If I expected pity, I found none. She never asked for my back-story. Every abortion has one. Every voyage ending long before it begins has a back-story. Every word marooned in a stutter has a long history behind it. Every abbreviated word has a tail missing. She did not care. She did not bother. Taking care of me was a duty and she was merely carrying out that function.

Things changed on the fourth day when an elderly and bespectacled man walked in. His voice was deep and soft and there was a dull spark in his eyes. He looked like a man who was learning to forget how to smile and laugh. His eyes had the look of a mirror dulled by dirt and so unable to reflect.

"How are we this morning?" He asked his eyes scanning my case note.

"Fine doctor".

He settled his bulk into a seat by my bedside and holding my gaze spoke words that redefined my life.

"Your diagnosis is bad." He said, his gaze unflinching. "You have a ruptured uterus and your fallopian tubes are scarred. You may never be able to have a baby."

To this day, I can never figure out whether it was pity or anger that made the female doctor keep my diagnosis away from me.

I left the hospital healed in my body but scarred deep inside. The news had two effects on me. For the first few months I dreaded men. I flinched when my boyfriend touched me. I could never visit a man all by myself. Riding in cars with boys was impossible. I had been through hell and my mind was still scarred.

Then a change came over me. It was so sudden it took me by surprise and it was a long time before I fully understood what was happening to me. I began to crave sex. I slept with any man that caught my eye. I was desperate to prove the doctors wrong. I wanted to take in, to test their words, to call their diagnosis a lie.

It took me two years and two venereal diseases to learn that I was indeed a marked woman. Without a miracle I would never have a baby of my own.

After school I found a job and even though there were relationships, I never let them last. I became adept at shutting men out, steeling my heart like a Spartan I would watch the embers of affection turn to cold ash. And even though I wept inside, I knew it was the best thing for everyone. I was not ready to burden any man with my yoke.

Then I met that same doctor again, eight years after my stint at the teaching hospital and affection had sprouted tiny shoots. I was thirty-one, he was fifty-two. Age was a gulf that yawned wide between us.

I was at the hospital to visit a colleague who had just had a baby when our paths crossed again.

"How are we today?" he asked blocking my path and making a huge effort not to smile.

"Fine doctor," I answered as recognition dawned.

We made small talk and exchanged addresses. He had just moved to my city and would keep in touch, he told me. It was a chance meeting and I did not think too much about it until the phone rang one afternoon some three weeks later and I heard the deep unmistakable voice on the other side.

"We are having a send off party for a colleague. Would you like to accompany me?" he asked after we had exchanged pleasantries.

" I would have loved to but I can't. It's my period and I'm battling abdominal cramps." I told him keeping my voice cheerful in order not to cause offence.

He was quiet for a heart beat and I could imagine him taking a deep breath.

"What drug are you taking?"

"Buscopan."

"That should do it," he said and sighed. " Just get plenty of rest, okay."

"Thank you", I said then after he said goodbye and hung up, I sat there with the receiver in hand wondering why the doctor was asking me out to a party.

We had a lunch date soon after, then dinner and then one night after I heard him laugh I asked why he made such an effort not to laugh. It was a long story, he told me and I could see that he was loath to tell it.