Chapter 11 Ophelia
The summons comes while I’m shoving wet hair into braids, just for a change, and trying not to think about the hand-shaped bruise Caius left on my thigh.
It’s not a letter this time, not even a snide knock-and-flee by one of the Board’s little rats.
No, this is the real deal: a knock at the door, insistent, a heartbeat thud against the cheap wood.
I open it and find the courier… tall, angular, white-blond hair razored close to the scalp, the kind of face you’d find in a medical textbook under “Hereditary Deformity: Aristocracy.” He doesn’t bother with hello or good morning, just: “Ms. Morrow. You’re wanted in the South Gymnasium. Please come now.”
He’s not asking. His body blocks the exit, just enough to make it clear I can either walk or be carried.
I don’t say a word. I grab my jacket and follow.
The walk is slow but measured. Every corridor we cross, every flight of stairs, every polished marble stretch is empty, obviously by their design.
The Board must hate an audience when it’s time for a shaming, but the ghosts are always present.
I can feel them in the stutter of the lights, the whisper of air through the vents, the way even the water in the hallway fountains seems to stop moving when I pass.
I keep my chin up, shoulders squared, pace even with my handler.
The gym is at the end of a long, windowless hall, the doors double-thick, painted hospital green. The courier holds one open, and I step inside.
They’ve transformed the space from a gym to something far colder.
The bleachers are pushed against the wall, stacked to the rafters, leaving the floor bare but for a row of folding tables, each covered in starched white linen.
The smell is bleach, vinyl, and something sweet and metallic underneath.
The only color comes from the banners nailed to the upper tier: the Board’s seal, big and blue with gold accents.
Floodlights hum from the ceiling, hot and relentless.
They cut the room into slabs of white and black, no hiding anywhere.
At the far end, a raised platform hosts four members of the Board, each in a suit so black it could absorb light.
The faces are different, but the vibe is the same: cold, focused, utterly bored.
Behind them, two women stand in nurse-white scrubs, hands folded at the waist, faces empty. A third—doctor, judging by the lab coat and the way she ignores the men—sits at a table covered in files and instruments.
The courier steers me to a line taped on the floor. “Wait here.”
I plant my feet and look around. There are cameras in the corners, red dots blinking, and I realize suddenly that this is not a disciplinary. This is an evaluation.
A test.
My stomach goes tight, but I force myself to breathe slow. I roll my shoulders, making a show of stretching, just to let the bastards know I’m not afraid.
The doctor glances up, eyes sharp behind the oval glasses. She stands, crosses to where I’m planted, and lets her gaze travel from the top of my head to my boots and back.
“Ophelia Morrow,” she says. “Please remove your clothing.”
I stare at her. “Excuse me?”
Her face doesn’t move. “All of it. We need baseline measurements.”
The world freezes for a half-second.
I look past her, to the Board. The men are unmoved, their eyes on their clipboards or the floor, as if the body in front of them is just another pile of meat to be weighed and discarded.
I force my voice to stay even. “Is this really necessary?”
She doesn’t answer. She just gestures to the two assistants in the background. They step forward, shoes silent on the polished wood, and I see now that they’re built for force. One is tall and wiry, the other stocky as a pit bull. I recognize them, faintly, but I can’t place from where.
They flank me. The doctor folds her arms.
“Strip,” she repeats, “or we’ll do it for you.”
This isn’t about medicine. It’s about power. About reminding me I’m prey.
I think about saying no, about refusing, but I can already see the outcome. They’ll drag me down, tear the clothes off, and it’ll be worse. This way, I keep what’s left of my pride.
I unbutton my jacket. Slow. Deliberate. I let it fall to the floor, and the sound is a dull thud. Next, the shirt, fingers clumsy on the buttons, white cotton sticking to the sweat at my ribs. I feel every eye in the gym, every lens, every ghost in the rafters.
My hands tremble at the waistband of my skirt. I will them still, and step out of it, standing in nothing but the cheap, institutional underwear they gave me. It’s see-through in this light. My nipples stand out, hard as bullets.
So I tear it off, rip the elastic, and fling it at the floor.
The doctor just nods, like I’m a dog who’s learned to sit.
She circles me, eyes clinical, pausing only to write notes on her tablet as she gestures for me to stand on various equipment.
