Dr. Larch had performed the first abortion with Nurse Edna's assistance; Larch had asked Homer to check on the contractions of the expectant mother from Damariscotta. Nurse Angela was assisting Larch with the second abortion, but Dr. Larch had insisted on Homer's presence, too. He had supervised Homer's ether application; Dr. Larch had such a light touch with ether that the first abortion patient had been speaking to Nurse Edna throughout the operation and yet the woman hadn't {237} felt a thing. She talked and talked: a kind of airy list of non sequiturs to which Nurse Edna responded with enthusiasm.

Homer had put the second woman out, and he was clearly cross with himself for sedating the woman more heavily than he'd meant to. 'Better safe than sorry,' Nurse Angela said encouragingly-her hands on the woman's pale temples, which she instinctively smoothed with her soft hands. Larch had asked Homer to insert the vaginal speculum, and Homer now stared darkly at the woman's shiny cervix, at the puckered opening of the uterus. Bathed in a clear mucus, it had an aura ol: morning mist, of dew, of the pink clouds of a sunrise gathered around it. If Wally Worthington had peered through the speculum, he would have imagined that he wa.s viewing an apple in some pale, ethereal phase of its development. But what is that little opening? he might have wondered.

'How's it look?' Larch asked.

'It looks fine,' said Homer Wells. To his surprise, Larch handed him the cervical stabilizer-a simple instrument. It was for grabbing the upper lip of the cervix and stabilizing the cervix, which was then sounded for depth and dilated.

'Didn't you get what I told you?' Homer asked Dr. Larch.

'Do you disapprove of touching the cervix, Homer?' Larch asked.

Homer reached for the lip of the woman's cervix and seized it, correctly. I won't touch a single dilator, he thought. He won't make me.

But Larch didn't even ask. He said, 'Thank you, that's a help.' He sounded and dilated the cervix himself. When he asked for the curette, Homer handed it to him.

'You remember that I asked you if it was necessary for me to even be here?' Homer asked quietly. 'I said that, if it was all the same to you, I'd just as soon not watch. You remember?' {238}

'It's necessary for you to watch,' said Wilbur Larch, who listened to the scrape of his curette; his breathing was shallow but regular.

'I believe,' said Dr. Larch, 'that you should participate to the degree of watching, of lending some amateur assistance, of understanding the process, of learning how to perform it-whether you ever choose to perform it or not.

'Do I interfere?' Larch asked. 'When absolutely helpless women tell me that they simply can't have an abortion, that they simply must go through with having another-and yet another-orphan: do I interfere? Do I?

'I do not,' he said, scraping. 'I deliver it, Goddamn it. And do you think there are largely happy histories for the babies born here? Do you think the futures of these orphans are rosy? Do you?

'You don't,' Larch said. 'But do I resist? I do not. I do not even recommend. I give them what they want: an orphan or an abortion,' Larch said.

'Well, I'm an orphan,' said Homer Wells.

'Do I insist that we have the same ideas? I do not,' Dr. Larch said.

'You wish it,' said Homer Wells.

'The women who come to me are not helped by wishes,' said Wilbur Larch. He put down the mediumsized curette and held out his hand for a smaller one, which Homer Wells had ready for him and handed to him automatically.

'I want to be of use,' Homer began, but Dr. Larch wouldn't listen.

'Then you are not permitted to hide,' Larch said. 'You are not permitted to look away. It was you who told me, correctly, that if you were going to be of use, if you were going to participate at all, you had to know everything. Nothing could be kept from you. I learned that from you! Well, you're right,' Larch said. 'You were right,' he added.

'It's alive,' said Homer Wells. 'That's the only thing.' {239}

'You are involved in the process,' said Dr. Larch. 'Birth,on occasion, and interrupting it-on other occasions. Your disapproval is noted. It is legitimate. You are welcome to disapprove. But you are not welcome to be ignorant, to look the other way, to be unable to perform-should you change your mind.'

'I won't change my mind,' said Homer Wells.

'All right, then,' said Dr. Larch, 'should you, against your will, but for the life of the mother, for examjple… should you have to perform.'

I'm not a doctor,' said Homer Wells.

'You are not a complete physician,'said Dr. Larch. 'And you could study with me for another ten years, and you still wouldn't be complete. But regarding all the known complications arising in the area of the female organs of generation, regarding those organs-you can be a complete surgeon. Period. You are already more competent than the most competent midwife, damn it,' said Wilbur Larch.

Homer had anticipated the extraction of the small curette; he handed Larch the first of several sterile vulval pads.

'I will never make you do what you disapprove of, Homer,' said Dr. Larch, 'but you will watch, you will know how to do what I do. Otherwise, what good arn I?'he asked. 'Aren't we put on this earth to work? At least to learn, at least to watch? What do you think it means, to be of use?' he asked. 'Do you think you should be left alone? Do you think I should let you be a Melony?'

'Why don't you teach her how to do it?' Homer Wells asked Dr. Larch.

Now there's a question, Nurse Angela thought, but the woman's head moved slightly in Nurse Angela's hands; the woman moaned, and Nurse Angela touched her lips to the woman's ear. 'You're just fine, dear,' she whispered. 'It's all over now. You just rest.'

'Do you see what I mean, Homer?' Dr. Larch asked.

'Right,' Homer said.

'But you don't agree, do you?'Larch asked.

{240}

'Right again,' said Homer Wells.

You damn sullen self-centered self-pitying arrogant untested know-nothing teen-ager! thought Wilbur Larch, but instead of any of that, he said to Homer Wells, 'Perhaps you're having second thoughts about becoming a doctor.'

'I never really had a first thought about that,' Homer said. 'I never said I wanted to be a doctor.'

Larch looked at the blood on the gauze-the right amount of blood, he thought-and when he held out his hand for a fresh pad, Homer had one ready. 'You don't want to be a doctor, Homer?' Dr. Larch asked.

'Right,' said Homer Wells. 'I don't think so.'

'You've not had much opportunity to look at other things,' Larch said philosophically; his heart was aching. 'It's my fault, I know, if I've made medicine so unattractive.'

Nurse Angela, who was much tougher than Nurse Edna, felt that she might cry.

'Nothing's your fault,' Homer said quickly.

Wilbur Larch checked the bleeding again. 'There's not much to do here,' he said abruptly. 'If you wouldn't mind just staying with her until she's out of the ether-you did give her rather a wallop,' he added, looking under the woman's eyelids. 'I can deliver the Damariscotta woman, when she's ready. I didn't realize you didn't like the whole business,' Larch said.

'That's not true,' Homer said. 7 can deliver the Damariscotta woman. I'd be happy to deliver her.' But Wilbur Larch had turned away from the patient and left the operating room.

Nurse Angela glanced quickly at Homer; it was a fairly neutral look, certainly not withering, or even faintly condemning, but it wasn't sympathetic either (or even friendly, thought Homer Wells). She went after Dr. Larch, leaving Homer with the patient making her way out of the ether.

Homer looked at the spotting on the pad; he felt the {241} woman's hand graze his wrist as she said groggily, I'll wait here while you get the car, honey.'