Keeper Read Free

the hospital. Alison’s uterus had been punctured. Alison hadn’t been completely evacuated. Alison was hemorrhaging. Alison had a heart attack. Alison had an aneurysm, a stroke, a seizure.
    “This way,” the woman said, and I followed her through the door, my heart seriously starting to knock about in my chest. The door swung shut behind us and the nurse led me down the corridor.
    “What’s happened?”
    “Dr. Romero would like to speak with you,” she repeated. She wore a cream-colored name tag over her left breast, “Delfleur, R.N.” printed on it in blue letters.
    The fact that my question had gone unanswered did nothing for my growing anxiety.
    The hall ended with doors to my right and left. The right door was marked “Bathroom.” The left door was marked “Dr. F. Romero, Administrator.” The nurse knocked on the door then said, “Go on in.” She turned and headed back to the waiting room.
    I took a second, trying to stay calm. Then I opened the door.

It was a cramped office, with a window looking out at another building across the alley. A densely packed bookshelf ran along the opposite wall. A filing cabinet stood in a comer beside a trash can. Two chairs covered in pale orange fabric were placed in front of a metal desk; on the desk were papers, a typewriter, and a telephone. Framed degrees hung over the bookshelf, one from Columbia, another from Cornell. The room smelled of paper and stale cigarette smoke.
    Behind the desk, speaking into the phone, sat a Hispanic woman in her late forties, her short black hair streaked silver. She had a narrow face and dark eyes behind blackframed glasses, and she was marking a paper on her desk with one hand, holding the phone with the other. She pointed her pen at me and made a horizontal swing, back and forth, and for a moment I had no idea what she wanted me to do. Then I turned and shut the door behind me. When I looked back she nodded and pointed the pen at one of the chairs in front of her desk. I sat.
    “Yes, I think it’s serious enough,” she was saying. “No, more than that. . . . Yes . . . that’s what I’m trying to do right now ... the board should cover at least half. ... I don’t know. When I find out I’ll call you back. . . . Yes.”
    She hung up the phone, then rose, extending her hand. “Mr. Kodiak? I’m Felice Romero.”
    I shook her hand and said, “Is Alison all right?”
    She lit a cigarette and sat back down. “Alison’s in recovery right now, completely evacuated. She should be ready to leave by the time we’re finished.”
    I exhaled long, and tried to dry my palms on my jeans. “I thought something had gone wrong,” I said.
    Moving papers around on her desk, Dr. Romero uncovered an empty ashtray. She tipped it into the trash can anyway, saying, “I apologize. Lynn should have said something. No, she’s fine. She’ll be sore for a while and you two shouldn’t engage in intercourse for at least sixty days, but you know that, you already filled out the release forms. I’d recommend reevaluating your method of birth control. Other than that, there were no complications. She was a model patient.”
    “I see.”
    Dr. Romero knocked ash into the tray and pushed her chair back, openly studying me. I adjusted my glasses. She took two drags on the cigarette, blowing smoke out of the side of her mouth.
    “It’s procedure here to ask the patient if they still want to have the abortion before we get started,” she told me. “I wanted to know if Ms. Wallace might be having second thoughts, especially considering the crowd outside. She told me that you are a bodyguard and had kept the nuts outside away from her. Is that correct—you are a professional bodyguard?”
    “What is this about?”
    “I’m sorry, I’m on a schedule and there’s been a lot of pressure here with Sword of the Silent out front.” 
    “Sword of the Silent?” I remembered the signs bobbing in the street, their bloody crosses and barbed wire.