23.
~ Ariadne looked around the tenement flat with an uneasy, quivering feeling. It was a simple set of rooms that the doctor, Eames didn't know his name, rented for this use. There was a little kitchen and bathroom. The front room had only a large, sturdy table, covered with a clean but stained butcher's tarp. In one corner, was a twin bed with a screen for privacy.
"So, less than three months late?" the doctor asked as she washed his hands and set a pot to boil.
"Yes." Ariadne said nervously as Eames stayed next to her. She had been too frightened to go here alone, and Eames, ever the faithful friend, agreed to accompany her.
"Have you felt any movement?" the doctor asked as he guided her to sit on top of the table.
She felt very nervous as the doctor's hands felt her pulse and motioned for her to take her dress off. Eames obligingly turning away for some privacy.
"Movement?" Ariadne asked as she striped down to her under dress.
"Have you felt the child move yet?" the doctor asked.
She hadn't heard of that before. Her mind not thinking about the burden inside her moving.
"No." she said feeling woefully under educated about these things.
"Good." the doctor said and guided her to lie down on the table.
Ariadne was glad Eames was in the room just now. She wasn't sure she liked this doctor with no name who rented a sparse railroad flat in an over crowded part of the city.
He felt her belly, harder than normal and Ariadne winced slightly.
"Any cramping?" he asked.
"No." she said.
"Just the morning sickness." he nodded.
"Yes." she said.
"Has a doctor examined you? Did he say he heard a heart beat?"
"I was examined. He didn't say anything about a heart beat." Ariadne said anxiously.
"Very good. Now, you know that this is illegal, but I do it because it's necessary." he explained. "Almost every day I get a woman with six or seven kids already and can't handle another one. Or, worse, I get some poor girl who was taken advantage of by some boy and finds herself in trouble. It's even worse when the fiend behind that crime is a family member."
Ariadne felt nervous about the ideas that the doctor was putting in her head.
"Well, you'll have to stay here for a few hours until I'm certain you've recovered." he said. I can tell you know, it will me uncomfortable. You'll have to keep quite because if the police find out, you'll be arrested."
"I'll wait outside." Eames said as the doctor went to the kitchen and started to take out shinny and scary looking tools.
Ariadne had no idea what they were for. Things that looked like a large fork and something that seemed nothing more that clean bayonet sword.
"Start undressing. I've a gown for you to use." the doctor said as he placed a bucket by the table.
"What's that for?" Ariadne asked as cold, ice like fear gripped her belly.
"For what come out." the doctor explained.
"Wait." she said feeling panicked as the the water in the pot started to boil. She felt sick again. She could hear a baby crying down the hall and the room was starting to spin.
"What do you mean, what comes out? What's going to happen?" she breathed.
The air was too tight. Too warm and it wouldn't start spinning.
"Change into the gown and lie down. By the end of the day, you'll be right as rain." the doctor said.
"No." she whispered as he pulled the instruments out of the hot water and laid them neatly on a towel.
"It's alright." the doctor said worriedly. "It hurts a lot less than labor, I promise you. Then you won't have to think about it anymore."
"Eames!" she cried.
"Mrs, everything will be alright." the doctor said.
A baby was crying somewhere in the tenement rooms on this floor and Ariadne wanted to run out the door. She was climbing off the table as the doctor was trying ask her to calm down.
"Eames!" she sobbed picking up her dress and starting to cover herself. The cabbie was quick to rush in.
"What happened?" Eames asked forming a barrier between the vial doctor and his patient.
"I want to go home. I... I changed my mind." Ariadne panted.
"That will still be ten dollars!" the doctor growled.
Ariadne searched her beaded hand bag and pulled free the cash. She felt sick as the baby down the hall was still crying for attention.
"We'll go home now." Eames was whispering when the police barged into the tiny rooms.
~ "There was no evidence of pregnancy, my god man." the doctor was explaining to the officer in charge. A tall man with blond hair and once youthful features.
"It's officer Cobb." the man said as Ariadne sat nervously on the bed.
"This is a simple and safe procedure to bring on the ministration. There was no reason to think she was actually pregnant at all. You can not arrest me." the doctor was saying.
"Are you the husband?" officer Cobb nodded to Eames.
Eames looked surprised as he tried to stay in a corner and out of sight.
"No, sir." he said.
"Then what were you doing here?" Cobb asked as the doctor was being taken away in handcuffs.
"I was driving her here." Eames said.
"I asked him to stay." Ariadne told him.
"Where is your husband?" Cobb asked coldly.
Ariadne pursed her lips tightly shut and refused to look at the once handsome police man. His face could be counted as beautiful, but the job and seeing too many hard things had made his good looks grow pale and worn.
"Mrs. I don't want to have to take you in." Cobb sighed.
"Then take me in." Ariadne snapped. "I haven't done anything wrong. It's like that doctor said, he was just trying to regulate my cycle."
"With a large knife and forceps?" Cobb argued.
Ariadne felt her heart beat faster.
"You realize Doctor Evens there has been performing abortions all over the city? That five women have bleed to death while under his care? That another dozen of them have succumbed to infections and toxic shock?" Cobb said darkly.
Ariadne refused to look at him.
"We did you a favor, Mrs. Stopping that man before he hurt you." Cobb added as another police officer was questioning Eames. How did the driver know about this doctor? Was he aware a fifteen year old girl died last night after being 'regulated' by the doctor?
Ariadne felt her stomach want to lurch as the baby down the hall was crying again.
She knew it was only a matter of time before they found out who her husband was and send for him. In fact, it only took a few hours of waiting in the same cell she had been in last time. The police got her name from the tag Mrs. Marsh stitched in her coat. From that, they were easily able to find her arrest record and summon her husband.
Ariadne wasn't sure what they would tell him, or what would happen when he found out. She felt the air grow cold when she heard Arthur's deep, angry voice ask for her at the front desk. She had been gratefully moved out of the cell for a few hours when a group of rowdy drunks were brought in. Officer Cobb thankfully having her sit on a bench while she waited for her husband to claim her.
Perhaps unknown to both men, Ariadne could hear their entire conversation.
"There's a reason why the practice is illegal Mr. Brandon." Cobb was saying. "It's too dangerous and poorly regulated. These con men call themselves doctors and insert unclean and dangerous objects inside to abort the pregnancy. It's enough to kill the baby, the woman can become infertile and even die."
"There has to be a mistake. My wife was visiting her mother." Arthur sighed.
"Unless there is another Ariadne Brandon who was also arrested for protesting outside a private citizen's house earlier this week." Cobb shrugged.
Ariadne felt like she wanted to be sick again.
She swallowed hard as Arthur and Cobb came around the corner to the waiting room. Her husband's face was darkened and angry looking.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
"Yes." she said sheepishly.
"Will there be charges brought on her?" Arthur asked Cobb.
"No." Cobb said as both men looked judgingly at Ariadne. "We can't prove she's actually pregnant and so we can't charge her with anything but seeking medical treatment. The doctor on the other hand..."
Ariadne didn't look at her husband as Cobb explained about the deaths believed to be cause by the doctor.
"Mrs. Brandon." Arthur said at last.
She took a long time to find her courage and looked at him.
His face was calmer now and less lined.
"Let's go home." he said.