The End of the Road

  We went outside. Rennie bounded gracelessly ahead of me down the sidewalk, and opened the car door before I could do it for her. She sniffed a little, but held back the tears. I drove out the highway toward Vineland.

  “This really turned into a mess, didn’t it?” I said sympathetically. She stared out the window without answering. “I’m terribly sorry that any of it happened.”

  She gave no clue to her feelings. The thing that I was sharply conscious of was her loneliness in what had happened and what was about to happen—the fundamental, last-analysis loneliness of all human beings in critical situations. It is never entirely true, but it’s more apparent at some times than at others, and just then I was very much aware of her as apart from Joe, myself, values, motives, the world, or history—a solitary animal in a tight spot. And Joe, home, washing the dishes. Lonely animals! Into no cause, resolve, or philosophy can we cram so much of ourselves that there is no part of us left over to wonder and be lonely.

  “This fellow’s really a fine doctor,” I said a minute later.

  Rennie looked at me uncomprehendingly, as if I’d spoken in a foreign language.

  “Rennie, do you want me to take you home?”

  “If you do I’ll shoot myself,” she said hoarsely.

  When we came to the end of the driveway leading to the farmhouse, I cut out the headlights and drove quietly up into the yard. I explained to Rennie that the Doctor didn’t want me to disturb his patients, but I’m afraid the theatricality of it did her nerves no good. As I ushered her into the farmhouse I felt her trembling. Mrs. Dockey and the Doctor were waiting for us in the reception room. They both scrutinized Rennie frankly, and some contempt was evident in Mrs. Dockey’s expression.

  “How do you do, Mrs. Morgan,” the Doctor said. “We can begin right away. Mrs. Dockey will take you to the Treatment Room.

  Wordlessly Mrs. Dockey walked toward the Treatment Room, and Rennie, after a second’s uncertainty, jumped to follow that formidable woman. My eyes watered. I didn’t know how to go about distinguishing compassion from love: perhaps it was only compassion I felt for her.

  “Did you bring the check and the bankbook?” demanded the Doctor.

  “Yes.” I handed them to him. On the next-to-last check stub the balance read two hundred eighty-seven dollars and thirty-two cents, and the next check was made out to that amount and signed. “I didn’t know who to pay it to.”

  “I’ll write that in. Very well, come along. I very much want you to watch this, for your own good.”

  “No, I’ll wait out here.”

  “If you want the abortion done,” the Doctor said, “then come along and watch it.”

  I went, most unwillingly. The Doctor donned his white jacket, and we went into the Treatment Room. Rennie was already on the examination table with a sheet up to her neck. I was afraid she’d object to my presence, but she gave no sign of approval or disapproval. Mrs. Dockey stood by impassively. The Doctor washed his hands and drew up the sheet from Rennie’s abdomen.

  “Well, let’s see if you’re pregnant, first.”

  When his fingers touched her to begin the examination, she jumped involuntarily. A minute or so later, when the Doctor slipped his hands into rubber gloves, greased the fingers, and began the internal examination, she started sobbing.

  “Now stop that,” the Doctor said irritably. “You’ve had children before.” After a while he asked, “How old do you think the fetus is?” Rennie made no answer, and he didn’t ask her anything else.

  “All right, we may as well get to work. Hand me a dilator and a curette, please,” he said to Mrs. Dockey, and she went to the sterilizer nearby to get them. The surgical instruments clinked in the sterilizer, and Rennie’s sobbing became looser and louder. She twisted a little on the examination table and even began to raise herself.

  “Lie down and be quiet!” the Doctor ordered sharply. “You’ll wake everybody up.”

  Rennie lay back again and closed her eyes. I began to be sick as soon as the Doctor accepted the bright curette from Mrs. Dockey; I resolved to keep my eyes on Rennie’s face instead of the operation.

  “Fasten the straps,” the Doctor said to Mrs. Dockey. “You should have done that before.” A wide leather strap was secured across Rennie’s diaphragm. “Now, then, hold her right leg, and Horner, you hold the other one. Since we don’t go in much for obstetrics here I didn’t bother to buy a table with stirrups on it.”

