by Nancy Thayer
Then, as soon, it was morning. And she could tell instantly, the way her gown stuck to her legs, that her period had started again.
Chapter Five
Morning.
Winter sun hit the yellow stone of the old Boston building and filled the foyer with such bright warmth that Sara felt she was entering a cube of light. The carpet was blue. On the wall in the entrance hall was a large glass-cased blocked board listing, alphabetically, the various offices in this building.
She looked at the sheet of paper Dr. Crochett’s office had sent along to her: she wanted Foster, Larch, Wang and Sikes.
FLWS Radiology Associates.
Sara smiled. She could see herself reflected dimly in the glass of the office listing: a young woman, the collar of her red cape turned up against the January cold, her cheeks flushed. That was not the cold; it was excitement, optimism, hope.
She was going to have her “tubes blown out.” Horrid phrase. Yet Dr. Crochett had told her that this procedure was both diagnostic and therapeutic. Wisely scheduled after she had finished her period yet before she ovulated, this procedure could clear out any tissue that might be blocking the way of her egg getting down from the ovary through the Fallopian tube and into her uterus. This procedure might clear the path. Twenty percent of all women who had this done got pregnant that very month.
So!
Sara had flown to Boston (and again the plane did not crash!) and taken a taxi to this clinic, situated near one of Boston’s major hospitals. Her appointment was for ten-thirty. It was only ten-fifteen; but she had not wanted to be late.
She found the correct door and entered the FLWS waiting room. A young woman smiled at her from behind a desk. Sara crossed the room, spoke to her, took the forms offered, hung her coat up on the coatrack.
She sat down in one of the blue plaid chairs that were scattered around the room in little groups, took a deep breath, and looked around her. There were five other women in the room, women of different ages. They did not look up at her.
Sara looked down at the sheet of paper the woman had given her, telling her to give it to the nurse when her turn came. The sheet said, simply:
Uterotubalgram
Ultrasound
Mammogram
On her sheet, “Uterotubalgram” was circled with blue ink.
Shit, Sara thought, her heart jumping. She looked up again, studying the women around her. She had forgotten that there were worse things in the world than not getting pregnant, that there were dangers lurking in one’s own body, cruel treacheries, cancers and cysts and tumors, an entire range of problems that no one ever asked for, that everyone feared. Suddenly she felt so frivolous being here, so foolish. Why should she have anyone mess around with her perfectly good body? Why should she take up the time and place when some other woman, seriously ill, was waiting to know the results of a much more important test?
She almost left. But she didn’t, she stayed sitting, her mind racing, and now all the frightening negative words came flooding back around her, the little scary bombs other women she had spoken with had unwittingly dropped all around the field of her consciousness.
When she told her mother she was going to have a uterotubalgram, her mother had said, “Oh, dear. Did they tell you how much it’s going to hurt? I had a friend …” and began to relay such a gruesome tale of pain and incompetence that Sara had had to ask her mother to be quiet. “Oh, that was foolish of me,” her mother had said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sure things have changed for the better by now.”
When she told her sister, Ellie had said, “Great. I’m glad you’re doing it. And it won’t hurt as much as everyone says.”
“What do you mean?” Sara had sputtered. “Dr. Crochett said there should be some discomfort, but no real pain. Or at least nothing that lasts very long, only for a few seconds.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Ellie said, lying so sincerely that only a sister could hear. “I must have been thinking of another procedure.”
When she told Julia, Julia had said only, “I’ll meet you at the doctor’s office. What time do you have to be there?”
“What have you heard about this?” Sara demanded, suspicious.
“Not a thing,” Julia said silkily. “I just love the pleasure of your company.”
