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July 1945
“Well, Mrs. Kirby, everything looks fine. Your pregnancy is proceeding normally. The baby’s heartbeat is strong.”
“Thank you, Dr. Goodman,” the woman said, her face wreathed with smiles. “I’m so glad you came to work with Doc Ramsey. He delivered my first four and he’s just wonderful. But it’s nice to have a woman to talk to, you know? I mean... I know you’ve never had a baby, but still, I feel like you know what I’m feeling.”
Ellen smiled at Mrs. Kirby. The woman looked even younger than her 29 years. She was small, except for the swollen belly. Her dark hair framed her heart-shaped face in a short bob.
“All right,” Ellen said, “I want to see you in two weeks.”
“Two weeks?” Worry clouded her face. “I thought you said everything was fine.”
“Everything is fine. You are just getting closer to the end, that’s all. I want to see you every two weeks for the next month. Then, for the last month I will see you every week until the baby comes.”
“Oh, of course! How silly of me. You would think I would remember all of this, but I guess I just thought I was out of the baby business and I put it all out of my mind. My youngest is getting ready to start the second grade, you know. I had gotten rid of all my baby things. But then... ” She paused for a moment, blushing bright red. “Johnny came home on leave... .”
“I can tell you ways to prevent pregnancy, Mrs. Kirby.”
“Oh no... Johnny wouldn’t like that,” she said. “He thinks it’s not natural. We were doing OK with the rhythm method. But when he came home, and he had been away for so long, well... ” She smiled and blushed again. “I guess we lost our rhythm,” she joked.
Ellen laughed politely, thinking that it was not “natural” for a woman to have five children before she turned 30. However, it was none of her business. Mrs. Kirby seemed genuinely happy to be having another child.
“You know, Doctor, I am not one to listen to gossip, or to pass it on. But I heard about all that business down in LA before you came to work for Doc. That... that,” she lowered her voice. “That... woman of the night, and the baby. And that darky... It must have been just awful for you.”
She paused expectantly and Ellen wondered if Mrs. Kirby really thought she was going to confide in her. Not bloody likely, she thought.
“That’s a good policy, Mrs. Kirby... not listening to gossip or passing it on. Now,” she said briskly, “you can get dressed. Just stop out front and make an appointment for two weeks on your way out. Good day.”
Without waiting for a reply, Ellen picked up Mrs. Kirby’s file and walked out of the room. She went to her office and closed the door, laid the file on her desk and sat down. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths, stilling her heart.
“That darky,” she had called him. Ignorant woman. Abraham’s face came to her, smiling at her as he so often did. How she missed him! It would soon be four years since the last time she had seen him, but the yearning had not lessened even a bit.
They took the baby, of course. Ellen tried to find out where he was, begged to be allowed to adopt him. But it was against the state adoption board’s policy to allow a single woman to adopt a child. The social worker she spoke to had assured Ellen that they would find a good home for him. She hoped that was true, that he was happy and with parents who loved him. She hoped he was not being raised in an orphanage, alone and unloved. He would be four years old now and Ellen often wondered what he looked like.
She opened a desk drawer containing her purse and reached inside to pull out the small box she carried everywhere. She took the lid off the box and gazed at the plain gold band nestled inside. She could remember Abraham’s face the day he gave it to her, the feel of his skin against hers as he slipped it onto her finger. She touched the tip of her forefinger to the ring and delicately traced the circle. Her eyes misted and she blinked several times to prevent any tears from falling.
She had lost the baby as well as Abraham. At the time she thought the pain was too great, that she would surely die from it. Doc Ramsey’s job offer was a Godsend. It took her to Fresno, close to her family but not too close. And it took her away from Los Angeles, where every place she looked reminded her of what she had lost. It also took her away from the scandal and gossip. Well, not completely, as Mrs. Kirby had proven.
For the first few months after she moved to Fresno, Ellen felt numb but did her job. Gradually she began to take an interest in the patients, in the practice. Doc Ramsey was a General Practitioner and saw every kind of patient, disease, and injury there was. She realized this was a wonderful way to begin her own medical career, with such a variety of experiences.
It seemed the world changed overnight after Pearl Harbor. The country went from one struggling to recover from the Great Depression to being a nation at war. Men went off to fight in strange and exotic places. Many returned wounded both physically and emotionally. Many others would never return. Women worked to support the war effort and their families.