  Rennie’s legs were drawn up and spread wide in the lithotomy position. Mrs. Dockey gripped one, pressing the calf against the thigh, and I, very reluctantly, held the other.

  “I’m sorry, Rennie,” I said.

  Rennie whipped her head and moaned. A few moments later—I would guess that the Doctor had applied his curette to begin scraping the uterus, but I wasn’t looking to find out—she began screaming, and tried to kick free.

  “Hold those legs!” the Doctor snapped. “She’s cutting herself to pieces! Shut her up, Horner!”

  “Rennie—” I pleaded, but I couldn’t say anything else. She was terrified; I think she no longer recognized me. Her face swam through my tears. For an instant she relaxed, fighting for control, but almost at once—another scrape of the curette?—she screamed again, and struggled to raise herself.

  “Okay,” the Doctor said disgustedly to Mrs. Dockey. “The curette’s out. Let go of her leg and shut her up.”

  Mrs. Dockey pushed Rennie’s head down and clamped a hand over her mouth. Rennie kicked wildly with her free leg; the Doctor jumped clear, upsetting his stool, and cursed. I inadvertently glanced away and saw blood on the sheet under Rennie’s abdomen, blood on her upper thighs, blood on the Doctor’s gloves. The vomitus rushed to my mouth, and I was barely able to swallow it down.

  “We can’t stop now,” the Doctor said to Mrs. Dockey. “She’s already hemorrhaging. Keep her quiet for a minute, and I’ll get an anesthetic.”

  I began to catch Rennie’s fear. She lay quiet again for a moment, and her eyes pleaded with me.

  “Take your hand off,” I told Mrs. Dockey. “She won’t holler.” Mrs. Dockey removed her hand warily, ready to clap it back at once.

  “Jake, I’m scared,” Rennie cried softly, trembling all over. “He’s hurting me. I don’t like being scared, but I can’t help it.”

  “Are you sure it’s too late to quit, Doctor?” I called across the room, where he was fitting a rubber hose to two tanks of gas on a dolly.

  “No use to now,” he said. “I’d be finished by this time if she’d cut out her foolishness.”

  “Do you want to go home, Rennie?”

  “Yes,” she wept. “But let him finish. I want to hold still, but I can’t.”

  “We’ll take care of that,” the Doctor said, no longer annoyed. He wheeled the gas tanks over to the head of the table. “The way you were jumping around I could very well have punctured your uterus. Relax, now.”

  Rennie closed her eyes. The Doctor handed the mask to Mrs. Dockey, who with some relish held it down over Rennie’s nose and mouth. The Doctor immediately opened valves, and the gases made a soft rush into the mask.

  “Breathe deeply,” the Doctor said, watching the pressure gauges.

  Rennie inhaled deeply two, three, five times, as though anxious to lose consciousness. Her trembling subsided, and her legs began to go limp.

  “Check the pulse,” the Doctor told Mrs. Dockey.

  But as she reached for Rennie’s wrist with her free hand, Rennie’s stomach jerked inwards, and she vomited explosively into the mask. A second later a horrible sucking sound came from her throat, and another. Her eyes half opened briefly.

  “Bronchoscope!” the Doctor said sharply, jerking the mask away. Rennie’s face was blue: the sucking noise stopped. “Take the strap off, Horner! Quick!”

  I tore at the strap with my fingers; couldn’t see it clearly for the water in my eyes. Another gurgling explosion came from Rennie’s chest.

  “Bronchoscope!” the Doctor shoute
d.

  Mrs. Dockey ran back to the table with a long tube-like instrument, which the Doctor snatched from her hands and began to insert into Rennie’s mouth. The vomitus was all over her face, and a small puddle of it lay under her head, in her hair. Her face darkened further; her eyes opened, and the pupils rolled senselessly. My head reeled.

  “Get oxygen ready!” ordered the Doctor. “Horner, take the pulse!”

  I grabbed Rennie’s wrist. Maybe I felt one beat—anyway, no more after that.

  “I don’t feel any!” I cried.

  “No,” he said, less excitedly. He withdrew the bronchoscope from her windpipe and laid it aside. “Never mind the oxygen, Mrs. Dockey.” Mrs. Dockey came over unhurriedly to look.

