Debbie is in a room in a warehouse in the backstreets of a small border town, the air redolent with a putrid stench. She lies on a dilapidated exam table, the paper crumpling and cracking as she nervously shifts her weight. Her boyfriend clutches her hand, his head slumped like a wilted flower. A man in surgical scrubs and a face mask introduces himself as the doctor and inquires of her age.

“I’m twenty-one,” she responds. His head jerks.

“Twenty-one? You look sixteen or seventeen, eighteen at most.”

Her face reddens. She glances at her boyfriend; he shrugs his shoulders. “Sir, I’m seventeen, and that’s the truth, but please don’t tell me you won’t do it.”

The man scoffs. “Don’t worry, I will do it if you have the money.” She rummages through her purse and pulls out $400 and counts the bills into his hand. He rolls the cash into a wad and stuffs it in his back pocket.

A woman enters the room; she is restless, picking at her fingernails. She introduces herself as the nurse, and, like the doctor, wears a mask. She covers Debbie with a sheet and slides a chair to her boyfriend. She instructs him to sit so he will not injure himself should he become faint and collapse. The doctor washes his hands and signals he is ready. The nurse locks the door and turns on a radio, loud. Then, she inserts an intravenous catheter into Debbie’s arm and slowly injects her with morphine and phenobarbital. Debbie’s eyes roll upward and a dim snore passes her lips. Her body grows still.

The nurse secures Debbie’s legs in stirrups and swabs her groin with an antiseptic. The doctor slips into a gown and gloves, plops on a stool, and positions himself between Debbie’s legs. He grabs a surgical instrument and begins to scrape her womb like the inside of a pumpkin. He scrapes and scrapes, the rind slowly grated until there is none, like every seed must be removed. Satisfied, he stands, snaps his gloves into a trashcan, and unlocks the door. He reaches into his pocket and passes a bottle of antibiotics to Debbie’s boyfriend and says, “Don’t let her miss a dose; she could die.” He opens the door, peers into the hallway, and disappears.

The nurse removes the intravenous catheter and assists Debbie to her boyfriend’s car. Debbie is pale-faced and clammy, her hair pasted to her brow in sweat-wet crescents. She attempts to speak, but her words are limp and slurred. The nurse opens the rear car door; Debbie flops onto the seat and folds into a fetal position. Claret blood seeps through her pants. The nurse retrieves a towel and shoves it beneath Debbie’s hips. “It’s normal to bleed a little,” she says. Her boyfriend shudders, turns the ignition, and drives fourteen hours home. Her parents do not know.

Paul Rousseau is a semi-retired physician and writer, with articles published or forthcoming in The Healing Muse, Blood and Thunder, Intima. A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Months to Years, Cleaning up Glitter, Burningword Literary Journal, Prometheus Dreaming, Hospital Drive, JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, Canadian Medical Association Journal, Tendon, and others. He is currently working on a collection of essays. Rousseau lives in Charleston, SC, and longs to return to the West. Lover of dogs.

Photo: Tree of Life by Emanuela Iorga