“Well, let’s just don’t talk too much about it, Sister. We’re going down there at ten o’clock and see the man. Look what’s in the newspaper. Those sapsuckers in Washington are crazy as loons. They’re fixing to drag us into a land war in Asia. Old Douglas MacArthur warned them about that, but nobody would listen to him. First Korea and now this mess in Vietnam.”

“Let me see.” I took the newspaper from him and pretended to be interested in the foreign news. He was always preaching to people about foreign affairs. “We ought to divide the world up with Russia,” he was always saying. “Let them boss half and we’ll boss the other half. That’s the way it’s going to end up anyway so we ought to go on and do it.”

At nine o’clock we got into a taxi and were driven through the streets of Houston. We went to a tall office building in the center of town and got out and went up on an elevator to a doctor’s office that looked like a hundred I had seen before. A waiting room with Currier and Ives prints on the wall and magazines on tables. My father went in and talked to the doctor, then they called me in and the three of us sat around a desk and the doctor asked me questions. He was a short nervous man with light-colored hair and a distracted smile.

“I’m getting a divorce anyway,” I said. “My husband forced me to make love to him. I’ve already had two cesareans. I can’t have any more. What would happen to my babies if I died? I hope you’re going to do this. I can’t tell you what it meant to me to get your name. I think you’re a real humanitarian to do this for people. I know people don’t understand that yet. But there will be a time when people know what a service you are doing for mankind.”

“Honey,” my father said. “Just answer his questions.”

“When was your last period?” The doctor handed me a calendar and I picked out a date and pointed to it. Then the nurse came into the room and handed me a glass of water and two white pills. I swallowed them and looked at my daddy. He was sitting with his hands on his knees. He was with me. He was there. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. “Uncle James said we could trust this man.”