Free Strange Women, The by Miriam Gardner

reading:
    Type: Friedman
Date: Nov. 30, 1961
Specimen subject: Bristol, Mrs J
Referred by: Leonora Caine, MD
Result: positive for pregnancy.
    She jerked up her head. So Mack had won his gamble. "Here, Jill," she said curtly, "this is yours. I guess they got tired of waiting for me to call for it."
    She tossed the green slip into Jill's lap. Jill said "What?" and read it through, her face losing color.
    "Well, that's that," she said at last. Then, crumpling it up in an angry fist, she exploded, "At least Mack got away first! Now he needn't know!"
    "Jill—it's none of my business—do you honestly think you're being fair to Mack? He's a good man, and he loves you. If you wanted to break off with him, you could have done it cleanly, before he left."
    Jill shook her head, her face twisting. "It's not—I told you, I don't want to wreck it for him—I don't want him to feel that he has to marry me."
    "Well, there's still time for him to fly home from Lima and marry you."
    "No! Oh, no!" Jill jumped up, her face white. "Nora, you can't tell him! You know he wouldn't go back to the expedition! Please, please, promise you won't!"
    Why was Jill punishing herself this way? Suddenly, the suspicion that had never left her flared up; she caught Jill's shoulder, not gently: "Or were you planning on trying some damn fool stunt to force a miscarriage? Answer me," she demanded, "have you been doing something to yourself?"
    "I haven't been taking any—any kind of drugs," Jill said tremulously. "Where would I get anything like that? And I've—been around hospitals enough to know that the —the other things women do, hot baths and quinine and that stuff, don't do any good."
    "Or any harm," Nora snapped, "though I suppose you've been trying? Well, if it keeps your mind occupied—I knew a girl who spent half her pregnancy winning ski championships in Norway. She had twins. So go ahead and jump off tables if it makes you happy!"
    Jill began to protest, but Nora was staring bleakly over her head. "Oh, those things work sometimes. If the woman has a tendency to miscarry anyhow. If she doesn't mind ruining her health, or wrecking her chances of ever carrying a healthy baby to full term afterward."
    She was flinging the words bitterly, remembering Les Rannock's words. It's up to you, Nor. You said you'd stick it out if we had a kid. You think I didn't know? To shut them out she swung back to Jill:
    "You're not going to do that to Mack, are you? If you do—if you do, you're a worse bitch than I ever thought! Tie him down, hell! Go ahead, make all sorts of excuses for getting rid of his baby!"
    "Oh, don't," Jill begged, "I don't want a baby, I don't, but—I only wanted to wait until Mack was sure—until I was sure—until I knew how he'd feel—" she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
    Nora's breath caught on the ache in her throat. Blindly she drew the sobbing girl into her arms. A moment Jill resisted the touch, then clung to Nora; and Nora held her, kissing the little downy feathers of hair away from her face.
    "I'm a miserable, wretched sadist," she said aloud. "Don't. Jill—sweet—don't. I didn't mean to make you cry."
    Sex frustration, latent homosexuality, how damn silly can you get? You're jealous, you damn fool, because she's Mack's wife and going to have Mack's kid, and you've been deviling her, when you promised to take care of her.
    She lifted Jill to her feet, took the robe from her, and tucked her in bed tenderly; then lay down beside her, taking Jill in her arms. Jill was still crying a little. The sound and feel of the convulsive sobs echoed something which Nora had never been able to release in herself.
    She thought at last that Jill was asleep. They were lying close, breast against breast, Jill heavy on her arm. Jill's pajama shirt had fallen open and Nora's hand rested on her smooth bare back.
    Jill murmured, snuggling closer. Nora smelled the indefinable scent of her hair, the cherry-blossom fragrance of her skin. Her