Now here Julia was, hurrying into the doctor’s office, giving Sara a quick kiss, sitting down next to her. “You look great!” she said. “We’ll have lunch when it’s over and I’ll take you to the airport. Now listen, I’ve got a new joke. A super-rich woman donates a lot of money to a hospital for a maternity wing. So one day she comes to see the wing and the doctors and nurses fall all over themselves because she’s Mrs. Moneybags. They show her all the new babies and they hand her one baby and she looks at it and coos and goos and they hand her another newborn baby and she coos and goos, and they hand her another one. She looks at this one, turns it this way and that, and finally says, ‘Doctors, there’s something wrong with this baby. This baby just doesn’t look quite right.’ The doctors say, ‘Oh, no, we’re really proud of that baby. That baby is a test-tube baby!’ And she hands the baby back and says, ‘That proves it. I’ve always said spare the rod and spoil the child.’ ”
“Oooh.” Sara laughed, aware of the eyes of the other patients. “That’s truly horrible, Julia.”
“Mrs. Kendall?” A nurse with a light blue cardigan over her white uniform stood in a doorway, a piece of paper in her hand. “Would you come with me?”
Sara dutifully followed. The nurse was young, with blond hair that had been overbleached and overblown and stuck out stiffly from her head like seagrass. But she was pleasant enough; she smiled when she showed Sara a curtained cubicle, and said, “Take everything off from the waist down. Put the paper gown on. You can leave your blouse and sweater on. I’ll come back for you in a minute.”
In a changing room much like one in any department store, except that the mirror on the wall was small, reflecting only Sara’s face, Sara stepped out of the lower half of her clothes. She looked at herself in the strange mirror, studying her face. The stark haircut was growing out and looked softer now. In this light she looked quite young and pretty—and healthy. Absolutely capable of having a baby.
She had just sat down on the little wooden bench in the changing room when the nurse returned.
“Would you follow me, please?” she asked, and briskly led the way out of the changing area and down a hallway into a small laboratory room.
“Now,” she said, efficiently, “you just lie down here. Put your feet here. Your legs need to be up. Good. Now scoot down. Way down. Your bottom should be way down here. That’s fine. You’re getting a uterotubalgram, right?”
“Right,” Sara said. “Does it hurt?”
“Oh, it depends,” the nurse said, bustling around, arranging the paper sheet over Sara’s naked lower body. “Sometimes it does. But not for long. And usually not worse than a really severe menstrual cramp. It depends on the person.”
A flare of fear shot up inside Sara then, surprising her. She had experienced so little pain in her life, really, she had never even had a broken bone, and the only time she had been in the hospital was when she was very young, having her tonsils out. What a lucky life she had led until now!
The doctor came in then, whisking through the door as quickly as someone on his way to catch a plane. He walked past Sara without even glancing at her, pulled up a stool, and seated himself at the foot of the table, between her spread knees. Sara caught a glimpse of black-rimmed glasses. The man’s expression was grim.
Isn’t he even going to say hello? Sara wondered. There had to be some kind of protocol for this procedure. Even if he never saw her again—and he probably never would—still he was going to be doing some of the most intimate things she had ever had done to her body. Not even Steve had seen her so gracelessly, helplessly exposed.
The nurse said something to the doctor that Sara didn’t catch. Her heart was pounding suddenly, s
o loudly that it seemed to be blocking out other sounds.
“I’m a little nervous,” she said quietly.
“I’m just going to put a speculum inside you now,” the doctor said suddenly. “It won’t hurt.”
He bent forward. Sara felt vaguely the intrusion of metal into her vagina. She shifted uncomfortably. She could see the top of the doctor’s head; his hair was white, and he was wearing a short-sleeved blue smock. He must do this all day, Sara thought with amazement. That man must spend all day looking up women’s vaginas. What an odd way to live.
She had almost relaxed when, suddenly, with a grunt of disgust, the doctor pulled his instruments out of Sara’s body and pushed himself away from her. His face was grim, contemptuous, even repelled.
Oh, my God, Sara thought. What was wrong? What was wrong with her? Did she smell? Had he seen something unexpectedly repulsive inside her? Was there something terribly wrong with her body?
The doctor said a few brief brusque words to the nurse and left the room.
Sara raised herself up on the table. “My God,” she said, “what’s wrong?”
