squeezed Bethie’s hand. Bethie tried to smile before following the woman to the far end of the lobby, where the elevator swallowed them up.
The woman didn’t speak on their ride to the eleventh floor. In silence, she led Bethie to a room in the middle of the hall. There was a bed with a sheet spread out on top of the dull gold comforter, and two chairs set up at its base, with towels draped over their tops. The wallpaper was light-brown, with a repeating pattern of a bundle of stalks and fringes that Bethie thought was meant to be a sheaf of wheat. “Take off your skirt and your underpants, and lie back on the bed,” said a man. He wore a blue jacket and a beige-and-red tie, and a white shirt, old but neatly pressed. His hands were bare. Bethie wondered if he’d washed them, and if he really was a doctor, like Jo’s friend Shelley had said. “Legs up here,” he said, indicating the chairs. He picked up a metal instrument, long and thin, and Bethie closed her eyes and wished she’d dropped acid, or smoked pot, or even had a gulp of vodka, anything to take herself out of her body, away from this moment.
“Hold still,” said the man. “You’ll feel a sting and a pinch.” That, Bethie hoped, was the anesthesia. She says it’s a real doctor, Jo had told Bethie, after Shelley had finally given her a name. He’ll take good care of you. She felt the promised sting, felt the pinch, felt a faraway cramping sensation, like someone rummaging deep inside of her. “Please stop crying,” she heard the man say. His voice was angry, but the woman just sounded bored when she told Bethie, “He needs you to hold still, hon.”
An eternity crawled by. Bethie closed her eyes and tried not to hear or to feel. Finally, when it was over, the woman gave her a thick sanitary napkin and a bottle of pills, with the instruction to take one in the morning, one at night. If she developed a fever, she was to go to the hospital, and to tell them that she’d just started bleeding, that nothing had been done to her. “You were never here,” the man said as the woman helped her to her feet. He looked her up and down, and Bethie called on her theater training. Act like you’re brave, she told herself. She stood up straight and made herself meet his gaze, taking in his greasy hair and his small, squinting eyes. “Thank you,” she said.
The man’s face was expressionless. “Next time, try keeping your legs together,” he said. Bethie gasped, but he’d already turned away to grab the edge of the blood-stippled sheet and pull it off the bed. The woman took Bethie by the elbow and led her back down the hall, back into the elevator, back to the lobby, where her sister was sitting on the love seat, holding Saul Bellow’s Herzog, with her thumb marking her place. Jo got to her feet as soon as she saw Bethie, and hurried to take her sister’s arm.
“Are you okay?” she asked, and Bethie nodded, leaning against her.
“I’m fine.”
“I’ve got aspirin.” She settled Bethie on the couch, got her a glass of water and a glass of Coke from an unfriendly bartender, and gave her sister aspirin to swallow. Bethie said that she was fine to walk, but Jo made her wait inside while she pulled the car right up to the door.
The whole way home, Bethie was quiet. She pressed her purse against her stomach and leaned her head against the window. The radio played, the Beatles singing “Ticket to Ride” and the Beach Boys singing “Help Me Rhonda” and Bob Dylan singing “Mr. Tambourine Man.” As soon as Bethie heard his voice she reached down and clicked the radio off.
“Bethie?”
“I’m fine.” Bethie’s voice sounded like it was coming from a radio station whose signal they were losing. She felt that way, like she was fading in and out.
“Did you pick a major yet?” Jo’s voice was cheerful. “Last time we talked, you were leaning toward English.”
“I think I’m going to take some time off. At least a semester.” Bethie didn’t tell Jo that she wasn’t going back to the U of M, not after this semester, not ever. She couldn’t imagine walking the same paths she’d walked, strolling through the Diag, having a burger at the Union, sitting in the same classrooms