Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell (12 page)

"You can't be as sick as you think, Minda," he said, smiling. "You look too nice."

He pushed at her stomach and she tucked it in. "Feels good," he commented.

He told her she needed a pelvic examination for her hips. She thought back on all the times she'd been dilated for colds, bee stings, kitchen burns, pregnancies, a nail puncture, sometimes even for vaginal problems. She thought, It's a wonder he recognizes me by my face.

"I've had so much trouble with my tongue," she said. "Is there such a thing as a tongue transplant?"

He laughed with her, and said, "No, there's no such thing."

"The last time my throat and tongue were this sore," she said, "I went to a doctor downstate and she told me I was having a breakdown. Not mentally, but physically. I was just worn down."

"Well, I don't know about that," he said. "Are you taking care of yourself? Maybe you shouldn't be working at the cleaners if it's too hard on you."

He got up from his stool, took a paper sheet from the closet, and said, "We'll get ready for the exam."

He was just stepping out of the room when she asked, "What about my throat and tongue?"

"Oh," he said, "I forgot."

He made her say "ah" and depressed her tongue with a wooden stick. "I don't know what to tell you," he said. "It looks fine to

me.

She didn't understand. The last time she'd looked at her throat in the mirror, it looked like raw hamburger. Her tongue was a swollen lump. Had there been a miracle cure?

He returned in fifteen minutes and turned on the water. He warmed his hands and the speculum, then began probing at her insides. "You've healed very nicely," he said. "You could have another baby."

"Hunh-uh," Minda reminded him, "you tied my tubes."

"Oh," he said. "I didn't remember. You're really pink inside. You look really nice. But I'll have to get in further to see if everything's okay. If I dilated you it would help make things go a lot easier."

Minda mumbled, "Okay."

When it was all over, Dr. Story handed her some drug samples and told her to return in a couple of days, "to see if I can get in further," and then again a week after that.

She walked to her car in a daze and sat for ten minutes trying to decide what to do. Then she headed for her mother's house to sound the alarm.

9

MEG ANDERSON

Minda and her four children had been gone for three hours, and Meg wondered what was up. Now that the sisters were sharing the same house, they kept closer tabs on each other, especially with Meg pregnant again.

It was a lovely spring day in the Big Horn Basin. Meg drove to her mother's and found Arden baby-sitting Minda's kids. "Where's Minda?" Meg asked.

"Up at the doctor's," her mom answered.

"For three hours?"

"Well, you know how slow he is."

Meg was just leaving to pick up Dan at the Queen of the Valley Dairy when Minda drove pell-mell into the driveway, slammed on the breaks, and jumped out as though fleeing for her life. Her skin was as white as her mother's summer skirt, and her face was streaked with tears.

"Meg!" she announced loudly. "Dr. Story will
not
deliver your baby!" Then she turned to her mother and yelped, "He's kinky! He's kinky! Don't you dare tell me he's not.
Don't you dare!"

Meg saw that her sister was trembling. Her blue-green eyes were red, and she teetered on her pumps like a drunk. Arden said, "Oh, Minda, no! Now didn't we go through this before? Dr. Story would
never
do that."

Minda's skinny arms flopped like broken wings as she stomped back and forth in the driveway. "Slow down," her mom kept repeating. "Let's talk about it." Meg saw that her mother's face was ashen.

"No!" Minda said in a hysterical voice. "I've got to get the kids home." She brushed past her mother toward the house. "My undergarments are full of semen."

Meg didn't want to get into a discussion with her mother about Dr. Story. As she drove away, she thought, He did it to me and now he's done it to Minda!
Why us?

Whatever had happened, she realized that it couldn't be brushed off. Other female relatives were coming along, including her sister Mia. Someone had to face reality.

When Meg and Danny got home, she phoned Jan Asay, Dr. Story's nurse. As she dialed the number, she said to herself, Jan's married to my cousin. She's family. She'll tell me the truth.

"Jan," she said, "this is in confidence. Listen, what does Dr. Story use that might feel like a penis?"

"During pelvics?" the nurse asked.

"Yeah. It feels like a tube and it's kinda soft and warm and it, uh, fills you up."

"Meg, I don't know," Jan said. She sounded puzzled. "He has a metal tray and it's got the duckbill in it, the speculum. But it clinks around and you can hear it. I don't know about any tube." ,

"What if I didn't see a tray and there was no clinking?"

"Meg, I don't know."

"Does he use anything that could feel like a penis?"'

Jan said, "Not that I know of." She asked why Meg wanted to know, and Meg told her the truth. Jan sounded disturbed. Meg wondered if anyone had ever asked the same questions, but she couldn't bring herself to ask.

After the dinner dishes were put away, the sisters huddled in a quiet corner and shared their stories in voices just above a whisper. Minda said, "There's no way I can tell Scott. He'd kill him."

Meg said, "I don't know how much longer I can keep this from Dan." It made her feel sick to admit that she still hadn't been able to tell her husband. "He knows everything about me except this. But Minda, I was so ashamed."

Minda nodded.

"This is a moral sin," Meg went went on, "and a moral sin has to be taken to the bishop." She was thinking, Minda and I both hold Temple Recommends, and that means we have to live worthy lives. Their spiritual futures were at stake.

"I know," Minda said. She didn't sound enthusiastic.

Meg said, "I want to ask the bishop what to do. Do I tell Dan or not? I need some guidance."

She phoned and made an appointment to meet Bishop Larry Sessions the next afternoon at three.

Before she left for the interview, she called upstairs to Minda, "Are you coming with me?"

"I guess I should," Minda said. She sounded uncertain.