The nurse patted her shoulder and smiled. “It’s all right,” she said. “You just haven’t completely finished menstruating yet. We can’t do the procedure today. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”
“But—I don’t understand,” Sara said.
“Here,” the nurse said, helping Sara off the table. “Let me show you back to the changing room and then we can make an appointment for you tomorrow.”
“But, please,” Sara said. “Wait a minute. I still don’t understand.”
Now the nurse turned to Sara, slightly impatient. “He was going to blow dye up inside you,” she said. “But you still have some slight show of blood. That means there might be some capillaries open inside your uterus, and the blood could get in and … cause a problem.”
Sara was horrified. “A problem?” she said. “But … I was told this procedure wasn’t dangerous.”
“It’s not,” the nurse said. “Not if it’s done on the right day. This is the wrong day. But you can come back tomorrow and it will be fine. You wrote down that you’re on the ninth day of your cycle. That’s correct, isn’t it?”
Sara, who had spent more time counting the days in her menstrual cycle than an accountant would spend preparing for an IRS audit, suddenly went blank. “I—I think so,” she said. Seeing the look of impatience on the nurse’s face, she said, more firmly, “I’m sure of it, yes. Absolutely sure.”
“Well, then, come back tomorrow. We’ll do it tomorrow.”
“Is there something wrong with me that I still have some blood inside? That I still have capillaries open?” Sara asked. All sorts of fears and worries were popping up in her mind. She saw now that she had not properly considered the intricacies of her body, had not thought of all the tiny parts inside her, which could be harmed if a mistake was made. For some reason, she began to shake.
“No, no, you’re fine,” the nurse said, distracted now, ready to get on with another patient. She led Sara to the changing room and vanished.
Sara dressed with trembling hands, her thoughts racing. It was all so new, so unfamiliar, this reproductive business. She had assumed—now she didn’t know why—Dr. Crochett would be doing everything to her, that he would be her doctor with every procedure. And that would have been all right. She trusted him, she had talked with him, he had looked at her—he had seen her. He was a human being who saw her as another human being with a specific problem he could help solve. He had discussed her problem with understanding and even with enthusiasm.
She couldn’t expect that of everyone, after all. These other doctors didn’t have time to be human, with all the women waiting nervously for all the tests they needed done. As she left her curtained cubicle, she passed one of the other women, an older woman who looked almost in shock, so white was her face, so wide were her eyes with terror. The other woman looked at Sara and then quickly away, and in that brief second of contact Sara saw tears glaze the other woman’s eyes. Oh, there was life-and-death business going on here, there was a necessity for speed; no wonder the doctor had been disgruntled with her body, her healthy body taking up time when it wasn’t ready.
Still. Still, that doctor could have said hello, Sara thought.
She went back through the door from the hallway into the reception room.
Julia was reading an old People magazine. As soon as she saw Sara, she rose, dropped the magazine, and in a flash had crossed the room and wrapped her arms around her.
“Are you okay? How do you feel, sweetie? Do you want to sit down? I didn’t want to tell you before you went through with it, but it’s hellish, isn’t it?”
Sara pulled away from Julia. “I didn’t have it done,” she said.
Julia dropped her arms. “Why not?”
Sara explained. “I’ve got to come back tomorrow,” she added.
“Great. You can stay with me,” Julia said. “We’ll play today, and I’ll bring you back here tomorrow, then drive you to the airport.”
Sara saw the receptionist eyeing Julia and smiled to herself. If opulent Julia had been lying on that table, the doctor would have spoken to her! She made an appointment for the next day, then left the office and the yellow building.
Julia drove her to her apartment on Marlborough Street, where they talked until Sara could call Steve, at home for lunch, to tell him what had happened. Then, on an impulse, she dialed Fanny Anderson’s number. The dragon lady answered, and said, as Sara had known she would, that the author was not available. She took the number Sara gave her but did not assure her that the writer could call.