  And so this is the picture I have to carry with me: the Treatment Room dark except for the one ceiling floodlight that illuminated the table; Rennie dead there now, face mottled blue-black, eyes wide, mouth agape; the vomitus running from a pool in her mouth to a pool under her head; the great black belt lying finally unbuckled across the sheet over her chest and stomach; the lower part of her body nude and bloody, her legs trailing limply and clumsily off the end of the examination table.

  “So, that’s that,” the Doctor sighed.

  “How’d it happen?” Mrs. Dockey asked.

  “She must have eaten a big meal before she came out here,” he said. “She should’ve known better. Vomited it up from the ether and then aspirated it into her lungs. What a mess this is!”

  I was stunned past weeping. Shock set in almost at once, and I was forced to find a chair before I fell.

  “Straighten up, Horner; this won’t do.”

  I couldn’t reply. I was fighting nausea and faintness.

  “Go lie down on a couch in the reception room,” he ordered, “and prop your feet up. It’ll pass. We’ll clean her up, and then you’ll have to take her out of here.”

  “Where?” I cried. “What am I going to do?”

  “Why, take her back home. Don’t you think her husband wants the body?”

  I stood up and lurched for the door, but before reaching it I fell flat. When I revived I was lying in the reception room, and the Doctor was standing nearby.

  “Swallow these,” he said, giving me two pills and a glass of water.

  “Now, then, pay attention. This is serious, but it’ll be all right if you keep hold of yourself. We took her out to your car. Now don’t do anything silly like trying to dispose of her secretly. I’ve called the husband and explained that she’d be awhile coming out of anesthesia. The best thing for you to do is take her right to her house and tell the husband she’d dead. Be in a panic. Tell him she seemed all right until you got halfway home, and then she started vomiting and got strangled—the autopsy will pretty much bear that out. He’ll call the hospital ambulance, and they’ll discover the abortion, but that’s okay. You’ll be asked questions; that’s okay too. Don’t tell them where it was done until tomorrow; after that it won’t matter. I’m leaving tonight with a few of the patients in the station wagon, and Mrs. Dockey will stay here to handle things. The house and phone are in her name, and she’ll say she’s one of my patients who set up the home. You don’t know my name, and she’ll give them the wrong one and plead ignorance of the whole business. They can’t hold you or her either, and they won’t be able to find me. Here, take this.” He gave me an envelope. “That’s your bus fare and enough money to last you until Wednesday. Our plans are the same. Meet Mrs. Dockey and the other patients Wednesday morning at the Greyhound station, and she’ll tell you then if there has to be any change in our plans. Do you feel able to drive now?”

  I couldn’t answer: all my grief had returned in a rush with consciousness.

  “You look all right,” he said curtly. “This thing was everybody’s fault, Horner. Let it be everybody’s lesson. Go on, now; get it over with.”

  The pills must have worked: when I stood up this time I didn’t feel faint. I went out to the car and got in. Rennie was lying curled up on the back seat, dressed, washed, her eyes closed. It was too big a thing to know what to think about it, to know how to feel. I drove mechanically back to the Morgans’ house.

  It was about eleven when I got there. The grounds and most of the house were dark, and there was no traffic on the highway. I rang the doorbell, and when Joe answered I said, “She’s dead, Joe.”

  It hit him like a club. He almost dropped, but caught himself and shoved his glasses back on his nose. Tears sprang into his eyes and ran at once down both cheeks.

  “Where is she?”

  “Out in the car. She vomited from the ether and strangled to death on it.”

  He walked past me out to the car. With difficulty he took her out of the back seat and carried her into the house, where he laid her gently on the daybed. Tears poured down his face, but he neither sobbed nor made any kind of noise. I stood by helplessly.

  “What’s the name of that doctor?”

  “I don’t know, Joe. I swear to Christ I’m not protecting him. I’ve been going to him, but he never told me his name. I’ll explain it to you when you want to hear it.”

  “Where does he operate?”

  “Out past Vineland. I’ll tell the police how to get there.”

  “You get out fast.”

  “All right,” I said, and left at once. It was not a time for protest, explanation, contrition, or anything else.

