from the sequence of operations and previous diseases that Dottie’s answer was given before she had time to gulp. “Good!” exclaimed the doctor, and when Dottie glanced up, wonderingly, the doctor gave an encouraging smile. “That makes it easier for us to fit you,” she said, commending, as though Dottie had been a good child. Her skill astonished Dottie, who sat with wondering eyes, anesthetized by the doctor’s personality, while a series of questions, like a delicately maneuvering forceps, extracted information that ought to have hurt but didn’t. This painless interrogation revealed no more curiosity about the why and the who of Dottie’s defloration than if Dick had been a surgical instrument: had Dottie been completely penetrated, had there been much bleeding, much pain? What method of contraception had been used, had the act been repeated? “Withdrawal,” murmured the doctor, writing it down on a separate pad. “We like to know,” she explained, with a quick, personal smile, “what methods our patients have used before coming to us. When was this intercourse had?” “Three nights ago,” said Dottie, coloring and feeling that now, at last, they were going to touch the biographical. “And the date of your last period?” Dottie supplied it, and the doctor glanced at her desk calendar. “Very good,” she said. “Go into the bathroom, empty your bladder, and take off your girdle and step-ins; you may leave your slip on, but unfasten your brassiere, please.”
Dottie did not mind the pelvic examination or the fitting. Her bad moment came when she was learning how to insert the pessary by herself. Though she was usually good with her hands and well coordinated, she felt suddenly unnerved by the scrutiny of the doctor and the nurse, so exploratory and impersonal, like the doctor’s rubber glove. As she was trying to fold the pessary, the slippery thing, all covered with jelly, jumped out of her grasp and shot across the room and hit the sterilizer. Dottie could have died. But apparently this was nothing new to the doctor and the nurse. “Try again, Dorothy,” said the doctor calmly, selecting another diaphragm of the correct size from the drawer. And, as though to provide a distraction, she went on to give a little lecture on the history of the pessary, while watching Dottie’s struggles out of the corner of her eye: how a medicated plug had been known to the ancient Greeks and Jews and Egyptians, how Margaret Sanger had found the present diaphragm in Holland, how the long fight had been waged through the courts here. …Dottie had read all this, but she did not like to say so to this dark, stately woman, moving among her instruments like a priestess in the temple. As everybody knew from the newspapers, the doctor herself had been arrested only a few years before, in a raid on a birth-control clinic, and then been freed by the court. To hear her talk on the subject of her lifelong mission was an honor, like touching the mantle of a prophet, and Dottie felt awed.
“Private practice must be rather a letdown,” she suggested, sympathetically. To a dynamic person like the doctor, fitting girls like herself could not be much of a challenge. “There’s still a great work to be done,” sighed the doctor, removing the diaphragm with a short nod of approval. She motioned Dottie down from the table. “So many of our clinic patients won’t use the pessary when we’ve fitted them or won’t use it regularly.” The nurse bobbed her white-capped head and made a clucking noise. “And those are the ones, aren’t they, doctor, who need to limit their families most? With our private patients, Miss Renfrew, we can be surer that our instructions are being followed.” She gave a little smirk. “I won’t need you now, Miss Brimmer,” said the doctor, washing her hands at the sink. The nurse went out, and Dottie started to follow her, feeling herself a rather foolish figure, with her stockings rolled down
Dottie did not mind the pelvic examination or the fitting. Her bad moment came when she was learning how to insert the pessary by herself. Though she was usually good with her hands and well coordinated, she felt suddenly unnerved by the scrutiny of the doctor and the nurse, so exploratory and impersonal, like the doctor’s rubber glove. As she was trying to fold the pessary, the slippery thing, all covered with jelly, jumped out of her grasp and shot across the room and hit the sterilizer. Dottie could have died. But apparently this was nothing new to the doctor and the nurse. “Try again, Dorothy,” said the doctor calmly, selecting another diaphragm of the correct size from the drawer. And, as though to provide a distraction, she went on to give a little lecture on the history of the pessary, while watching Dottie’s struggles out of the corner of her eye: how a medicated plug had been known to the ancient Greeks and Jews and Egyptians, how Margaret Sanger had found the present diaphragm in Holland, how the long fight had been waged through the courts here. …Dottie had read all this, but she did not like to say so to this dark, stately woman, moving among her instruments like a priestess in the temple. As everybody knew from the newspapers, the doctor herself had been arrested only a few years before, in a raid on a birth-control clinic, and then been freed by the court. To hear her talk on the subject of her lifelong mission was an honor, like touching the mantle of a prophet, and Dottie felt awed.
“Private practice must be rather a letdown,” she suggested, sympathetically. To a dynamic person like the doctor, fitting girls like herself could not be much of a challenge. “There’s still a great work to be done,” sighed the doctor, removing the diaphragm with a short nod of approval. She motioned Dottie down from the table. “So many of our clinic patients won’t use the pessary when we’ve fitted them or won’t use it regularly.” The nurse bobbed her white-capped head and made a clucking noise. “And those are the ones, aren’t they, doctor, who need to limit their families most? With our private patients, Miss Renfrew, we can be surer that our instructions are being followed.” She gave a little smirk. “I won’t need you now, Miss Brimmer,” said the doctor, washing her hands at the sink. The nurse went out, and Dottie started to follow her, feeling herself a rather foolish figure, with her stockings rolled down
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