The Millstone by Margaret Drabble

an endless wait, but within a few minutes my name too was mysteriously called. "Mrs. Stacey," said the mechanical voice, "Mrs. Rosamund Stacey." I got up once more and found the nurse who had taken my letter. She turned to me and said,
What do you want? I said they'd just called my name out, what should I do? Go see the midwife, said the nurse. Where? I said, almost sharply, for I could see no possible reason why I or anyone else should be expected to know by instinct where midwives were. Oh, don't you know? she said, and pointed to a door leading off the hall in the far right-hand corner. I walked up to it, knocked and went in.
    The midwife was a pretty lady with smart ginger hair and small features and blue eyes. "Hello, Mrs. Stacey," she said warmly, extending her hand from behind her desk, "I'm Sister Hammond, how do you do?"
    "How do you do?" I said, thinking I had reached civilization at last, but feeling nonetheless impelled to continue, "but I'm not Mrs. Stacey, I'm Miss."
    "Yes, yes," she smiled, coldly and sweetly, "but we call everyone Mrs. here. As a courtesy title, don't you think?"
    She was a civilized lady and she could see that I was civilized, so I too smiled frostily, though I did not think much of the idea. We had some chat about how she didn't believe in natural childbirth, and the overcrowding of the maternity service, and then she made me fill in interminable forms and documents, giving details of all past illnesses and of my domestic accommodation. When I said that I had a flat with five rooms, kitchen and bathroom all to myself, her smile became even more courteous and cold: I could see that she saw me, and without wild inaccuracy, as one of these rich dissolute young girls about town, and I was rather relieved that her profession prevented her from inquiring why I had not done the sensible and expected thing and gone and had an expensive abortion. I did not like her, but I felt on safe ground with her, as I did not feel with all those bloated human people outside. Safe, chartered, professional, articulate ground.
    When she had finished her interrogation, she said,
"Well, Mrs. Stacey, that's all for now, I'll be seeing you again in a month's time."
    "Do you mean that's all for now?" I said, getting up with relief, but she said:
    "Oh no, I'm afraid not altogether. I'm afraid you'll have to wait now to see Dr. Esmond."
    "Oh, I see," I said. "I'm afraid I don't quite understand the routine here."
    "Oh," she said, rising dismissively, all clean starch and coolness, "oh, you'll soon find your way around. People don't take long to find their way around."
    So I went out and waited for Dr. Esmond, and I waited for him till the bitter end, when everyone else had gone. It was the first time that I had ever been examined, and I could have put up with Dr. Esmond, who was a grey-haired old man with rimless glasses, but I was not prepared for being examined by five medical students, one after the other. I lay there, my eyes shut, and quietly smiling to conceal my outrage, because I knew that these things must happen, and that doctors must be trained, and that medical students must pass examinations; and he asked them questions about the height of the fundus, and could they estimate the length of pregnancy, and what about the pelvis. They all said I had a narrow pelvis, and I lay there and listened to them and felt them, with no more protest than if I had been a corpse examined by budding pathologists for the cause of death. But I was not dead, I was alive twice over.
     
    As Sister Hammond had prophesied, I got used to it. I learned what time to arrive and where to slip my attendance card in the pile so that I would get called early in the queue: they were so unsystematic that one could not really beat their system, but one could win occasionally on the odd point. I learned to read the notes upside down in the file that said Not to be Shown to the Patient. I learned
how to present myself for inspection, with the