This infuriated Paul. “You sure none of this has anything to do with that jerk-off journalist?”
Maybe I should have said no. But I couldn’t do it. So I said nothing, which made what happened next so much worse.
121.
PAUL AND I DID OURbest to avoid each other for the rest of the weekend, but on Monday morning, I drove him to the pier like usual. He kissed me on the cheek before he got out of the car and said he’d see me later, but I couldn’t even tilt my head in his direction, much less answer him.
“You know,” he said as he held open the passenger door, “I said I was sorry.”
I cleared my throat. “I know.”
He got out of the car and closed the door quietly behind him, and I pulled away from the pier, then took the Via Principe Amedeo past the compound and up the hill, where I parked on a side street a block or two from the clinic. Sick hours were from nine to noon, and while I wasn’t sick, exactly, I reasoned that I also wasn’t well.
“Mrs. Archer,” said Doc Callaway when he entered the examination room with my very thin medical record in his hands. Mark Callaway had arrived on the island the previous summer, fresh out of a residency program at Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego. He was unmarried, which in that era probably meant he was gay. “What brings you in here today?” he asked.
I hadn’t said a word, but already I was weeping. “I need to get on birth control pills.”
He looked at his notes, confused. “This is a sick visit?” he said.
“I know,” I said.
“You’re not sick?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, but the fact that I couldn’t get my breathing under control might have proved otherwise.
“For family planning, I’d recommend you make an appointment with one of our ob-gyn consultants. We’ve got a doc scheduled to fly in at the beginning of December, and I can check if there are any appointments left.”
“This can’t wait,” I said, a little more forcibly than I intended, and he studied my chart.
“Do you have children?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“But you’re married?”
“My husband works in Radiological Controls.”
If he knew Paul, he didn’t let on, which I appreciated. “How long have you been married?” he asked.
“About a year and a half.”
“And have you been using some other form of birth control until now?”
“A diaphragm,” I said, softly.
“You still have it?”
I nodded.
“And that can’t see you through until Consultant Day?”
“No,” I whispered, then started to really sob.
“Okay, okay,” he said, and wheeled over a metal stool so he was sitting directly in front of me. “Let’s calm down.”
“My husband—” I started, but I couldn’t continue. I could barely breathe. Callaway handed me a Kleenex, and I blew my nose, then tried again. “My husband wants kids.”
“Nothing wrong with that, right?”