"Yes, I guess you should!" Meg said with a big sister's authority.

Meg had known Larry Sessions for years. He worked with his brother-in-law Bob Asay—Uncle Bob—at the furniture store. People said the two of them dabbled in stripper oil wells and other modest enterprises. Sessions was responsible for the moral and religious welfare of some two hundred Mormons in the Third Ward, one of six wards that made up the Lovell Stake. Like most LDS bishops, he was known as a pure and righteous man. This news, Meg said to herself as the sisters entered the store, is gonna knock him off his horse.

Brother Sessions invited them to sit on a couch covered with transparent plastic. "What is it?" he asked. His face showed concern. Meg thought, We must look like we just came from a hanging.

"We have something to tell you that's just gonna floor you," Minda said in her high-speed delivery, "and it's something that's just terrible and it's bad for me to even be thinking about it."

Meg chimed in, "But it's something that we have to tell you to get off our chests. We—"

Minda interrupted. "We think that Dr. Story has violated us."

The bishop listened patiently as they added details, then said, "Girls, I thought you were going to tell me something I didn't know. I've been hearing these reports for over five years."

Meg felt the hair stand up on her neck. She was horrified, then hurt, then angry. She flashed on her little sister Mia, lying on Story's table any day now, losing her virginity and not even knowing it. How many others had he deflowered the same way? She said, "Five years? Then why did I have to go through this? Why wasn't it taken care of five years ago?"

"There's nothing we can do," Brother Sessions said. "We can't prove anything. I just tell the women to change doctors."

"Change . . . doctors?" Meg asked.

"Yes. And you should tell your husbands what happened, too."

Minda said, "I can't. I just can't."

"Well, then, Minda, wait till you're more comfortable about it." The bishop turned to Meg. "I think you should tell Dan right

away."

Meg drove to the dairy to break the news. She had no idea how Danny would react. He was a mellow man with a relaxed, forgiving attitude toward people, but he also had a cop's mentality about molesters and perverts.

Meg told the story in an agitated burst, talking almost as fast as Minda. At first Dan didn't seem to react. He turned away and she could see that he was upset. After a while he said softly, "Your challenge and mine is understanding."

She breathed again.

"I oughta do something to him," he went on. His words came out in terse little bites. "Some guys would blow him away. But I won't make that mistake. I could end up in prison. I refuse to risk losing my family for John Story. He's not worth it."

Meg agreed. She told Dan that she'd informed the church.

"That's good," he said. "They'll take care of it." She couldn't bring herself to tell him that the high priests had known about Story for five years.

By the time she phoned her mother, the sun was starting to slide down the back of the purple mountains to the west. "Mom," she said, "we've been to see the bishop."

"Who's been to see what bishop?" Arden asked.

"Minda and I."

"What about?"

"About Dr. Story."

"Meg," her mom said in her stoniest voice, "what are you trying to tell me?"

Meg wished she had better control of her emotions, but she was afraid she wouldn't be able to conceal her anger—toward Story, toward the bishop, even toward her mother. "We visited with him and he said he's been having complaints like this for five years."

Arden sounded confused. "Complaints like
what!"

"Mom, we've been violated by Dr. Story."

There was a long silence on the phone line, and then her mom snapped back, "What do you mean, 'violated'? Be specific. I don't know what you're saying."

"Mom," Meg said, lowering her voice, "we think Dr. Story has been dilating patients with his penis."

Another long silence came over the line. "Mom?" Meg said. The silence continued till Meg said "Mom?" again.

Then she heard her mother whimpering. "No," Arden said. "No, Meg,
no."
Wrenching sobs came over the phone. "Don't tell me any more!"

"Mom, the bishop said he'd been having these complaints for five years. And Minda has wondered for four."

"No!"

"He told us to change doctors. There's nothing else we can do about it."

"I can't believe that." Her mother didn't seem to be crying now.

"Well, that's what the bishop said," Meg told her.

Arden insisted that they inform their dad right away. "He has to know. Sick or not, he's our strength."

Dean McArthur's face turned bk>od-red. Meg worried about another heart attack. He asked some of the same questions her mother had asked, then picked up the phone and dialed a doctor

MEG ANDERSON

friend in California. "Do doctors ever insert some kind of tube in a woman," he asked, "when they're doing routine office inspections?" He listened for a minute, said "Thanks," and turned back to his wife and daughters.

"No," he said. "They don't. Never. You girls were abused."

10

MINDA BRINKERHOFF

It took the middle child six days to get up the oourage to tell Scott. When she tried, the words stuck in her mouth. Fingers trembling, she handed him a copy of a long letter she'd prepared in case they decided to go to a lawyer. He frowned and flopped into a chair. She sat on the armrest as he read:

He stood between my legs, looking at my face, and began to dialate me. I was tight, right? I was. He went in further. Tight here also, right? Further he went in. Tight here, right? Yes. Next he pushed all the way in and it hurt me terrible. I turned red and started to sweat. That was what always happened.

Why was he looking at my face? Nowhere else, just in my face. Again. It hurts there? Yes it did.

Then he said, "Let me pull out a little." Very slowly he pulled out and then he said, "Let me try again." He pushed back in. It hurt me. Out he pulled again and asked, "It still hurts there?"

"Yes, it does."

"Well, I'll try one more time and if I can't get in far enough, we'll quit. Do you think it would help if you guided it in?"

I responded, "No, I'm sure it wouldn't."

He pushed in one more time and tears rolled down my face. He turned around to the sink and did something, walked up to the side of the exam table and began pushing on my bladder and what not. My hands were at the sides of the table. Something long and soft slipped underneath the cup of my hand.