Obstetrix(3)

“Oh!… Well, look, I promise that if you get that job and leave us, we won’t hold it against you. If you sign on for just a month, that’ll get us out of our bind, at least for now. And you could probably continue part-time, if you wanted.…”

I thought about my depleted savings and dwindling bank balance—defense lawyers and expert witnesses and all the rest did not work cheap. My rent was due next week. “What’s your address?” I asked.



* * *



SARAH SENT ME TO a location in Minneapolis. “It’s not going to look like an office,” she warned, and she was correct: it just looked like a house. I pulled up and pulled out my phone to text her to be sure, but she was already out and waving at me. I put my phone away and followed her inside.

Sarah was younger than me, a white woman with light brown hair that some areas (not Minnesota) would say was blond, in a long braid down her back. The living room looked a little like it had been staged by a real estate company, with cheap but pristine furniture. “Have a seat,” Sarah said, waving me at the fake leather sofa. “I’m going to get myself some tea. Can I offer you any?”

“No, thank you,” I said.

“Coffee, then? Or how about a homemade soda? We just got one of those gadgets for the office that makes homemade soda, I’d love to show it off.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Do you like citrus flavors?”

“Sounds good,” I said.

She returned with a cup of tea and a short glass of soda, no ice. I sipped it politely—it was fine—and set it down. “So I’ve looked over your resume,” she said. “One thing that caught my eye was that you volunteered in Haiti?”

Doctors don’t usually put their resumes up on LinkedIn—I’d done it on my lawyer’s advice, ahead of the trial. “I did a residency rotation there, with a medical nonprofit,” I said. “I’ve been back a few times with a group that specializes in repair of obstetric fistulas.”

Sarah leaned forward with interest. “I knew another doctor who went there who said she learned all sorts of things doctors here generally don’t know how to do. Like how to do spinal anesthesia.”

“Spinal anesthesia is actually pretty straightforward, but I wouldn’t be able to do it for home births,” I said, a little confused as to why she was bringing this up.

“Oh, of course not,” she said. “I just thought it was interesting—doctors in the US tend to be so specialized. Can you tell me a little about your care philosophy?”

I started to talk about autonomy in choices, listening to my patients, empowerment. With horror, I realized that I was slurring my words. What the hell, I thought. I sat up a little straighter and took a deep breath, only to feel a wave of nausea.

“Oh my God,” I said. The words didn’t come out properly, and I thought, They’re going to think I’m drunk. “I’m feeling sick. Is there—is there a bathroom?”

“Just sit there a minute,” Sarah said, calmly, her hands cupped around her tea. “I’m sure it’ll pass.”

I’m not sick.

There’s something in the soda.

I scrabbled for my cell phone, thinking, I need to call for help, I need to call—

The phone dropped from my fingers like wet spaghetti off a shaky fork.



* * *



THE WORLD DIDN’T GO dark, exactly; it went blurry. I was going through a list of likely drugs in my head, trying to figure out what they’d given me—Rohypnol? Chloral hydrate?—and realized I was doing it out loud. I felt the sting of an injection and my body went even more limp than it already had. Muscle relaxant, I thought, or maybe another sedative. “She can still hear us,” Sarah’s voice said.

The blast of cold outside air and then the musty smell of a car heater. A too-cheerful radio voice talking about college basketball scores. The smell of burgers and fries.

A gas station, neon lit, sometime in the night.

I wasn’t playing helpless at first, but by the time we arrived at the gas station, I was sufficiently conscious to think about trying to escape. I didn’t know where we were, exactly, just that this was a gas station, so there might be other people around, and the car was stopped. I tried to look around, to figure out what I needed to do to escape my … I didn’t want to say the word kidnappers in my head, but obviously I knew that’s what they were.

I was in the back seat of a minivan, and no one else was in the minivan with me. I unbuckled my seat belt; that was obviously the first step. The door was a sliding door, and it didn’t move when I tried to open it. I looked around for the unlock button; it didn’t do anything. Would the window roll down? Could I escape that way?

“Sarah! You’d better hurry!” I heard a man’s voice call from outside the car.

The door slid open. Even drugged up, I was determined to fight. I kicked out with my feet as hard as I could and heard an oof as I connected, and then I flung myself out of the car to try to run. Only, my feet weren’t quite listening to me and instead of running, I found myself falling.

The asphalt was rough against my face and I struggled to push myself to sitting, but my body didn’t seem to know up from down. My voice still worked, at least. “Help!” I yelled. “Help! I’m being kidnapped, help!”