Chapter Three

Dr. Lincoln’s Abortion Clinic and  John Janis

Meanwhile, Dr.  Henry Lincoln had just arrived at his office at the Lincoln Abortion Clinic in Washington D.C.

“Good morning, Doctor,” he heard his secretary say.  She was a woman in her early twenties, well dressed and very alluring even in her modest uniform.   Her skirt was almost too short for normal professional decency.  The doctor didn’t care.  It brought in customers sometimes.  She was the patient in seven abortions, herself, seeing she got hers free as a fringe benefit of working at the clinic.             

“Good morning, Sarah,” he replied.  “How many today so far?”

“Two hundred and forty-six.”

“Two hundred and forty-six,” he said, beaming.  “Business is good.  If it keeps up, you'll get a raise.”  At this, Sarah smiled broadly.  “Why, thank you boss.  You're sweet.”  She passed her tongue over her lips, alluringly, but the doctor couldn’t notice or care.

“Tell me, did the student arrive?”

“Yes,” she said.  “He's waiting in your office.  I told him you'd be here any minute.”

“These young ones,” the doctor said.  “Bright eyed and bushy tailed.  I bet you he got up at five this morning so he wouldn't be tardy.”

The doctor went into his office to find a tall, twenty-year-old, slightly built man with red hair and short mustache.  A gold earring garnished his right ear, as was the current fad among young men.  He smelled of too much sex pheromone from his after-shave.

“Good morning,” Dr. Lincoln said in a warm, friendly voice.  It set the boy at ease.

“Good morning, Doctor Lincoln,” he said as he arose to greet him.  “I'm John Janis, the student from Montgomery University  I'm here to watch some abortions.”

“I am going to show you some abortions for your term paper, right?  But you know,” he said jokingly, “I bet you you're here just to see some naked women.”

This unexpected levity made Janis grin sheepishly.  “No, sir,” he replied.

“Tell me, what made you choose the specialty of abortion?”

“Well, sir,” he said meekly. “My mother is a member of the N.A.O.W., so she helped me to pick a relevant subject.”  (N.A.O.W., that is, the National Abortion Organization of Women.)

It was no wonder that he chose Dr. Lincoln’s office.  He did over sixty percent of all abortions, nationwide.  He was doing over two-hundred and forty of them that morning from that one office.  And it was his father who was involved in the land-mark Supreme Court decision to enable post-born tissues to be aborted.

“Now, you are familiar with the procedures, aren't you?”

“Yes sir.  I got an ‘A’ in the subject.”  The lad beamed with pride.

“An 'A'!  My, my.  Good for you!  Now are we ready to begin?”  The Doctor smiled broadly, patronizing the young man and wishing he hadn’t allowed the time-wasting visit.

“Yes sir!”

Dr. Lincoln touched the intercom that hung on the nearby wall.  “We're ready for the first one,” Dr. Lincoln said.  His nurse went into the preparation room to wheel in the patient.

“Linda Smithson,” he heard his nurse call.  “You are next.”

The youthful Mrs. Smithson was in her early twenties, a beauty queen and wife of a corporate executive.  She wore a hospital gown as she was wheeled in.  She held a tissue to her eye, pensive, brooding as she waited to be called.  She looked at her distended belly and felt the kick of the life within.  Her heart rending, she openly wept.  Slowly she managed to regain her composure.  “I'm ready,” she said.

An orderly dressed in white arrived to take her to the fateful room.  “Operating room B?” she asked.

“Whatever,” the doctor replied.

Upon reaching the operating room, the austere physician was quick to welcome his patient with a well-practiced face.  “Good morning, Mrs. Smithson.  I want you to know that this will be perfectly painless.  Tell me, did you decide on complete sedation?”

“Yes, doctor,” she replied.  “I'd rather be asleep.”

“Nurse, please call in the anesthesiologist,” he said.

“I know how you must feel, Mrs. Smithson.  But I promise you, you will be all right.  People recover one hundred percent, even with late-term procedures.”

A seasoned woman in nurses' garb soon entered the room and applied her craft to the patient.  Within moments, the young maiden was asleep.  The doctor moved into position, clutching his tools of the trade: a looped cutting blade and a pair of cold tongs.

“These women,” he said to Janis, “they can't keep their legs crossed.  Then they come to us to fix the problem and we have to treat them like Madonnas.”

