Obstetrix(24)

My youngest patient that morning was a newlywed who was there because after six months of marriage she wasn’t yet pregnant. Sarah called the girl Sister Chloe, but tripped up a few times because apparently you were only “Sister Firstname” here once you were married, and this girl had been just “Chloe” not all that long ago.

After a couple of questions got me barely audible, entirely mumbled answers, I took Sarah aside and told her that if she wanted me to chase down the explanation for Chloe’s infertility she was going to have to leave me alone with this girl. Or I could leave her alone with Sarah. Explaining what was going on to two women was clearly going to be too stressful.

“I’ve tried to get a straight answer out of her twice already,” Sarah muttered.

“Guess it’s on me, then,” I said. “Go take a walk.”

To my surprise, Sarah did take a walk, and I briefly wondered if I could appeal to Chloe to help me get out of here. Looking at her wide, fearful eyes, I decided that the answer was no. Probably better to keep this conversation focused; maybe that could help me lull Sarah into trusting me alone with more people.

“Tell me about what happens when you have sex with your husband,” I said.

“It’s not like I expected,” she whispered.

There’s a story that circulates about a couple that spends years trying to get pregnant, only to see a doctor who realizes they’ve been having anal sex the whole time. This is almost certainly an urban legend, and I briefly wondered if I was about to have that story come true, but Chloe instead haltingly explained that her husband penetrated her—vaginally—but for a minute or less. It didn’t sound like he was ejaculating.

This sounded like sexual dysfunction and not like actual infertility. “I think I need to see your husband,” I said. “It sounds like he’s the one who needs my advice.”

Just before leaving, Chloe took a deep breath and said, “If God doesn’t bless us with a child soon, I’m afraid—Nick is a good man. I don’t want Pastor to give me to anyone else. I want Nick.”

“Are you saying that you’ll be forced to divorce if you don’t get pregnant?”

“Oh, no, God hates divorce.”

“What’s going to happen if you don’t get pregnant?”

“Brother Ethan’s got no wife right now, and Pastor might decide I should take Brother Ethan’s wife’s place.”

“God hates divorce, but swapping around a bride because she didn’t get pregnant is allowed?”

“Well, God did command us to be fruitful,” she said.

“What about Janet?” I said. “I thought Sister Janet was infertile.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she said.

I gave up trying to understand this. “Send Nick—Brother Nick to me,” I said. “Tell him I want to see him.”

Also on Mondays, Emma and Jason took the van (the same one I’d been kidnapped with) and went out for a several-hours-long trip to grocery shop. They came home with coolers and bags of food in Walmart grocery sacks, which I sometimes saw people unloading in the afternoon. In “school,” the children worked on reading; the books were unlocked and dutifully passed out, and even the fluent readers were allowed a few hours with a book. I was briefly tempted to try to filch one away, but then I found out it was Bethany who had to gather them up before lunch, count them, and lock them away again, and it was Bethany who’d take the blame if there was a shortfall in the number. Bethany, I also noticed, did not get reading time with a book—it looked like it was just the grade-school-aged kids who got to read.

On Tuesdays, I saw Harvest residents (I called them Harvesters in my head, like the agricultural equipment, but they referred to themselves as “the Blessed”) who wanted to see a doctor for some reason other than pregnancy. Jason came in the first week because he’d been having pain in one of his knees. I thought it was probably a meniscal tear; we got out the ultrasound machine and I did my best but couldn’t spot it. Of course, I’m not an orthopedist. I’m also not a physical therapist, and he would probably benefit from physical therapy. Sarah had already looked up some exercises for knee pain, which she hinted that he probably wasn’t doing, and she printed them off again and sent him on his way.

“It might still be a meniscal tear,” I said.

“I didn’t see one, either,” she said, dismissively. “Some men are just malingerers. You should see Brother Jason with a cold.”

Chloe’s husband Nick came in on a Tuesday two weeks after I’d seen Chloe. Sarah’s willingness to leave me alone with Chloe turned out to be heavily predicated on Chloe’s extreme timidity. She refused to leave me alone with Nick, saying it was inappropriate for a woman to be alone with a man not her husband under any circumstances. I suggested that Chloe be brought in to supervise me with her husband; Sarah refused to go along with that, either. I could talk to Nick, but she needed to be present for it.

Nick was young, like Chloe, and quiet, like Chloe. I could easily understand why Chloe didn’t want to trade him for Brother Ethan, who I thought would probably give me the creeps even if I had not heard that he’d committed a murder. Chloe and Nick were both the children of high-status older men, “Elders” who I didn’t know particularly well, and apparently Chloe had asked for Nick, which was apparently part of why this relationship was viewed with so much suspicion.