The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [88]
“You disapprove, Ephraim?” asked Abigail, her voice gone cold.
“I cannot countenance abortion,” I said bluntly.
“Oh, can’t you, now?” she snapped, her despair finding an outlet in anger. “How easily smug denunciations roll off your tongue! Do you think it is better to bring a child into the world who will be ripped from the arms of its mother and shoved into an orphanage to live a wretched and neglected life … to grow up not knowing its parents and likely die on the streets in misery?”
I thought of Annie. “No,” I said, “it is not that … but …”
Eakins unexpectedly came to my rescue. “Wait, Abigail,” he said. “You are being unfair. Dr. Carroll is quite right to be outraged. The concept of taking human life is repugnant. It must be all the more so to one who has dedicated himself to saving it. But, Dr. Carroll, I must ask you to try and look at this from a different perspective. Would you, as a doctor, save a patient who you know will simply live out life in agony? If Rebecca were to have this child, it would doom two lives, hers and the child’s. Please understand, this is not a decision that anyone came to lightly.”
“I love Rebecca,” Abigail said, now as plaintive as she had just been furious. “If she was determined to go through with this, I wanted only to ensure that she was put into the hands of someone who would care for her safety.”
“Like Turk?”
“I had nothing to do with that!”
“Rebecca refused to allow either Abigail or myself to be party to the specific arrangements,” Eakins told me, “in case the facts should come out and the police—or her father—gained knowledge of the event. I am incensed with myself for agreeing.”
“Why did she not simply have the abortion on the continent? And return at her leisure?” I asked. “Locating a disreputable physician to perform such a criminal act would be no more difficult in Europe than in Philadelphia.”
“This was not something to be done in a strange city, with no friends to call upon in an emergency.” Eakins then proceeded to recount the tale of Rebecca’s return. He had journeyed to New York in late February to meet the Christina and thence returned to Philadelphia, having secured lodgings for “Lucy” in Chestnut Hill. The preparations for the operation had been handled circuitously. Eakins had not known of anyone personally who might perform the procedure, and was thus forced to make the most discreet of inquiries. Finally, an actor who had at one time been a photographic subject—“a thoroughly disreputable fellow,” as Eakins described him—had contacted an acquaintance who had once been in need of a similar service and who had in turn contacted an acquaintance of his who had then made contact directly with Rebecca.
“You never knew the identity of the abortionist?”
“Never,” replied Abigail. “It was as I said. We were to be at that horrible place at ten o’clock on an appointed night, where Rebecca would be contacted by someone who would make the final arrangements. She was to give him two hundred dollars. Rebecca didn’t even know if the man contacting us would be the one performing the operation or just a go-between. But, as I told you, no one approached her. We remained for over an hour and then left.”
“Clearly, Rebecca didn’t stop there.”
“Two days later, I met her at her rented rooms. She told me that she had contacted the man who had given her the instructions and that the problem had been resolved. She refused details, saying only that she had made arrangements both for the operation and for a convalescent facility afterward where she would be under a nurse’s care. She promised to be in touch when everything had been completed. She was actually quite proud of herself for managing everything. That was just over two weeks ago. The last I heard from her.”
“How was she intending to deal with her father?” I asked.
“She intended to confront him with a fait accompli. Don’t be deceived by Rebecca’s youth … she is a formidable woman, every bit the match