‘Was there an accident?’ Em asked as she began probing the girl’s face, gently feeling for possible fractures. ‘Is anyone else hurt? Anyone else who needs help?’

The bony areas around the eye, cheek and forehead all seemed intact. So did the jaw. To be sure, she’d order an x-ray.

‘No,’ the girl said in a quiet, but firm voice. ‘It wasn’t an accident. And no one’s hurt. At least not in the way you mean.’

The girl winced as Emily opened her swollen left eyelid and peered in with an opthalmoscope. There was some bleeding on both the white of the eye and the inner areas of the lid but there didn’t appear to be any serious damage. Emily daubed her split and swollen upper lip with antiseptic and then looked in her mouth.

‘All right then, what happened? Who did this to you?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

Emily frowned. ‘Of course it matters.’ She wiggled a front tooth that was loose. ‘You’d better have a dentist look at this. It’ll be coming out any time now. Do you know a dentist?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll give you some names and numbers before you leave. Now I need you to tell me who beat you up.’

‘I told you it doesn’t matter. It’s not why I’m here.’

Emily frowned. ‘Really? Then why are you here?’

The girl took a deep breath. ‘Because I’m pregnant and I need to get rid of the baby as soon as I can.’

Emily looked at her curiously. ‘I don’t do abortions, if that’s what you’re after.’

‘I know that. What I was told . . . what my . . .’ The girl paused as if deciding on an appropriate descriptor. ‘. . . my friend told me was . . . you could give me some pills that would cause, I don’t know, a spontaneous miscarriage.’

Emily cocked her head. ‘Really? And who exactly was the friend who told you that?’

‘Just a friend.’

Emily sighed. This was going nowhere. ‘Okay. What makes you think you’re pregnant?’

‘I’m late. I’ve never been late before. Usually, I’m regular as hell.’

‘Did you take a home pregnancy test?’

‘Yes. It came up positive.’

Emily glanced at the young woman’s tummy. If she was pregnant it had to be early. Maybe that’s why she’d been beaten up. A boyfriend unhappy learning he was about to become a father.

‘What’s your name?’ Emily asked. ‘Where do you live?’

‘I told you. It doesn’t matter.’

‘And I told you it does. You’re in my office. You want me to treat you. I need to know your name and where you’re from.’

‘If it’s getting paid you’re worried about, I can give you money.’

The girl reached over and grabbed her backpack. She unzipped it, rummaged around inside and pulled out a wad of bills nearly an inch thick. She thrust the bills at Emily. ‘Take it,’ she said. ‘It’s a lot of money. I can get more if that’s not enough.’

The top bill was a fifty. If the rest were all fifties there had to be at least three or four thousand dollars in the wad. Where in hell did a twenty-something kid in Washington County get that kind of loot?

‘Put your money away,’ Emily said.

The girl sighed. ‘Okay. Then what do you want?’

‘Your name for starters. Where you live. Who told you to come to me. I’d also like to know who beat you up.’

‘I’m sorry. I can’t tell you any of that.’

‘Can’t or won’t?’

‘Both. Either.’

‘But you still want my help?’

‘Yes. I need to get rid of this baby. As soon as I can. It’s important.’

As she spoke, Emily ran her fingers along either side of the girl’s nose. A fairly minor break. ‘Hold on,’ she said. ‘This is going to hurt a little.’

Without waiting for a response she inserted an instrument called a Boies elevator into one nostril. There was a slight tensing of the girl’s body as Emily pushed with her thumb against the break and popped the nose back into alignment. A painful procedure she’d experienced more than once when she was still boxing competitively. Still, there was no crying out.

‘You’re a pretty tough kid, aren’t you?’ said Emily.

The girl smiled bitterly. ‘Not tough enough.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-two.’

Emily checked the girl’s temperature. 98.5°. She wrapped a blood pressure cuff around the girl’s arm and pumped it up. One twenty over eighty. Temp and BP both normal and healthy.

‘Who’s the guy?’ she asked as she drew three small vials of blood.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know. The guy whose child you’re carrying.’

‘Trust me, you don’t want to know.’

‘As a matter of fact, I do.’ Emily labeled and dated the vials and put them in a tray. She’d write in a name later if she ever got the girl to give her one. ‘Is he the one who likes beating you up?’

‘Look, doc. No more questions, all right? I’m a big girl. I wasn’t a virgin. I wasn’t raped. I just need to get rid of this fucker’s baby so I can get the hell out of town.’

Emily sighed. ‘If you want my help, I’m going to need some answers. I’m going to need the truth.’

‘The truth? Look, Doctor Kaplan,’ the girl said in quietly angry tones, ‘I’m sure you’re a nice woman and I’m sure you mean well. But I really can’t tell you anything more about this than I already have.’

‘Why not?’

The young woman slid off the table and looked straight at Emily with her one uninjured brown eye. ‘Because if I told you or anyone else what you call the truth, the guy who did this,’ she said pointing at her face, ‘would do a hell of a lot more than just beat me up. He’d probably kill me. No. I take that back. Not probably. Definitely. And get his rocks off doing it. And if he found out I told you anything about him, he’d kill you as well.’

‘Kill?’

‘Yes, kill. First me. Then you.’

Two

In spite of a natural streak of Yankee skepticism, Emily found herself believing what she heard. One crime and possibly two had already been committed. Assault for sure. Maybe rape. A third crime, murder, seemed to have been threatened. And where had all that money come from? These were things Emily was obligated to report. Aside from anything else, she could lose her license if she failed to do so. But what could she report if the girl wouldn’t tell her who she was or where she’d come from or who the guy was who’d beaten her up? If Emily refused to treat her she’d simply disappear into the night.

‘All right,’ Emily finally said, deciding on a course of action, ‘I’ll help you with the pregnancy if I can.’

‘Thank you.’

‘When did you have your last period?’

‘Beginning of July. Started around the fifth. Stopped five days later.’

‘No period in August?’

‘Not yet.’

August was almost over.

While Emily had never performed an abortion, she had on a few occasions prescribed Mifepristone and Misoprostol, drugs that when used sequentially cause spontaneous miscarriages in pregnancies of less than eight weeks. If the girl was pregnant and if she was right about the dates of her last period she was just within the window where the drugs would work.

‘All right, first let’s make sure you really are pregnant. Then we’ll figure out what we can do about it.’ She pointed at the bathroom. ‘Go in there and pee into one of the little bottles. When you’re finished, take off all your clothes and put this on.’ She tossed the girl a johnny. ‘Then come back in here, lie down on the table and wait for me. I may be a few minutes so you’ll need to be patient. I have to get some things I need to check you out.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Some instruments that’ll help me figure out if I can safely give you these drugs,’ Emily lied, ‘and if they’ll do the job.’

The girl threw Emily a hard, mistrustful stare, slid off the table and went into the bathroom. It was only when the bathroom door was firmly closed and she was about to leave the room that Emily noticed the backpack, still on the chair.

Looking inside a patient’s belongings was a serious breach of professional ethics. If she was caught and if the kid complained it could cost her her license. Her career. On the other hand, this girl had been threatened with death. Emily unzipped the bag.