Doc: The Rape of the Town of Lovell (17 page)

Dr. Story came back in and sat behind his messy desk. When she'd finished telling her story, he counseled her, "Maybe you'll have to stay away from your church awhile. It might save your marriage."

He'd delivered two of her children and treated her and her family most of her life, so she didn't tell him that she had no intentions of taking his advice. Nor did she inform him later that his free samples hadn't worked out. The first one made her dizzy, and she capped the bottle and decided to let the Lord do her healing.

The next time she went to the clinic, Dr. Story gave her a pelvic exam, and more in the following months. He told her she needed counseling, but he seemed more interested in hearing the intimate details of her life than in providing advice. One day as he was dilating her with the tube, he asked, "Do you have intercourse very often?"

"Probably once a week," she said. It felt strange, making conversation flat on her back.

"Have you ever had an orgasm?"

She thought, Gee, what's this got to do with anything? "Well, I don't know," she said.

"One thing that would make it more enjoyable for you," he said, "is to change positions. That would pretty much make sure you'd have an orgasm and be satisfied."

She thought, Gosh, who brought this up? And who says I'm not satisfied?

On the morning of her thirtieth birthday, Saturday, February 12, 1983, she was lazily tying a quilt. Mike wanted to drive her to the new Kmart in Cody to pick out a present for herself, but she'd had pneumonia recently and felt as though she might be relapsing. Her chest burned, and when she checked her temperature, it was 101. She made a call. "Dr. Story's so nice," she told Mike when she hung up. "It doesn't matter, day or night. He always accommodates us."

She drove herself up the hill. Somewhere in the back of the clinic, she heard a man and woman talking. After a while Dr. Story installed her on the automatic table in Examining Room No. 2 and checked her eyes, ears, nose and throat. "I can't see anything," he said. "Maybe you're coming down with a virus. How long has it been since you've had a pelvic?"

She thought, A pelvic for pneumonia? He looked at her as though reading her mind and said. "You might have a low-grade kidney infection."

She thought, Well, yeah, I guess so.

He told her to undress, handed her a sheet, and left. She heard the other people say good-bye and the front door shut. The place was silent.

He returned and turned on the water. In earlier pelvics she'd noticed that he always warmed his instruments under the faucet. Some doctors used cold speculums, but Dr. Story was concerned about his patients' comfort.

He asked her to slide to the end of the table till her backside touched his hands. He inserted the speculum and said, "This is awfully uncomfortable, isn't it?"

"Yes," she said, "but it always is."

He told her he would dilate her with the tube. She felt uneasy as he laid the plastic speculum on the sink and returned to his position at the foot of the table. Something slipped inside and it felt exactly like Mike. She thought, This can't be true. Dr. Story wouldn't do that to me.

She noticed a rhythm to his motion. When the tube was far inside, his body was close, and when he stood back, the tube slid back with him. She thought, Oh, my, this can't be happening.

He paused and asked, "Can I get in farther?"

She didn't know what to say. "Yes," she mumbled.

She closed her eyes and prayed, O Heavenly Father, please don't let this be happening to me.

Again he asked if he could get in farther, and this time she said, "I guess." She couldn't decide what to do. Should she jump up and yell? But they were alone. She thought, He could kill me. He could inject me with a shot, make it look like a heart attack. He could tell Mike that I'd died of pneumonia.

He pushed back and forth, slowly and steadily. She remembered an admonition in the Book of Mormon to guard your virtue with your life. She thought, Gosh, I shouldn't just lie here. But when he asked for the third time if he could get in farther, she heard herself say "I guess" again.

Tears slid across her temples and into her ears. He stared at her boldly, a look of triumph and dominance in his flat brown eyes. She thought, He knows I know—and he's not stopping. Ooooooh, this is terrible.

At last he stepped back. "Well," he said in his normal soft voice, "I can't find anything, and—I don't know, you might be getting a virus or something. I'll give you a prescription."

She heard the sound of his zipper. He scribbled something on his clipboard and left the room.

Driving down the hill, she thought, I'm going to the police. She looked at her watch. It was noon; she'd been gone two hours. She decided she'd better tell Mike first.

As she walked in the door, she heard his anxious voice. "Is it pneumonia again?"

She thought, How can I tell him? He'll shoot Story like a buck deer. She tried to sound unruffled as she said, "He didn't find anything."

"Did he give you a prescription?"

"Yeah, but I'm not gonna get it filled."

"Yes you are."

"No I'm not." She tried to decide how to put it and finally said, "Dr. Story didn't know what he was doing today."

Mike drove downtown and filled the prescription, marked "for misery," but she refused to touch the pills. She moped around all day. Her best friend brought her a lovely blouse; Aletha mouthed a joyless thanks. Mike peered at her several times as though to ask what was wrong. All she could see was the face at the top of the sheet. And all she could think was, Oh, you dirty thing. I know what you've been doing all these years. You dirty, dirty thing . . .

At
1 a.m
. that night she lay listening to her husband's breathing. She thought, I can't handle this alone.

She nudged him and said, "Mike, are you awake?"

"I am now," he growled.

"Can I talk to ya?"

He raised up on an elbow. "Yeah," he said. "What's wrong?"

She said a few words and began to cry. When she recovered her composure, she started again. "You know, uh, this morning? At Dr. Story's office?"

That was ail she had to say. He put his arms around her. "All those years ago," he said gently, "when you thought that's what had happened—that was true, wasn't it?"

"Yes"

They rocked in each other's arms. After a while he said, "What should I do?"

