“What does that mean?”
“Abnormal cells. Stage I is a change, an early sign of cancer. Stages II to III indicate strong changes, and stage IV dysplasia can mean full-blown cancer.”
He spoke without seeing her, his eyes still scanning her chart.
“Why didn’t you let me know?” Her alarm was like a siren blast.
“Well, I couldn’t chase you down. It would be unethical.”
“Why? What are you talking about?”
He pushed her shoulder down so that she lay flat, told her to scoot her buttocks stirrupward, then inserted the cold metal speculum, an instrument that reminded her of a post-hole digger. Then with a long swab he jabbed a spot and smeared the specimen onto a glass slide. After slipping out the metal device, he rammed his finger up her vagina and rooted around.
“I’m taking you off the Pill,” he said, removing his rubber glove with a sharp snap. “I want to see how you do for six months without it. Meanwhile, I can fit you for a diaphragm.”
“I won’t need it,” she said. And if I do, I won’t get it from you. “What about cancer?”
“The Pap smear will tell us.” He waved the glass slide at her. “When did you have your last period?”
“The last day of January. I wrote that on the questionnaire.”
“Was your flow full and vigorous, or scanty?”
“Scanty.” What language.
Why was it called a flow? she wondered. Did anyone ever really flow? The Mississippi River flowed.
“There is some anomaly,” the doctor said, packaging the glass slide in a little sleeve. “I want to run a fern culture. Stay right here. You may put your clothes on.”
She visualized the network of ferns in the redwood forest. She wondered if the dysplasia he spoke of was caused by LSD. And could the fern culture find out?
As she dressed in her bell-bottoms and Indian tunic, she recalled being photographed in the shortie baby-doll pajamas, the squirrelly, rambling man ogling her. Always there was a man of authority—a photographer, a professor, a psychologist, a soldier, and now a doctor—a man who potentially had her future in hand like a basketball that he might toss casually.
Ann imagined writing to Jimmy that she had cancer. No, she couldn’t send him such news. She remembered how Pixie had extolled this doctor—his discretion, his willingness to prescribe the Pill so unmarried women could fuck the night away without a care in the world.
Nurses hurried along the corridor past the doorway, while Ann waited, her thoughts awhirl. She tried to read Mrs. Dalloway but could not get through a single paragraph. In about fifteen minutes, the doctor returned.
“The fern culture shows you may be pregnant,” he said.
Ann gasped. “How can that be?”
“You know better than I do.”
“Could I have both cancer and a baby?”
“I don’t see any signs of cancer now, and it has been six months. Sometimes the cells are just a little abnormal because of the mestranol and norethynodrel, but we’re checking. I doubt if you have cancer. Don’t worry about that.”
“Then will you write a letter asking me to call, or will you take the time to call me with the results?” For God’s sake.
“It’s best if you call here, in about two weeks. We can do further pregnancy testing then.”
“What do I do now?”
“Just be calm. Wait.”
She had read something in the Stanford Daily about LSD and broken chromosomes. She wanted to ask if broken chromosomes would prevent having a normal baby, but he dismissed her before she could speak. He slipped out the door with his clipboard, and a nurse appeared then, with a bright smile.
“Do I hear we have happy news?”
“I wouldn’t say that. Cancer?”
“Oh. He didn’t mention that.”
The nurse examined the lab test. “This could mean nothing,” she said. “Don’t worry about that. Now to the other condition. Have you had any signs—a feeling of fullness? Or morning sickness?”
“Not really. Well, right now there’s something. The doctor just explored my insides with a post-hole digger.” She felt blood flowing to the center of her abdomen.
The nurse raised an eyebrow. Ann had rarely seen the eyebrow of skepticism in such explicit action.
“I’ll make an appointment for you. I think you may be only a month or six weeks, the very beginning.”
THE OVERCAST DAY had brightened, and the sun flashed off the parking lot pavement onto Jimmy’s blue Mustang. She was a fountain of illegal drugs. Birth-control pills were legal only if you were married. Her bottle of Preludin was a friend’s prescription. And Ann had learned that LSD was illegal, even though Jimmy and Chip had led her to believe otherwise. Not to mention grass. She had been an imbecile to swallow anything foreign. She hadn’t been thinking rationally. Did she ever really think?
She had said goodbye to Jimmy six weeks ago and had stopped the Pill the day they said goodbye. There were moments after Jimmy told her he had joined the army that she wished—hadn’t she?—she could be pregnant. She had toyed with skipping the pills, but she didn’t think she had skipped any. Could wishing somehow have an effect on those madly swimming sperm, those little athletes? Swimming Jimmies. She had been like a cheerleader on the sidelines, urging them past hurdles. She hadn’t admitted to herself that she had hoped to become pregnant, as a way of keeping Jimmy.
As she drove to her apartment, one dominant thought was how to tell her parents that she was going to have a baby out of wedlock. At one time such a shameful admission would have been unthinkable, but she had been through so many liberating phases just in the last year that the old rules and taboos now seemed as odd as roosters in bonnets. Jimmy was gone. And the Doctor of the Absurd, with his fern culture, had plunked her onto a seesaw—cancer on one end and baby on the other. Cancer/baby. Ann had a case of the jimjams.
But what about chromosome damage? And what were chromosomes anyway? Little Xs and Ys in the cells like alphabet soup. Her mind was fuzzy, mazy. She remembered thalidomide, a drug women had once taken innocently for morning sickness, resulting in babies with horrible birth defects. Whatever happened to those deformed babies? Hidden in the attic, probably.
Shouldn’t she have felt morning sickness? Or did that come later? What did she know about pregnancy? All she knew was that the threat had loomed over her young life like a prison sentence until she got the Pill. But now having a baby would be the ultimate commitment between her and Jimmy, ready or not. He wouldn’t be pleased. She was afraid to tell him. She wouldn’t tell him until she was sure, but gradually she could feel something like a thrill, or laughter, rippling through her body.
The car radio played Janis Joplin’s bull-bellowing and screeches. Sometimes Ann wanted to cry the way she imagined Janis Joplin would cry. The couple next door would hear her. Everyone in the building would.
She cruised home in a daze. When she pulled into her parking spot, she met Sanjay, who was arriving home from his afternoon chem lab. He was a teaching assistant, leading a group doing research on lipids. She wondered if he would know what a fern culture was, but she was embarrassed to ask.
“The day is beautiful,” he said, smiling.
“Is it?”