The young man was aroused by the scantily clad woman.  His face blushed as the doctor opened her gown.  The Doctor positioned a scanning device over the patient that was supported by an elbowed aluminum arm. 

“Computer: monitor,” he said.  A monitor on the side of the device soon revealed the perfect image of a six-pound embryo.  He was sucking his thumb.   “This should be easy,” he said.  “The numan is in a good position.”

The Doctor inspected the lifelike image on the monitor as he inserted the tip of his tool.  The silent instrument did its work quickly and efficiently.  Embryonic fluid gushed out onto the operating table and ran through channels imbedded in the side.  The baby began to struggle.

“Now  for the extraction,” he said in a voice so mundane that John wondered if the doctor wasn’t thinking about something completely different. He inserted tongs and grabbed the right arm of the incipient organism.  The boy responded by jerking away from the tongs, then by shaking violently.  “Damn.  I hate these late term abortions.  The embryo moves too much.” The Doctor twisted his tool forcefully, then pulled out the torn appendage.  Blood dripped from the boy’s limb.  The image on the monitor convulsed causing the woman’s belly to contort, his mouth wide open in a cry.  A wail  made its way into the outside world.  Janis winced, but managed to hide his response.  He watched the monitor as blood oozed from the tiny boy’s wound, partially filling the torn embryonic sac.

“The numan is a little too large,” the abortionist said.  “I'm going to have to cut instead of twist.”  He inserted a looped shaped knife that had its blade on the inner edge. He skillfully maneuvered it inside the womb, looped it around the other arm, then jerked downward.  The boy jerked in the opposite direction, then became still.  He then removed the severed appendage with his tongs.  Dr. Lincoln continued.  He extracted a leg, then another leg, each time dropping the medical waste into a bag.  “It’s sort of like building a ship in a bottle, but in reverse,” he said.  Again, Janis flinched inside.   The doctor reached in with a special instrument.  “Now to crush the head.”  Janis gritted his teeth.  Lincoln exerted a bit more pressure.  “You see, John, he said to the student, “It is really simple.  It only takes a few minutes,” he said as he extracted the remainder of the pieces.  “Almost like doing a pumpkin at Halloween.”  Dr. Lincoln smiled broadly at his grotesque joke.

The young man eyed the torn, crushed, dismembered parts, his face turning ashen.  “Yes sir,” he said quietly, choosing to ignore the doctor's last try at levity.

“Is there something wrong, John?”

“No sir,” he said, trying to smile.

“Are you sure?  You look a little pale.”

“I - I'm fine, sir.  Just some gas.”

The doctor took a small bottle from a nearby cabinet.  “Here, take one of these.  It'll help.  You're not the first that got gas while watching an abortion so I keep these pills handy.”

“Thank you, sir,” he said as he downed a tablet.

“Maybe it will help you to know that numans don’t experience pain.  Finish this one,” he said to the nurse, “then cart her into the recovery room.  But first call in the next one.”

“The next one is from Mrs. Richards,” the nurse said as she grabbed the full bio-bag for processing.

“Is this next one like the first one?” the student asked.

“No, this one and the next ten or so are postnatal.”

“Post natal?” the young man said with a bit of relief.  “This should be interesting.  I've seen it in films.  They march them into a large metal chamber and press a button.  The chamber is then flooded with gas or a saline solution, which cause spontaneous abortion.  The remains are dropped through a large door that opens in the floor.  Clean and fast.  No blood or dismembering.  It can handle up to five every minute.”

“Right, but we don't do that here,” the doctor said with a cordial smile. “That method is used by nonprofessionals looking for a fast buck.  We choose to abort them postnatally using the same method we do prenatal abortions so their parts can be preserved for recycling.  You're in for a real experience.  I'll show you.  Let us go into the postnatal chamber.”  Then he asked the nurse,  “How large is this next one?”

“Sixty pounds,” she said.

It is hard to describe what Janis felt at that very moment.  The words “sixty pounds” scared him, spooked  him.  It was like a year’s worth of fright came upon him at once, unnerving him, making his stomach tighten like a drum head.  It would mean nothing to him if the doctor was a butcher talking about a side of pork.   But he knew this was not about pork.  He was talking about a living, breathing child.  His heart pulsed hard in his eyes making them ache.

