The narrator’s doctor-patient relationship with Dr. N

The narrator’s doctor-patient relationship with Dr. N develops under the pressure of an unwanted pregnancy and a law that makes direct medical assistance dangerous. He examines and treats her, but cannot offer straightforward help with an abortion. Their encounters instead move through diagnosis, indirect assistance, retreat when she seeks help after obtaining an abortion probe, and a later visit in which he recognizes her recovery and provides contraception. The relationship combines professional attention with the limits imposed by criminalization: his care matters, but it never gives her secure access to the treatment she needs.

First consultations and the limits of diagnosis

The narrator is on her way to an appointment with Doctor N when she meets Jacques S, who asks where she is going. Afraid that her explanation might prompt him to suspect the real reason for the visit or offer to accompany her, she says she has a stomach ache and is seeing a stomatologist. His correction—that a stomatologist treats mouth disorders—makes her slip more conspicuous to her, and she hurries away when the bus arrives. Before she reaches the appointment, the scene has established how secrecy shapes even her ordinary movements and speech.

At the consultation, the narrator’s presumed stomach pains are identified as morning sickness, and the physician tells her that she is pregnant. He prescribes injections intended to bring back her bleeding, though he seems doubtful that they will work. At the door, his cheerful assurance about the beauty of children conceived in love clashes with the narrator’s distress. His words do not meet the need that has brought her to him: she does not want reassurance about a future child but a way not to continue the pregnancy. She records the diagnosis in her diary as a nightmare, making clear the distance between the physician’s framing and her own experience.

A request mediated by the law

When the narrator later returns to Doctor N, she tells him she does not want to continue the pregnancy and says she has harmed herself. She has not, but uses the claim to communicate that she will persist in seeking an abortion. Doctor N examines her and says that she is medically all right. She begins to cry; he remains behind his desk, visibly troubled. The narrator takes his pause for a struggle of conscience and hopes he may agree to help. Instead, he tells her to arrange the abortion without telling him where she is going and writes a prescription for penicillin to be taken before and after it.

This response is neither direct provision of an abortion nor a simple refusal of all care. Doctor N keeps himself at a distance from the act while trying to reduce one danger associated with it. The narrator leaves believing that she has failed to persuade him, and for years interprets the encounter as a missed opportunity that greater pleading might have changed. In retrospect, she questions that belief: only he could say whether she could have altered his decision. The prescription nevertheless shows that he is concerned she might die of blood poisoning, even as the law restricts what he is willing or able to do openly.

The boundary of his assistance

After the narrator has obtained a probe from Madame P-R, she phones Doctor N from the station. Perhaps she hopes he will call her back to his office and take over her care, as he did during the earlier consultation. After a long pause, he recommends Masogynestril. From the sound of his voice, she understands that he does not want to see her and that she should not call again. The withdrawal sharpens the limits of their relationship: the doctor who had previously examined her and supplied antibiotics now offers advice at a distance rather than assuming responsibility for the situation.

The narrator later imagines the dilemma he faced. If he saw her, he might be legally compelled to remove the device and allow the pregnancy to continue; if he refused to see her, she could be left in danger. This reconstruction is explicitly retrospective, not a confirmed account of Doctor N’s thoughts. It preserves the uncertainty at the center of their relationship: his prescription may be an attempt to reduce risk, but it also marks his refusal to become more directly involved. The narrator’s experience of the law is consequently not abstract. It determines which forms of care are available, which conversations remain indirect, and when a doctor withdraws.

Follow-up and a different kind of care

Several months later, the narrator returns to Doctor N. He examines her thoroughly and expresses approval that she has recovered well. His response encourages her, without his intending it, to understand the ordeal as a personal victory. He also gives her a diaphragm and sperm jelly. This visit differs from the earlier ones: the immediate crisis has passed, and the consultation addresses contraception as well as recovery. It cannot undo the fear and uncertainty of her earlier appeals, but it offers practical means of preventing another pregnancy.

Taken together, the encounters portray a relationship that is neither wholly supportive nor simply indifferent. Doctor N diagnoses the pregnancy, prescribes treatments whose relevance the narrator does not initially understand, gives her penicillin while keeping the abortion itself unspoken, and later provides contraceptive care. At the point when she seeks help after obtaining the probe, however, he declines to see her. His concern for her survival coexists with fear of the legal consequences of intervention; the narrator’s dependence on his medical authority coexists with her determination to pursue care beyond him. The pattern makes the limits of individual compassion visible: under criminalization, a doctor may offer fragments of assistance without being able or willing to provide safe, continuous care.