Not a planned visit. She was pregnant and started bleeding, so I took her to the ER.
The room was small. Curtain half drawn, door not fully shut. A male doctor came in with a nurse behind him. I ended up near the door, just behind him. She was standing in front of him, still in her jeans, one hand on her belly.
He didn’t give her a gown first. He told her to take off the jeans and the panties, right there, while she was still standing. She went red. She looked at me for a second, then at him, and she did it. Unbuttoned, pushed the jeans down, stepped out of them. Then the panties. She had to bend a little to get them off her feet. I could see all of it from where I was standing. So could he. She knew I could. That was the part that stayed with me. She was stripping in front of another man, and she could see me watching her do it.
He had her lie back after that. He checked the bleeding, looked between her legs, did a quick internal exam with the nurse holding a light. I stayed by the door. From there I had the side view: her knees apart, his hands, her face turned toward the wall because she didn’t want to look at either of us. The bleeding wasn’t heavy. They kept her a while and sent us home.
I haven’t told her what that minute did to me. The exam I can explain as medical. Her having to undress standing in front of him, with me behind him seeing the whole thing, and her seeing that I saw it, is the part I still replay.