“We'll need a medium puller.  Chamber three,” the doctor ordered.

“Yes doctor.”

John’s feet went cold, very cold. “A puller?” he whispered.       The lump in his throat halted his breath.                       

The doctor smiled.  He was rather amused at Janis’ emotional distress.  “This lady . . . .” he said to the young man, “this is her sixth numan   we've done for her under nine years old.  She could have gotten two more years out of it.  What a waste.  I told her not to pull their teeth as punishment but she won't listen.”  The doctor grinned as Janis flinched.  “Then when they can't eat hard tack anymore, she goes to the expense of buying another one.  Regenerating the teeth would cost less if it weren’t illegal to give medical help to a numan.”  Then the doctor turned to his nurse and ordered, “Prepare a dose of the serum.  And nurse, let me do only ten today.   I have to get to the laboratory to do more work there.  The Ambassador is going to be here tomorrow and I want everything to be ready.”

“Yes Doctor.”                                     

"The ambassador?” he blurted out.  He was still trying to hide his horror.

“Don't worry about that.  He's from the German embassy.  A pompous ass.  You know, the Neo Nazis think they're the master race.”  Tell me, are you feeling all right?  You look pale.

Nothing could have prepared Janis for what he saw next.   He and Dr. Lincoln entered the chamber where a nurse was waiting.  There stood before him a nude eight-year-old girl, three foot tall.  Her hairless head, scarred body and toothless mouth spelled years of abuse.  Her left shoulder was bruised and swollen.  She held her right hand tightly over an open sore on her left upper arm.  The doctor turned his head at the smell of caked blood and the putrid sores that covered her body.  Janis gritted his teeth.  This is not the first time he smelled puss, but never did the odor so prominently saturate any room.

“This is the tissue mass we're doing now,” the doctor said.  He turned to the girl,  “Onto the table,” the doctor barked.  The little girl struggled, and used her good arm to pull herself up.  The table had four plexiglass sheets, one on each side, that could be raised and lowered.  Straps protruded from each of the four corners and one from each side. “Nurse, what is the standing of this one?”

“The owners said it was disobedient and should be done slowly,” the nurse said.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t say that.  Always slow with Mrs. Richards.  I don't have time for a slow today.  We'll do it fast and mark it as slow.  No one will know.”  The doctor grabbed a large, looped cutting tool similar to the earlier one except in size.  The nurse quickly attached a leather belt to the girl’s waist, securing her to the table.

“Yes Doctor.  Duration?”                                                                     

“I don't care.  Say it took five minutes.”  He grabbed a large, plastic syringe from the table and put the tip into the girl's mouth while, simultaneously, he looped the knife about the girl's injured shoulder.  It's sharp inner edge was positioned at the joint.  The little girl closed her eyes and gritted her toothless mouth.

“Watch, now.  It's all in the way you twist your wrist as you jerk downward.”

Despite his shock Janis could not remain silent.“No!” Janis said twice as loud as he had planned.  “Sir.  Don’t do this.”

“This distraction made Lincoln stop and look at the student sharply.  “What’s this?  Are you weak kneed boy?  This is what you came to see, isn’t it?  An abortion?”  The doctor thought a second.  He removed the blade from her arm. Thin lines of blood streamed from where the blade touched her flesh like rivulets of water.  The doctor was not smiling now.  This was his time to teach a wayward guest his manners.

“What are you going to do now?”  Janis was crying inside.  He wiped his nose with his sleeve.  “You aren’t going to kill her, are you?”

“Yes, but not as fast as I would have had  you not objected.  I’ll show you how it is done when I do it slow.”  Then he said smugly, “My nurse can hold your hand if this is too much.”

The doctor, again, forced the syringe into the young girl's mouth.  He squirted an oily substance from it.  The young  girl gagged, then began a serious of harsh, but voiceless, coughs.  “This is to keep the numan from making too much noise.  The neighbors complain.”   The Doctor then methodically attached leather straps to the limp girl's wrists and ankles.  The girl cringed and tried to scream as her swollen arm was pulled into place.  Tears streamed from her eyes.  Two thongs were attached by adhesive strips to either side of her abdomen.  The doctor raised the translucent shield around the numan.   “Here,” he said, offering Janis a mask.  “You won’t like the smell of entrails.”