"I was gonna go to the police this morning."

He hesitated. "It'll be your word against his. They're not gonna believe you. The only thing you can do is get another doctor."

"But Mike, I feel like I've got to do something. I feel like . . . I've got to go to the stake president."

"What can he do? Story's not LDS, and you didn't do anything wrong."

"I feel so dirty. I feel like I allowed him to go on. Is there something about me that makes men come on to me? I mean, why did he pick me out of all the women in Lovell? There's a couple of older guys on the mail route that're trying to get friendly, too. Why, Mike? Do I ask for it?"

"You're just nice." He squeezed her hard. "Don't change."

"Well, gosh, I'm gonna have to start being not so friendly, but I hate to be that way because that's not me, ya know?"

She decided to be more formal on her route. It might help head off more misunderstandings.

On Monday, two days after the incident, she had to deliver a registered letter to the clinic. It made her nervous. She was confused by her own feelings. She thought,
I still like him!
She tried not to let it show.

To make matters worse, she kept running into him downtown. Each chance meeting made her more upset.

When she broke out with bad eczema, she went to Story's fellow churchman, Dr. Douglas Wrung. He asked her to show him the rash, and she had to take off her blouse and pants. He prescribed an ointment, and asked a few routine questions. As she was leaving the office, she said to herself, No way I'm coming back. He didn't do anything wrong, but I'm not taking any chances.

Spring runoff filled the canals with yellowish-orange snowmelt. She couldn't chase the rape from her mind. Playing the piano at primary or leading the choir at church, she would fight back tears. She didn't know what bothered her more, that she'd been abused or that she'd let it happen. Who would understand? She lectured herself by the hour:
Aletha, this guy raped you, and if you don't do something, other people are gonna get raped, more and more and more. They're gonna go through what you went through, and it'll be your fault.
She prayed, O Heavenly Father, please help me to know what to do. Help me to know where to go. Help me to do . . . something.

She listened as Stake President Abraham counseled her Relief Society on virtue. He reminded the women to allow no one but their husbands to touch their private parts. "And be careful about doctors," he warned. "Just because somebody's a doctor doesn't mean that you need to let them violate you. If you know a doctor's doing something improper, stop him! Make sure you're not one of the unworthy who are taken advantage of. Make sure there's a nurse in the room. And don't let a doctor give you a lot of pelvic examinations. They're not that necessary. My wife bore ten children and she hasn't had ten pelvic exams in her life."

Aletha listened and thought, He's talking about Story! How did he find out? He's talking about . . .
me.
I've got to do something. But what? Months ago, Mike had predicted that the police wouldn't believe her. Were they any more likely to believe her now?

By Memorial Day, she hadn't seen Story as a patient for three months, but she took her daughter in because the child was afraid of other doctors. Story treated her strep throat and gave her a painless shot and smiled at both Durtsches as if they were his favorite patients. Aletha hated herself more than ever.

By the end of June, four months after the birthday trauma, she'd begun a fast for guidance. She'd been on the second day, walking a double route to help out another carrier, when Arden McArthur's car pulled over and stopped.

It took three hours to compose the letter to the State Medical Board. A few days later, she was sorting mail in the post office when a call came in from a man who identified himself as Dr. Lawrence Cohen of the Medical Board. He said, "I hope you realize that these are very serious charges to bring against a doctor." He didn't sound friendly.

"I do," she said nervously.

"I hope you realize that if this goes to a hearing, you'll have to testify. Are you willing to do that?"

"Yes," she said, "I am."

By repeatedly stressing the gravity of her charges, Cohen gave the impression he was trying to frighten her off. "We have two other letters," he said in his stern voice, "but that's not enough. And they're both from the same family. Did you women get together on your stories?"

She assured him that they hadn't. Her palms were wet when she hung up.

She phoned Arden and learned that the Medical Board had demanded the names of five victims. She remembered a remark that her friend Irene Park had once made: "I wouldn't go to Story if he was the last doctor on earth and I was dying. Not after what he did to me."

She called the Park home and briefed Irene on the situation. "Would you be willing to write in?" Aletha asked.

Irene said she would take the address and think about it.

The stake president phoned. "I've been hearing rumors about you," he told his choir director. He asked if she'd made an official complaint against Dr. Story.

ALETHA DURTSCHE

"Yes, President Abraham, I have."

He expressed his sympathy, but reminded her that the prosecution of medical rape was not the church's job. He mentioned that there was strong LDS support for Dr. Story. "Personally, I'm sure he's guilty," he confided. "I've heard from so many women."

She breathed a little easier. At least he knew. In all of Big Horn County, there was no more important ally.

17

ARDEN McARTHUR

Arden prayed and meditated and exercised her brain, but she couldn't change the arithmetic. If every one of her prospects wrote in, they would end up one victim short of the Medical Board's magic formula.

She dredged up an old memory and phoned Sister Dottie Parry. Arden had hardly started speaking when the excitable Dottie began bellowing into the phone. "I tried to tell you about Dr. Story twelve and a half years ago! And Arden, you dang thing, you wouldn't listen!"

"You're right," Arden answered calmly. "You're absolutely right. But this is important, Dottie."

"It was important
then,
too. Now you're asking me to write a letter to somebody?"

"Only if he did something that was against your principles."

"I'll think about it. But . . . don't count on me."

Arden thought, Well, that's the end of the line. I'm a dollar short and a day late. And that creature can keep right on abusing women, by approval of the state's number game.

She called Meg and Minda and asked if they could remember