Naked Came the Stranger - By Penelope Ashe Page 0,46

lip to stifle a cry. She fought the nausea welling up in her throat.

"Easy," he said. "There, that should do it."

"You mean it's all over?"

"All over now." Dr. Hetterton handed her a prescription pad and pencil. "Here, write your name, address and phone number. Your real name. You may need me and I'll have to have the correct facts. It should happen within twenty-four hours. Call me as soon as it does." Gillian did as she was told, precisely as she was told. Not glancing at the paper, the doctor thrust it into his trouser pocket and called the taxi. The two of them sat there in the office waiting, not speaking, and Gillian wished for something appropriate to say.

For once she was wordless. At parties she employed a selection of icebreakers that seldom failed to work – a small smorgasbord of existentialism, Zen and little known facts about obscure students of Bellini. Don't you think Sartre is very much the twentieth-century man? she would ask. Kirkegaard has a marvelously fey quality about him, don't you think? she would say. Wouldn't you say that sex is simply the last resort of two people who can't communicate? she would offer.

But none of them – nothing seemed appropriate. The doctor looked like the kind of man who would forget to zip up his trousers, a man on the edge of going to seed.

"Why do you do this?" she asked.

"I'm a doctor," he said. "I help people."

"Seriously," she said.

"Seriously, I need the money," he said. "Why do you do it?"

"Seriously, I don't need the baby," she said.

"You don't look to be suffering," he said. "You are married, aren't you? is the baby your husband's?"

"No," she said. "And as long as we're being honest, I have no idea who the father is."

"No idea?" he said.

"Some idea," she said. "But I might be wrong on that."

"It doesn't matter now," he said.

They both heard the cab pull up in front of the office. Gillian nodded at the doctor and opened the door.

"By the way," he said, "by the way, Mrs. Brown, you are a very beautiful woman."

It was a strange way to end it, Gillian thought, closing the door behind her. The door closed away the sight of Dr. Alan Hetterton holding both hands straight out in front of him. The tremor was barely noticeable. He stopped then and answered the ringing telephone.

"I told you I had some calls to make," he said. "Yes, yes, I know what time it is. Why am I still at the office? Christ, I was in the neighborhood and had to take a leak. I think, Gerda, I'm capable of coming to these decisions by myself."

He replaced the receiver and sat staring at the phone for ten minutes or more. When he could stand it no longer he went to the locked cabinet, opened it, took down the bottle of morphine. He placed two of the tiny white pills, half-gram pills, in the belly of a tablespoon. He drew a single cc of sterile water into the syringe, squirted it onto the spoon, watched the pills effervesce. Rolling up his left sleeve, he searched out the vein and daubed it gently with alcohol. Soon, soon. Drawing the precious liquid into the hypodermic, he squirted out a drop, then jabbed the needle home. An hour. One hour to get home and shower before the euphoria would grip him.

The cramps began the following morning and by noon the abortion was complete. Gillian flushed the shapeless mass away. Bye bye, baby, she thought. She dragged herself back to bed and the bleeding did not let up. She dozed off and awakened to feel the dampness spreading beneath her legs. She barely had time to call Dr. Hetterton before passing out again. Within an hour, the doctor arrived. He gave Gillian an injection of ergot to stop the bleeding. And some follow-up tablets for the next day.

"Gillian Blake," he said. "You know, I honestly had no idea who you were until I looked at the paper you filled out. I catch your program frequently."

"Do you, doctor?"

"I especially liked the one the other day, the one about the God-is-dead-theory. I mean, calling it the biggest publicity stunt of the decade. Imagine! God as PR man, planting God-is-dead theologians around to start controversy, to bring His name into the limelight – that was a master stroke!"

"I'm so tired, doctor."

"But seriously," he said, "something like that can start people back on the road to doing some serious