Free A Case of Need: A Novel by Michael Crichton, Jeffery Hudson Page A

soap they foam like overloaded dishwashers. Other times, it’s bleeding. In every case, the girl is hysterical and full of wild lies. We just take care of it quietly and send her on her way.”
    “And never report it to the police?” 7
    “We’re doctors, not law-enforcement officers. We see about a hundred girls a year this way. If we reported every one, we’d all spend our time in court testifying and not practicing medicine.”
    “But doesn’t the law require—”
    “Of course,” Carr said quickly. “The law requires that we report it. The law also requires that we report assaults, but if we reported every drunk who got into a bar brawl, we’d never hear the end of it. No emergency ward reports everything it should. You just can’t operate on that basis.”
    “But if there’s been an abortion—”
    “Look at it logically,” Carr said. “A significant number of these cases are spontaneous miscarriages. A significant number aren’t, but it doesn’t make sense for us to treat it any other way. Suppose you know that the butcher of Barcelona worked on a girl; suppose you call in the police. They show up the next day and the girl tells them it was spontaneous. Or she tells them she tried it on herself. But either way she won’t talk, so the police are annoyed. Mostly, with you, because you called them in.
    “Does this happen?”
    “Yes,” Carr said, “I’ve seen it happen twice myself. Both times, the girl showed up crazy with fear, convinced she was going to die. She wanted to nail the abortionist, so she demanded the police be called in. But by morning, she was feeling fine, she’d had a nice hospital D & C, and she realized her problems were over. She didn’t want to fool with the police; she didn’t want to get involved. So when the cops came, she pretended it was all a big mistake.”
    “Are you content to clean up after the abortionists and let it go?”
    “We are trying to restore people to health. That’s all. A doctor can’t make value judgments. We clean up after a lot of bad drivers and mean drunks, too. But it isn’t our job to slap anybody’s hand and give them a lecture on driving or alcohol. We just try to make them well again.”
    I wasn’t going to argue with him; I knew it wouldn’t do any good. So I changed the subject.
    “What about the charges against Lee? What happened there?”
    “When the girl died,” Carr said, “Mrs. Randall became hysterical. She started to scream, so they gave her a tranquilizer and sedative. After that, she settled down, but she continued to claim that her daughter had named Lee as the abortionist. So she called the police.”
    “Mrs. Randall did?”
    “That’s right.”
    “What about the hospital diagnosis?”
    “It remains miscarriage. This is a legitimate medical interpretation. The change to illegal abortion is made on nonclinical grounds, so far as we are concerned. The autopsy will show whether an abortion was performed.”
    “The autopsy showed it,” I said. “Quite a good abortion, too, except for a single laceration of the endometrium. It was done by someone with skill—but not quite enough skill.”
    “Have you talked with Lee?”
    “This morning,” I said. “He claims he didn’t do it. On the basis of that autopsy, I believe him.”
    “A mistake—”
    “I don’t think so. Art’s too good, too capable.”
    Carr removed the stethoscope from his pocket and played with it, looked uncomfortable. “This is a very messy thing,” he said. “Very messy.”
    “It has to be cleared up,” I said. “We can’t hide our heads in the sand and let Lee go to hell.”
    “No, of course not,” Carr said. “But J. D. was very upset.”
    “I imagine so.”
    “He practically killed that poor intern when he saw what treatment had been given. I was there, and I thought he was going to strangle the kid with his bare hands.”
    “Who was the intern?”
    “Kid named Roger Whiting. Nice kid, even though he went to P &