Plainsong (Plainsong #1)(20)

I didn’t know all of these, she said.

Did you answer what you did know?

Yes.

Then take a seat. We’ll call you.

She sat down again. The waiting room was a long narrow room with potted plants tied upright to sticks and set in front of the four windows. There were three other people in the room waiting too. A woman with a little boy whose face looked as yellow as tablet paper and whose eyes looked too big for his head. The boy leaned listlessly against his mother while she caressed the back of his head, and after a time he put his face down in her lap and shut his eyes and she smoothed her hand over his yellow sick-looking cheek while she herself stared blankly toward the windows. The other person in the room was an old man with a new pearl-gray felt hat that rode squarely on his head like a statement. He sat against the opposite wall and he was holding the thumb of his right hand forward on his knee. The thumb of that hand was wrapped thickly in white bandages and it stuck up like some kind of hastily wrapped exhibit in a freak show. He regarded the girl with merry eyes as if he were going to say something, explain to her all that had happened, but he didn’t. He looked at her, and no one said anything. Presently a nurse called the woman with the sick boy, and then she came back and beckoned the old man with the bad thumb, and after a while they called her.

She rose and followed the woman in the white smock and slacks down the narrow corridor past a number of closed doors. They stopped at a scale and she was weighed and her height was taken, then they went into a little room where there was an examination table and a sink counter and two chairs. The woman took her pulse and checked her blood pressure and temperature, all without talking, and wrote the results of her findings in the file.

Then she said, Now get undressed please. And put this on. He’ll see you in a minute. She went out and shut the door.

The girl felt discommoded but she did what she was told to do. She put on the paper jacket that was open in the front, then she sat on the examination table with a paper sheet over her legs, both the sheet and jacket starkly white and scratchily uncomfortable to her, and waited and looked toward the wall in front of her at the picture of autumn trees growing up in some place that was altogether foreign to Holt, Colorado, since the trees were tall and dense and were of a species of hardwood and were colored so spectacularly that they seemed in the girl’s experience altogether unlikely if not impossible. Then he came in, the old man, the old doctor, stately and formal and elegant and kindly in a dark blue suit and wearing an absolutely white shirt with a maroon bow tie knotted expertly at his starched collar, and after he closed the door he shook her hand cordially and introduced himself.

You saw me once before, she said.

Did I? I don’t recall.

Six or seven years ago.

He looked at her closely and smiled. The eyes behind the rimless spectacles were lighter than his suit. His face was gray but his eyes were very lively. There were age spots at his temples.

That’s a long time, he said. Probably you’ve changed somewhat since then, since the last time I saw you. He smiled again. Now then, Miss Roubideaux, I need to examine you. And after I’m finished with that we’ll have a little talk about what I find out. Have you ever had a pelvic exam before?

No.

I see. Well, it’s not very comfortable. I’m afraid you’ll just have to endure through it, and I’ll try to be careful and not hurt you, and be as quick but as thorough as I need to be. He picked up a silver instrument from the tray on the counter. I’ll be using this speculum. Have you seen one of these before? It opens like this inside you—he showed her, as illustration, by sliding it into the circle made by his finger and thumb, and then opening it—and you may hear me screwing this little nut so that it stays open. Try not to tighten the muscle at the bottom—he indicated the muscle web between his finger and thumb—because that makes it more difficult for me and more uncomfortable for you. This is the light which shines inside you so I can see the cervix, and I’ll also be taking a smear with this swab. Do you have any questions?

The girl looked at him and looked away. She shook her head.

The old man removed his blue suitcoat and folded it over the back of the chair and rolled up his white starched cuffs and went to the sink and scrubbed his hands. Then he came over to her at the examination table.

Now I’ll ask you to lie back, he said, and put your feet up here, please.

She did as he instructed. Her feet were in the stirrups and he draped the paper sheet over her knees and thighs and he put on rubber gloves and took up the speculum and squeezed a little lubricant onto it from a tube. Then he sat down on a stool between her knees and patted down the drape so he could see her face.

This is the uncomfortable part, he said. He adjusted the sheet. Slide all the way forward, please. Thank you. That’s right. This may feel cold. He warmed the instrument for a moment in his hands.

She felt it then and flinched.

Did I hurt you? I’m sorry.

She stared straight up. He was seated low, eye-level between her open legs.

That’s right, he said. Try to relax. Now I’m just going to take a look.

She stared up at the ceiling and felt what he was doing and waited and endured it and listened to his calm voice telling her all the time what examinations he was making and why and what was next, and that everything was fine and he was almost finished. She didn’t say anything. He continued his examinations. Then in a little while he was finished and he removed the discomfort of the metal instrument and said, Yes. That’s fine. Now I just need to do this, and felt the ovaries and the size of the uterus, one hand outside and one inside, again telling her what he was doing, and afterward he took the rubber gloves off and examined her breasts while she was still lying down and told her that she needed to do the same for herself regularly and how she should do it. After that he stood back and moved to the sink and washed his hands again and turned down the cuffs of his stiff white shirt and put his suitcoat on. You may get dressed now, he said. Then I’ll come back and we’ll talk.