Chapter 121
PAUL AND I DID OUR best to avoid each other for the rest of the weekend, but on Monday morning, I drove him to the pier like usual. He kissed me on the cheek before he got out of the car and said he’d see me later, but I couldn’t even tilt my head in his direction, much less answer him.
“You know,” he said as he held open the passenger door, “I said I was sorry.”
I cleared my throat. “I know.”
He got out of the car and closed the door quietly behind him, and I pulled away from the pier, then took the Via Principe Amedeo past the compound and up the hill, where I parked on a side street a block or two from the clinic.
Sick hours were from nine to noon, and while I wasn’t sick, exactly, I reasoned that I also wasn’t well.
“Mrs. Archer,” said Doc Callaway when he entered the examination room with my very thin medical record in his hands.
Mark Callaway had arrived on the island the previous summer, fresh out of a residency program at Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego.
He was unmarried, which in that era probably meant he was gay.
“What brings you in here today?” he asked.
I hadn’t said a word, but already I was weeping. “I need to get on birth control pills.”
He looked at his notes, confused. “This is a sick visit?” he said.
“I know,” I said.
“You’re not sick?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, but the fact that I couldn’t get my breathing under control might have proved otherwise.
“For family planning, I’d recommend you make an appointment with one of our ob-gyn consultants. We’ve got a doc scheduled to fly in at the beginning of December, and I can check if there are any appointments left.”
“This can’t wait,” I said, a little more forcibly than I intended, and he studied my chart.
“Do you have children?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“But you’re married?”
“My husband works in Radiological Controls.”
If he knew Paul, he didn’t let on, which I appreciated. “How long have you been married?” he asked.
“About a year and a half.”
“And have you been using some other form of birth control until now?”
“A diaphragm,” I said, softly.
“You still have it?”
I nodded.
“And that can’t see you through until Consultant Day?”
“No,” I whispered, then started to really sob.
“Okay, okay,” he said, and wheeled over a metal stool so he was sitting directly in front of me. “Let’s calm down.”
“My husband—” I started, but I couldn’t continue. I could barely breathe. Callaway handed me a Kleenex, and I blew my nose, then tried again. “My husband wants kids.”
“Nothing wrong with that, right?”
I didn’t know how to say what needed to come next.
Back then my definition of rape was so narrow.
It was something that happened to women who were attacked in dark alleys by unknown assailants.
It wasn’t something that happened on dates or, God forbid, in marriages.
We had all sorts of other euphemisms for that.
Was a little excited, took things too far, got carried away.
In the vaguest possible terms, I told him what had happened, scared that if I said too much, he’d report Paul to the master-at-arms and kill his career in the process.
In hindsight, I shouldn’t have spent a second worrying about that, because in 1975, what a naval officer did to his wife in the privacy of his home was still very much his own business.
“So you’d take the birth control pills in secret?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
He thought for a minute. “And what if you’re already pregnant?”
That concern had haunted me since Saturday night. “Is that something you can test for?”
He shook his head. “Too soon for that, I’m afraid.”
“Okay,” I said, and a new wave of panic washed over me.
He pulled out his prescription pad and started to write. “This is a prescription for Ovral, which is a pretty standard birth control pill. We carry it downstairs, so you should be able to pick it up on your way out.”
I took the piece of paper from him and studied his chicken scratch.
“You shouldn’t smoke while taking it. Some women have developed blood clots.”
“Okay.”
“And look, if anyone asks me, I’ll deny telling you this,” he said. “But assuming you really don’t want to be pregnant right now, take two of those pills now and two more in twelve hours.”
“And that’s it?”
“It’s not a hundred percent effective at preventing pregnancy,” he said. “But you’re at a military clinic in a Catholic country. So I’m afraid it’s the best you’ve got.”