Evelyn softens, takes a long sip of her drink. “Alice came to me with a proposal today.”
“Mmm, bad timing. You’re already married.”
“Ha, ha, yes, I know. But seriously, she was asking me to join her at a meeting of an underground abortion network. It’s called Jane.”
“Jane?” Tom asks.
“Jane.” Evelyn takes another large swig of wine.
“Huh. What are they doing that you aren’t?”
“I’m not sure, really. Sticking their necks out unnecessarily. That’s what I told Alice, anyway. Sounds like a whisper network of sorts, but I don’t have much detail.”
“Where’s the harm in going to get that detail?”
“Mm?”
“Go to the meeting. There’s nothing to lose, right?”
Evelyn considers for a moment, then shakes her head. “No. Not tonight, anyway. I need time to think.” She pauses, then taps her finger on the side of her glass. “Can a girl get a top-up?”
Tom unfolds his long limbs and retrieves the bottle from the counter beside the stove, sets it down beside Evelyn before turning his attention back to meal preparation. Evelyn pours a little too much into her glass, then leans forward, settling her elbows onto the island.
“Alice is adamant that we can be doing more than we already are, but”—Evelyn shakes her head—“there’s a lot to lose if we’re found out.”
Tom is quiet for a while, though Evelyn can tell he’s thinking it over. “You remember the Parliament Hill protest?” he asks.
“Of course.”
“Do you remember the conversation we had the night before you left?”
She can see where he’s going with this. In medical school, his grades were always a couple of percentage points higher than hers. It was an ongoing joke at the time, but she’s always felt like Tom benefits from a slight edge. He’s often just one step ahead of her. It’s a trait that makes him such an attentive husband, though. He anticipates her needs before she’s fully aware of them herself.
“You thought I was worrying too much,” he says. “And that you’d be a hypocrite for not going to the protest. You basically told me that if you’re doing this, you’re doing this, right?”
Evelyn holds his intense gaze with her own.
“Well,” Tom says, “it would seem that other women are doing it, too. Maybe the need is coming out of the shadows a bit, and that’s a good thing for everyone. It’s illegal, full stop, so there will always be a risk, I grant you. But if more women are standing up to the illegality, fighting against it… why not join them? Maybe there is safety in numbers, in a way. You told me they couldn’t arrest you all at the Hill protest. Not enough handcuffs, right?”
Evelyn takes another long draught from her glass, eyeing her irritatingly sensible husband. She nods again. “Not enough handcuffs.”
* * *
Evelyn and Alice wait for their after-hours appointment to arrive on a damp Tuesday evening. They got takeout from the Chinese food place two blocks away and sat on the floor of the waiting room, eating off the tiny coffee table.
“So,” Alice begins, popping a chunk of broccoli into her mouth with the short wooden chopsticks. “Have you given any more consideration to the Janes?” She hasn’t mentioned it at all since their first conversation a few weeks ago.
Evelyn keeps her eyes on her noodles. “A little bit, yes.”
“And?”
“I spoke with Tom about it. But I’m still not sure.”
Alice sighs. “Okay.”
They sit in a sticky silence for another five minutes, each eating faster than they normally would. When they’ve finished, Evelyn stacks the takeout containers and walks them over to the reception desk garbage.
“Our patient’ll be here in ten. Let’s get prepped,” she says.
Alice straightens, stretches her arms over her head. “What’s her name?”
“Celeste.”
Half an hour later, Celeste is on the surgery table with her socked feet in the stirrups. She’s the youngest patient they’ve ever had. Only sixteen.
“How are you doing, there, Celeste?” Evelyn asks, fixing her surgical mask into place and pulling on her gloves. “Do you understand the procedure as Alice has explained it to you? You understand what we’re about to do?”
Celeste nods, and the tears start to fall, as they often do right before Evelyn begins her work. Alice rushes over with some tissues and encourages Celeste to blow her nose.
“Sorry,” Celeste says.
Evelyn can’t count the number of times a patient has unnecessarily apologized to her in this room. “That’s okay. Do you need a minute?”
“No, I’m okay. To be honest, I’m just grateful. I had a friend—” She swallows with difficulty. “I had a friend who died last year because she got pregnant. She comes from a really religious family and she panicked and thought she could get rid of it by drinking… drinking bleach. I thought I was really careful about not getting pregnant. And then when it happened, I just thought, Oh my God, I’m going to die now.”
Alice’s wide eyes meet Evelyn’s over the tops of their masks. The room is silent. A car passes by on the wet road outside the window.
Celeste takes a shaky breath. “I just figured, if I didn’t want to be pregnant anymore, that I’d have to do one of those things you hear about, you know, like using a knitting needle. Or throwing myself down the fucking stairs. Sorry. My mom says I swear too much. But yeah, I called my doctor to just ask if there was anything I could do, and she wouldn’t talk about it, but she gave me your number.”
Evelyn’s brow furrows. This isn’t the first time they’ve gotten a referral from another physician’s office. She’s glad, in a way, that they know what she does and have the decency to refer their patients to her, but she resents the fact that they aren’t willing to step the hell up themselves.
“Anyway, I really thought I was probably going to die,” Celeste says again, her watery eyes reflecting the bright lights of the overhead halogens. “So, thank you. I just…” Her lip trembles. “I just wish I had known about you before Linda got pregnant. I can’t—”
Alice steps forward with a cool cloth, brushes Celeste’s hair back off her forehead.
At the end of the table, Evelyn is speechless. She tries to clear her head of the uncomfortable truths that she’s beginning to fear may end up dictating her career.
“Okay, Celeste,” she says gently to her patient. “Take some deep breaths and hold Alice’s hand. This will all be over soon.”
* * *
“A church?” Evelyn asks Alice, stopping short on the sidewalk outside the ornate building. “Seems a bit… unlikely.”
Immediately after they put Celeste in a cab on Tuesday night, Evelyn asked Alice to find out about the next meeting of the Janes. Alice engaged her grapevine and found out there was a meeting on Friday evening. They took the streetcar over together after veggie sandwiches and milkshakes at Fran’s Diner.
Alice inspects the numbers on the red-brick exterior. “It’s the right address. Besides, it’s a United church. Can’t be that bad, right? Let’s go in and see.”