Darla Patterson is my friend from High School. Now she works at an abortion clinic. This is her story.
Issue #2 - June 27, 2003 - 8:35 pm
People often get lost coming to our clinic. This is due in part to the civic planning of the city the clinic is in. There are lots of winding one way streets because apparently the religious group that originally developed this area believed that straight roads were somehow sinister. This seems as likely an explanation as any other, and seems likely because this same group also practiced the strange customs of asceticism and celibacy. We give precise directions to patients when they make their appointments to counteract the effects of the strange swirling streets but this, like the rythmn method, is only somewhat effective.

People who are lost often call us on their crap reception cellular phones and shout frantically through the mouthpiece at us the names of the streets they're passing. They don't want to stop and ask for directions in case people figure out where they're going or because they're just so
tweaked out about it all that they can't behave rationally. The fact that a good number of women are cloak-and-dagger furtive about their abortins can be somewhat tirtesome in these sort of situations, even though it's understandable. I imagine that if I could watch their cars from a spaceship hovering above they would look like drunken bees careening around and around the hive of our clinic. Or the anti-hive, more precisely.

Anyway- today we had this woman coming from just twenty miles away who was lost for four hours and everyone had spoken to her at some point on the telephone trying to help her find her way. It was taking her so long that we thought that she may arrive too late to see the doctor so the last few times someone spoke with her they let her know that this was a possibility. So she finally arrives and her hair is looking windblown and she's breathing kind of hard and talking very quickly and tells us that she'd been pulled over because she was speeding. She told the officer that she had to get to our clinic to get an abortion and they let her go, without a ticket! So next time you get pulled over you should tell the cop that you're in a hurry to get to the abortion clinic. Say it like you mean it, it works!
Issue #1 - June 9, 2003 - 5:53pm

No one has asked me if I think Sammy Sosa was using a corked bat all along. Those aren't the sort of circles in which I languidly pick at my nail polish, I guess. But I like to think I know a little something about human nature from my tenure at the abortion clinic and I'd like to show off my savvy. I want someone to say "So Darla, ya think that Sammy did it?" so that I can share the insights I've gained in a well-seasoned, Detective Briscoe on Law and Order kind of way.

The thing people most obviously lie about when they come in for an abortion is about their drug usage. It's always funny to look at somebody's chart and see that they claimed to have "tried some crack" three weeks before. Like it was casually offered at a party after they turned down

the wine. There are the Eddie Haskell types who deny any useage until they have to sign a couple of consent forms with the word "death" listed as a complication. I had a woman once coyly say "So what would happen if someone free-based some coke yester-dayand um, like, you know, they got the drugs I'm gonna be gettin'?"

Some people act like they're little Pollyannas, happily sniffing flowers that have been laced with narcotics without their knowledge. "My friend gave me a joint but it had a little sumpin' sumpin' in it," this woman told me last week, trying to do her best impression of an ingenue. Due to her indecent attire and heavy-handed application of her make-up she looked more like she was doing a bad impression of some teen idol musician/actor doing a bad impression of an innocent teen in a Lifetime movie.

So I guess I know a little sumpin' sumpin' about pregnant women who want to have abortions, which also makes me an authority on major league baseball players and everyone else. I always feel kind of sad for people when they get caught commiting non-violent crimes, but it's entertaining to watch them make a spectacle of themselves by the hilarious lies they make up.