Ellen’s brother, Henry, joined the Army. The family was relieved when the European war ended two months ago. Henry was still in Germany, but they felt he was safe. Their parents were getting older, but had maintained the family orange groves with help from Ellen’s sister-in-law.
The Japanese family, who owned a neighboring grove, had been sent to an internment camp, along with thousands of other Japanese Americans. Henry promised Mr. and Mrs. Yasuhiro that he'd watch over their land while they were gone. Ellen’s father took over when Henry left, caring for their oranges as diligently as he did for his own. They kept scrupulous records. depositing every penny into a separate account at the bank. They did not charge anything for their own labor, deducting only what was needed for the groves' upkeep and the workers’ wages.
Ellen discovered that she loved taking care of pregnant women and delivering babies. It was simultaneously her greatest joy and greatest pain. Each time she helped a baby slip from the womb in a gush of water and blood, each time she cleared a baby’s mouth and heard the first lusty cry, each time she watched a new mother cuddling and cooing to her baby, it brought it all back. It should have been the last thing she wanted... the constant reminders of her own baby; too early, too weak, and too tiny. But for some reason, she found herself craving this. She never grew tired of the miracle of pregnancy and birth.
Doc Ramsey was more than happy to let her take over the obstetrical part of his practice. Soon the patients also were just as happy. Ellen became a popular doctor among Fresno's pregnant women.
She was shocked the first time she saw the old doctor perform an abortion. She knew there were doctors who did them, even though it was illegal, but she had never met one who did... or at least, she had never met one who admitted to it.
The woman was in her late twenties, small and thin. Her hair was short and dark, her eyes big and brown. She had delicate features and a face lined with fear and worry. She had been widowed a few years earlier, left to raise a young daughter alone. She had met a man who swept her off her feet and she married him after a whirlwind romance. Within weeks of their elopement, he began to hit her. It had escalated to the point that one night he threatened her with a pair of scissors. When he finally fell asleep that night, she had escaped with her daughter and returned to her mother’s house. She filed for divorce and thought she was free of him, only to discover a few weeks later that she was pregnant.
She had come to Doc Ramsey and tearfully told him and Ellen her story. She was afraid of having another child to support on her own and she was afraid her soon-to-be-ex-husband would find out about the pregnancy. He was so obsessive that she knew he would try to get custody. At the very least she knew he would have regular visitation with the child. She was afraid of what he would do with constant access to her and her child. Doc listened to her story and patted her hand comfortingly.
“Now don’t you worry, dear,” he said. “We'll just take of this right now.”
With that, he called his nurse in. Gladys Adams was in her sixties, short and plump. Her short hair was mostly gone to gray, with just a few streaks to show her original light brown color. Her blue eyes were clear and her face kind. She had never married and had worked for Doc for over 30 years. Ellen suspected they were lovers, but neither of them confided in her and she did not ask. Whenever Mrs. Ramsey came by the office to see her husband, she and Gladys were friendly and there was no hint of discomfort between them, so Ellen minded her own business.
Gladys was brisk and efficient, quickly setting up the instruments Doc would need and helping the young woman to position herself on the table. She assisted Doc, anticipating what he would need before he asked. At the same time, she kept up a conversation with the young woman, soothing and distracting her from the procedure being performed. It was finished quickly and Gladys disposed of the aborted tissue, cleaned up the room, and helped the patient to dress. The young woman tearfully thanked Doc and she was gone.
Doc Ramsey and Ellen never discussed the ethics or legal ramifications of the procedure, but he continued to do them on occasion. There were not a large number of women seeking abortions, but it was a steady business. Married women who already had more children than their bodies or finances could support. Young girls, caught up in the heat of passion. Though it was never mentioned in polite society, it was known in Fresno that Doc Ramsey was a safe source of abortions. Before long, Ellen had taken over those duties, as well as the pregnancies that ended with the delivery of a baby.
A knock on the door interrupted Ellen’s reverie and she quickly put the lid on the box and slipped it into the top desk drawer as Gladys opened the door and stuck her head in.
“Your next appointment is here, Dr. Goodman. Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Thomas.”
“Both of them?”
“Yes,” Gladys told her. “They made an appointment to speak to you about a personal matter. Shall I bring them into your office?”
“Yes, thank you Miss Adams.”
While she waited for Gladys to return with the couple, Ellen tried to remember where she knew that name. Eugene Thomas... yes, that was it. She had seen the name many times in the newspaper. Eugene Thomas III was a wealthy and important man in Fresno. Banking, as she recalled. Old money... and a lot of it. Ellen wondered what they wanted with her.