“Height, five-six. Weight, one-seventy-six. Hip to waist ratio, looks optimal at visual inspection. Musculature—underdeveloped, but within parameters. Breasts: full, symmetrical, possible prior piercings. No visible tattoos.”
She stops in front of me and gestures to the underwear.
I want to scream, but I make myself smile instead. I hook my thumbs under the band and yank them off, standing naked as the day I was born in the blaze of light.
The assistants don’t look at me; they look at her. Waiting for the next command.
She glances at my face, and for a split second, I see something human. Pity, maybe. Or just fatigue.
“Hands at your sides.”
I do as I’m told.
The first measurement is arm span, cold metal tape stretched from wrist to wrist. Then the circumference of my biceps, my thighs, my calves.
She runs her hands over my shoulders, probing for muscle.
My skin prickles. I imagine I’m somewhere else, a million miles away, floating outside my body and looking down at this scene like a science experiment gone wrong.
“Chin up,” she says, and slides a caliper under my jaw, pressing until the bone aches.
The assistants record every number, typing into tablets. One of them takes photos, flash bright against my skin.
My nipples are hard, my legs shake, but I won’t give them a reaction.
“Bend forward,” she says.
I do, and the doctor checks my spine, counting the vertebrae with her gloved fingers. She makes notes about flexibility, posture, possible joint injuries.
“Turn around.”
I turn, ass bare to the world, and hear the snick of more photos.
There’s a hush, then the doctor clears her throat. “You can move to the next station.”
I grab for my clothes, but the pit-bull assistant blocks me with a hand. “Not yet,” she says. “You’ll be issued new attire at the end.”
I stand, naked, and cross my arms over my chest. Not out of shame, but to hide the way my hands shake.
The Board never looks up. The men in suits are more interested in their notes than the body in front of them. But I know better. They’re predators, and predators always watch.
The doctor hands me a towel, and I wrap it around my chest, letting it hang loose.
She leans in, voice low. “It’s almost over. You did fine.”
I don’t answer.
Station Two is a cubicle of screens, blinding halogens, and the stink of medical plastic.
The gym floor is out of sight; the only way in or out is a curtain drawn tight as a noose.
The examination table is a slab of brushed steel, so cold it burns my calves when I sit.
A nurse grabs a needle from the tray beside her.
She snaps gloves over her hands, snaps them hard so the latex bites my skin when she grabs my elbow.
The doctor follows, her clipboard now stacked two inches thick with the metrics of my body.
She doesn’t bother with eye contact, just says for me to “Lie back, please,” and starts adjusting the stirrups at the foot of the table.
The nurse holds my wrist, pinning it in place while she cleans my skin with an alcohol wipe that stings worse than the needle she shoves in, depressing something clear into my vein.
I don’t bother asking what it is.
It doesn’t really matter.
“Relax,” the nurse says, voice hollow.
I want to ask if she means physically, emotionally, or if it’s just a reflex from all the girls she’s had to peel off the ceiling after this. I want to say, “Fuck you,” but I’m busy counting the cracks in the roof, forcing each muscle to unclench one by one.
The doctor starts with the easy things— drawing blood, blood pressure, pulse. She calls out numbers and the nurse enters them into a tablet.
She presses cold calipers to my breast, squeezing until the skin turns white and the flesh bulges around the metal. “Thirty-four C,” she says, “no evidence of reduction, natural ptosis for age. No evidence of infection or keloid. Areolas symmetric.”
The nurse takes a photo, then another. I stare at the ceiling, fighting the urge to cover myself, to claw out her eyes, to run screaming from the room.
The next step is worse. The doctor tells me to “scoot forward.” Her fingers are cold, efficient, pressing into my hip bones, measuring the width with a tape, then comparing it to the distance between the pubic crest and my ribs.
“Pelvis: adequate for delivery,” she says, and I realize for the first time that this isn’t just about me. It’s about what comes after.
She snaps on a new set of gloves and spreads my knees apart, guiding my feet into the stirrups. My ass is barely on the table. I shiver, not from cold but from the humiliation, the way the air hits places that should only ever see darkness.
“Relax,” she says again, but it’s not advice. It’s a command.
She swabs the inside of my thigh with something sharp and minty. Then comes the click of the speculum, the crunch of metal forced into softness.
I wince. The pain is dull, but the shame is sharp as glass.
She inserts a swab, rotates it, pulls it out, drops it in a vial. “Cervical sample for culture,” she says, as if talking about a blood orange.