It was some sort of office, but not for a doctor. I was led into a room where a second man was waiting. He looked like he was on his way to a dinner party: he smelled like Brylcreem, and he wore a brown suit jacket with a gold tie, a white dress shirt, and metal cuff links shaped like birds. After I gave the first man the money, the second man told me to lie down. There was a wooden table covered in white paper, a tray with cotton gauze, and medical tools beside an ashtray containing a lit cigar.

I lay at one end of the table with my legs dangling over the sides. The cuff-link man hung his jacket on a hook on the door. He told me to relax, but I couldn’t. He inserted a speculum. I asked if he was going to use anesthesia, but he shook his head. He picked up what looked like a long pair of scissors. I must have made a noise, because he told me to close my eyes, but of course I couldn’t, and anyway the man only used the scissor-thing to pick up a wad of cotton from the tray. He dipped the cotton in a liquid and used it to clean me on the inside. He told me he was doing something “to make the baby come out at home, just like a miscarriage,” and if I wasn’t going to shut my eyes I should at least shut my mouth. He had rolled up only one shirtsleeve. The cold cuff link at the end of his left arm kept brushing against my thigh while his right cuff link winked at me from the tray.

There was a red rubber tube like a long straw, with what looked like a wire inside it. When the man slid the tube inside me, it felt like being pinched, which didn’t hurt too much. Then he pulled the wire out and the tube stayed in, the end of it dangling out from between my legs. Next, more cotton. I suddenly pictured Mother stuffing the Christmas turkey, spooning breadcrumbs into the black hole of its body. This made me giggle in a nervous, terrible way that the man didn’t like. “You think this is funny?” he asked as he worked. “You do this for fun?” I shook my head. I was afraid I would throw up if I tried to talk. I looked away from the man and back toward the metal tray. The right cuff link had fallen onto the floor.