ‘Honey,’ the doctor said. He was leaning over the teenage girl. ‘I want you to count to, to thirty for us, please, honey.’

  ‘All right,’ she said, smiling, but for the first time her voice sounded a little tired.

  It was starting to work.

  ‘1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…’ There was a pause here. ‘7, 8, 9…’ There was another pause here, but it was a little longer than the first pause.

  ‘Count to, to thirty, honey,’ the doctor said.

  ‘10, 11, 12.’

  There was a total stop.

  ‘Count to thirty, honey,’ the boy said. His voice sounded soft and gentle just like the doctors. Their voices were the sides of the same coin.

  ‘What comes after 12?’ the teenage girl giggled. ‘I know! 13.’ She was very happy that 13 came after 12. ‘14, 15, 15, 15.’

  ‘You said 15,’ the doctor said.

  ‘15,’ the teenage girl said.

  ‘What’s next, honey?’ the boy said.

  ‘15,’ the teenage girl said very slowly and triumphantly.

  ‘What’s next, honey?’ the doctor said.

  ‘15,’ the girl said. ‘15.’

  ‘Come on, honey,’ the doctor said.

  ‘What’s next?’ the boy said.

  ‘What’s next?’ the doctor said.

  The girl didn’t say anything.

  They didn’t say anything either. It was very quiet in the room. I looked down at Vida. She was very quiet, too.

  Suddenly the silence in the operating room was broken by the Mexican girl saying, ‘16.’

  ‘What?’ the doctor said.

  ‘Nothing,’ the Mexican girl said, and then the language and silences of the abortion began.

  Chalkboard Studies

  Vida lay there gentle and still like marble dust on the bed. She had not shown the slightest sign of consciousness, but I wasn’t worried because her breathing was normal.

  So I just sat there listening to the abortion going on in the other room and looking at Vida and where I was at: this house in Mexico, so far away from my San Francisco library.

  The small gas heater was doing its thing because it was cool within the adobe walls of the doctor’s office.

  Our room was in the centre of a labyrinth.

  There was a little hall on one side of the room, running back past the open door of the toilet and ending at a kitchen.

  The kitchen was about twenty feet away from where Vida lay unconscious with her stomach vacant like a chalkboard. I could see the refrigerator and a sink in the kitchen and a stove with some pans on it.

  On the other side of our room was a door that led into a huge room, almost like a small gym, and I could see still another room off the gym.

  The door was open and there was the dark abstraction of another bed in the room like a large flat sleeping animal.

  I looked down at Vida still submerged in a vacuum of anaesthesia and listened to the abortion ending in the operating room.

  Suddenly there was a gentle symphonic crash of surgical instruments and then I could hear the sounds of cleaning up joined to another chalkboard.

  My Third Abortion

  The doctor came through the room carrying the teenage girl in his arms. Though the doctor was a small man, he was very strong and carried the girl without difficulty.

  She looked very silent and unconscious. Her hair hung strangely over his arm in a blonde confusion. He took the girl through the small gym and into the adjoining room where he lay her upon the dark animal-like bed.

  Then he came over and closed the door to our room and went into the forward reaches of the labyrinth and came back with the girl’s parents.

  ‘It went perfect,’ he said. ‘No pain, all clean.’

  They didn’t say anything to him and he came back to our room. As he passed through the door, the people were watching him and they saw Vida lying there and me sitting beside her.

  I looked at them and they looked at me before the door was closed. Their faces were a stark and frozen landscape.

  The boy came into the room carrying the bucket and he went into the toilet and flushed the foetus and the abortion leftovers down the toilet.

  Just after the toilet flushed, I heard the flash of the instruments being sterilized by fire.

  It was the ancient ritual of fire and water all over again to be all over again and again in Mexico today.

  Vida still lay there unconscious. The Mexican girl came in and looked at Vida. ‘She’s sleeping,’ the girl said. ‘It went fine.’

  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.