“No!” Janis shouted.  “Please!  Don’t do this!  She's being tortured.”

“She?  you mean, 'it,' don't you.  This is a numan.  You know you were quite complacent when you witnessed me dismembering that fetus just minutes ago.  How is this different?”

“That was a fetus, this is a girl!  This is a girl!”

“No! It is not a girl!” he said sternly.  “No more than the other numan was a boy.  They are both tissue masses, like a tumor or a parasite!  It's the same thing!  The same thing!”

“But, but the fetus died in seconds, not minutes.”
            This irritated the doctor even more.  “Seconds?  I wanted to do it fast.  You made me change my mind to do it slow.  Which way do you want it?” Should I dismember her with a blade or by pulling her apart?”

“This is torture!” John shouted.

“Not torture,” the doctor said indignantly.  “Humans can be tortured, masses of tissue can only be surgically removed.  This is what the Supreme Court of the United States said.  They are masses of tissue!  Nothing more!”

He positioned the control knob, then pressed the on switch.  Immediately the machine began to hum.  Janis watched the still-visible ends of the thongs.  They became taut, then tauter.  Through the smoked plastic shield, the young student could see the convulsing life on the inside.

He removed his mask.  “Don't do this.  That girl needs to be helped.  Turn off that machine!” he shouted.  “Turn it off!”    

The doctor laughed, “Ha, ha.  You disgrace yourself.”                          

Janis pushed the off button himself.  The thongs relaxed.

 “What?  Do you faint at the sight of blood?  Turn that back on!”

“I won't let you destroy that little girl.  I’m taking her.  He forcefully removed her straps then cradled the weeping child in his arms.

“What would you do with it?” the doctor asked.  “It is used up.  It can't serve you.”

“How much do you want for the girl?”

“What girl?” Lincoln said to spite him.
            “How much do you want for the girl?” he shouted.  His head now pounded with pain.  Sweat trickled down from his face, belly, legs.  Janis took his wallet out with his free hand and dumped its contents on the floor.  Two hundred and fifty dollars.  “That’s more than she’s worth.  I’m taking her.”

“And what would you do with it?  Do you want the other two hundred and more that I'm to dispose of this morning from this clinic alone?  Believe me, it's not worth the trouble.  Buy a new one!”

“You're throwing your money away.”  Then he smiled with a sudden sense of sardonic amusement, “Do you want it gift wrapped?”

The girl was motionless, having fainted from the pain, but still breathing.  Blood dribbled from her cut arm.  Other than that she was not damaged by the machine.

“There you go, one numan.  I hope you know what you are doing. It's for a class project, right?  The chemistry lab, or a biology experiment?  Or is it that you just like little female numans?  Come on.  There’s no shame.  I like the males, myself.”

“I'm out of here,” Janis replied.

The doctor couldn’t resist tormenting the lad.  “You know we have an endless supply.  I'll give you three for two hundred and ten,” he said, amused.  “A six-pack at the bargain price of three hundred and twenty!”  He then ordered the nurse, “Bring in the next two.”  Immediately two others appeared, a girl and a boy, each in at least as bad a shape as the girl he held.

Mr. Janis swallowed hard at the sight.  “I may not be able to save any except this one.  But I'll be back.  Even if it is to save a few.”

Lincoln couldn’t resist a last jab.  “So be it. Can I interest you in some used shoes, too?”

Janis forced himself to turn away from the other two victims.  The doctor was right.  He didn’t have the means of saving but one.  He quickly left the room.

   That boy,” Lincoln said to himself, quite amused.  “He'd be better off selling hamburgers.  He doesn't have the balls.  Nurse,” he said, punching the intercom.  “I want you to call to see if you can get in an intern.  With me gone, we're really short handed today.”

“Yes doctor,” came the reply.

“And, nurse, make sure the one they send won't quit on us when we do the abortions by abdominal suction or brain evacuation.  I don't want any wimps.”

“Yes Doctor.”

“And nurse, have Gene clean the pullers after every sixth abortion.  He’s been negligent.”

Doctor Lincoln's head turned abruptly toward the sudden sound of a prolonged cry some distance away.   “That John Janis,” he said to himself.  “Something is definitely wrong with him.”  He then picked up his blade.  “What about these two?” He asked the nurse. “Slow or fast?”