Sara sat in Julia’s living room after Julia had gone back to work and thought about the morning at the doctor’s office. She thought about how Julia had rushed to console her when she saw her, and began to wonder how much this tube-blowing business was going to hurt. She put her hands on her lower abdomen. What if the doctor, careless, uncaring, made a mistake? It could happen. Mistakes happened all the time. And underneath the comfortable pillowy covering of her skin lay all those tiny little functioning parts with their own terribly specific duties: passageways, tubes, arteries, receptacles, infinitesimal in size, immense in importance.
How easy it would be to damage such delicate, microscopic tissue.
One fraction of a centimeter’s slip with a knife—
Or dye or air blown with too much force, blasting a tube into fragments—
Sara jumped up. She had to stop thinking this way. It was foolish, self-defeating.
She dialed Donald James. He was delighted to hear from her and asked her to join him for a drink that evening. He was a confirmed bachelor, too fastidious to be even gay, and absolutely not a person to engage in discussions about sex, babies, and bodies. This would be good for her.
She spent the rest of the afternoon staring at television shows she never watched at home, waiting for Fanny Anderson to call.
Fanny Anderson did not call.
At five she took a cab to the Ritz and met Donald James. It was wonderful being with her old boss again, hearing all the literary gossip, talking about books. And it was a great consolation to know that he wanted her back anytime because he missed her, her, Sara, not a woman capable or incapable of reproduction, but a woman who was a good editor and an intelligent friend.
Later, at dinner at the Harvard Club with Julia, she continued to forget her fears and fantasies. The one time she attempted to move their conversation onto the particularly maudlin track she had become so fond of, Julia had quickly gotten them off it.
“Do you know,” Sara had confided, ever-so-slightly drunk on two vodka tonics and half a bottle of wine, “Dr. Crochett told me that the trip all those little sperm have to make to get from the vagina into the Fallopian tube to get to the egg is equal to a trip that a man would have to make if he jogged all the way from Boston to Detroit?”
“My God,” Julia said, seeming properly impressed. “Just t
hink of that. All that effort, and then to end up in Detroit.”
Of course Sara had to laugh at that, and Julia, seizing her opportunity, began to regale Sara with every dirty joke she had heard in the last six months. It was incongruous, sitting in the dignified serenity of the Harvard Club dining room with the pianist playing Mozart to the genteel accompaniment of silver against china, to hear the vulgar jokes Julia had to tell. But it took Sara’s mind off her worries, and before she knew it she was back in Julia’s apartment, passing out on the foldout sofa bed.
And then it was morning.
Her appointment was for nine-thirty. Sara drank two cups of coffee and three glasses of water—all the alcohol of the evening before had helped her fall asleep, but had also dehydrated her. She put on the clothes she had worn the previous day, and Julia, dressed in supple black Ultrasuede and pearls, drove her back to the yellow-stoned clinic.
“Shall I tell you some more dirty jokes?” Julia asked as they waited in the reception room.
“My God, can you possibly know any more?” Sara asked, laughing. But her heart was pounding. Today she was more nervous than yesterday. When the nurse called her name and led her into the changing room, she began to tremble. She had had too much time to think about it. Today she knew too much—and too little.
A different nurse, an older woman, led her into the narrow room where the table and equipment sat coldly waiting. Sara licked her lips. Like a good child, she hoisted herself up onto the table and lay down, her legs spread apart, her bottom scooted down to the end of the table so that she knew she made, from a certain angle, a giant M, with the crevice of her crotch, leading into the cave of her body, centered at the fork of the M.
That place, that delicate spot, which so few had ever touched, which Steve touched only with gentleness and reverence and lust and love … now it was exposed to bright light and a stranger’s judgment, all hairy and homely, like a shy night creature that, trapped in the light of day, becomes paralyzed.
She was still new enough to marriage with Steve to base much of her love there, in that low space between her legs, beneath her skin. She loved lying with Steve against her, his penis in that moist iridescent shell-pink passageway, and all the most profound pleasures of her life pulsing there. That was the true heart of her body and her life.