  I sat up through the rest of the night waiting to hear from either Joe or the police, but no one called. I wanted terribly to call the police, to call the hospital, to call Joe—but there was no reason to call anyone. What Joe was doing I had no idea; for all I knew he might have done nothing yet—might still be regarding her on the daybed, making up his mind. But I decided to let him take whatever action he wanted to—even killing me—without my interference, since he hadn’t wanted my help. Unless he requested differently, I intended to answer everybody’s questions truthfully, and I hoped the Doctor had been mistaken: I hoped with all my heart that there was some way in which I could be held legally responsible. I craved responsibility.

  But no one called. I was presented in the morning with the problem of deciding whether to go to school or not, and I decided to go. I couldn’t telephone Joe; perhaps someone at school would have heard some news.

  When I reached the college I went directly to Dr. Schott’s office on the pretext of looking for mail. Dr. Schott was in the outer office, along with Shirley and Dr. Carter, and it was apparent from their expressions that they’d heard of Rennie’s death.

  “Good morning,” I said, uncertain how I’d be received.

  “Good morning, Mr. Horner,” Dr. Schott said distractedly. “We’ve just heard a terrible thing! Joe Morgan’s wife died very suddenly last night!”

  “What?” I said, automatically feigning surprise and shock. So, it seemed that they didn’t suspect my part in her death: my feigned surprise was proper until I found out what was on Joe’s mind.

  “Terrible thing!” Dr. Schott repeated. “A young girl like that, and two little children!”

  “How did it happen, sir?”

  He blushed. “I’m not in a position to say, Mr. Horner. Joe naturally wasn’t too coherent on the phone just now… A shock, you know—terrible shock to him! I believe she died under anesthesia last night in the hospital. Some kind of emergency operation she was having.”

  “That’s awful, isn’t it?” I said, shaking my head.

  “Terrible thing!”

  “Shall I call the hospital?” Shirley asked him. “Maybe they’d have some information.”

  “No, no,” Dr. Schott said at once. “We mustn’t pry. I’ll telephone Joe later and ask if there’s anything I can do. I can’t believe it! Mrs. Morgan was such a fine, healthy young thing!”

  It was evident to me that he knew more than he was telling, but whatever Joe told him must not have involved me. Dr. Carter noticed my eyes watering and clapped me on the shoulder. It was known that I was some kind of friend
of the Morgans.

  “Ah, you never know,” he sighed. “The good die young, and maybe it’s best.”

  “What’ll he do about the children?” I asked.

  “Lord knows! It’s tragic!” It was not certain what exactly he referred to.

  “Well, let’s don’t say any more about it than we have to,” Dr. Carter advised, “until we hear more details. It’s a terrible shock to all of us.”

  I guessed that Dr. Schott had confided to him whatever information he had.

  So on Monday and Tuesday I taught my classes as usual, though in a great emptiness of anxiety. Tuesday afternoon Rennie was buried, but because the college could not declare a holiday on that account Dr. Schott was the only representative of the faculty at the funeral. A collection was taken by Miss Banning for a wreath from all of us: I gave a dollar from what little money the Doctor had given me. At the moment when Rennie was lowered into the earth, I believe I was explaining semicolons to my students.

  It was given out at the college that Mrs. Morgan had not died from anesthesia after all, but had strangled when a morsel of food lodged in her throat, and had succumbed en route to the hospital. This is what appeared in Tuesday’s newspaper as well—Dr. Schott must have been a power in the community. Moreover, it was rumored that Mr. Morgan had submitted his resignation; everyone agreed that the shock of his wife’s death was responsible—that Joe very understandably wanted a change of scenery for a while. The boys were being cared for by Mr. and Mrs. MacMahon, Rennie’s parents.

  But later Tuesday afternoon I heard the truth of the matter from Dr. Carter, who accosted me as I was leaving school for the last time.

  “I know you were a friend of Morgan’s,” he said confidentially, steering me away from a group of students nearby, “so you might as well know the truth about this business. I’m sure it’ll go no further.”

  “Of course not,” I assured him. “What is it?”

  “Dr. Schott and I were terribly shocked, Horner,” he said. “It seems that Mrs. Morgan really died from the effects of an illegal abortion someplace out in the country near here.”

  “No kidding!”