Chapter 5 Eliana
ELIANA
consommé /?k?ns??mā/: noun
After Helen leaves—satisfied with my progress, or at least satisfied enough to schedule our next session—I stand outside the apartment building with Excalibur in one hand and my phone in the other.
I should go upstairs, make myself tea, and practice the techniques Helen drilled into me until muscle memory takes over and I stop having to think so damn hard about every single step.
But my thumb hovers over the phone’s voice assistant, and before I can talk myself out of it, I’m asking Siri for directions to the nearest free clinic.
The automated voice tells me there’s one four blocks west. I can do four blocks. I’ve done harder things than that in the past seven weeks.
I make the trek. The clinic isn’t much to speak of—or so I imagine, based on the sounds filtering through the propped-open door when I finally locate it.
Wailing babies, the flapping of magazines, a television playing Jerry Springer at an inhumane volume.
When I approach the reception desk, a woman with a kind voice asks how she can help me.
“I need to, uh, see someone,” I say awkwardly. “About… I think I might be pregnant.”
The woman doesn’t gasp or tsk or do any of the judgy things I’m bracing for. She just says, “Okay, honey. Let me get you some paperwork.”
A clipboard appears in my hands, smooth and cool.
“I can’t—” I swallow and try again. “I can’t see to fill this out.”
“Oh! No problem.” The clipboard disappears. “I’ll just ask you the questions and write down your answers. That work?”
“Yeah. Thanks. That works.”
We go through the basics. I give her my real name, because what’s the point of lying to a doctor? For address, I hem and haw and make up something in the general vicinity of our apartment. Insurance status: none. The woman doesn’t comment on any of it, just writes it all down.
“Alright, Ms. Hunter. Have a seat and we’ll call you back in just a bit.”
I find an empty chair. The plastic seat is cracked and lukewarm beneath my jeans. I fold my hands in my lap and wait.
Fifteen or twenty minutes go by before an impatient voice calls my name. “Hunter? Hunter? Anyone in here named Hunter? Goddammit, if I have to—”
“Here!” I squeak nervously. I stand, Excalibur extended, and set off in the direction of a woman who’s clearly having a very bad day.
The nurse’s shoes make a nasty sound against the linoleum floors. She shows no signs of slowing down, offering an arm, or asking if I need help navigating. In fact, all she says is, “Hurry up. In here.” I resist the urge to rap Excalibur across her shinbones as I pass.
I slip through the door she’s holding open, then turn around to face roughly in her direction. Her breath comes in short, angry puffs, like a dragon fueled by Monster Energy drinks and spite.
“Do I just stand here, or…?”
“Up on the table,” the nurse barks. “Obviously.”
Again, no offer of help is forthcoming. I’m on my own in this world, and I have this kind, thoughtful woman here to thank for the reminder.
After a few 360-degree turns and some confused wobbling around, I find where I’m supposed to go.
The tissue paper on the examination table crinkles as I haul myself up.
It’s thin enough that I can feel the cold vinyl beneath it.
Jesus, do they chill these things on purpose?
“So.” I hear pages flipping and the smack of her pursed lips. “Says here you think you might be pregnant.”
“Yeah. Er, yes. Yeah. I think so.”
“When was your last period?”
I do the math in my head, counting backward through motel rooms and panic attacks. “About seven weeks ago. Maybe eight.”
More page-flipping. “And you’re sexually active?”
“I… was.”
“Protected or unprotected intercourse?”
My face goes lava-hot. “Unprotected.”
“Mhmm.” Her pen scratches across paper with what sounds like judgment, though there’s a teensy bit of a chance that I’m merely projecting. “Any symptoms? Nausea, breast tenderness, fatigue?”
“All of the above.”
“And you’re blind?” This bit, she says like an accusation, as if I’ve personally inconvenienced her by showing up with a disability.
“Recent development,” I say. “I have a, uh, progressive genetic condition.”
“Uh-huh.” The self-righteous pen keeps scratching. “You on any medications?”
“No.”
“Drugs? Alcohol?”
“No.”
“You sure? Because if you are, we need to know for the baby’s—”
“I’m sure.” My hands clench in my lap. “I don’t do drugs. I barely drink.”
Unless a blue-eyed devil is pouring the wine down my throat himself, that is.
The nurse makes a noncommittal sound that suggests she’s heard that ol’ chestnut before and didn’t believe it then either. “Any history of STIs?”
Jesus Christ. “No.”
“Partner’s history?”
For the first time in a while, I let myself think about Bastian. I picture him the way he was when I left him: rain-soaked, blood-soaked, anger-soaked. A knife in one hand and a severed pinky in the other. Eyes blacker than the pits of hell.
Then, slowly, I start to imagine him moving in reverse from that moment.
The rain gets sucked up into the sky instead of falling down from it.
The bloodstains shrink and vanish. The pinky flies back to the man’s hand and reattaches, then the man stands up, retreats into the bar, vanishes from sight.
As I watch, the black rage leaves Bastian’s eyes and they turn blue again.
I keep spiraling backwards through weeks and months together. I watch it all unspool like a film looping back onto its reel.
The sunrise at Promontory Point becomes a sunset.
His fingers slip out of me, the pleasure unraveling into nothing.
We un-kiss on his kitchen counter and the wintergreen taste of him disappears from my mouth.
The Casablanca screening plays in reverse—credits first, then Bogart walking backward into Rick’s Café.
Further back: His story about the freezer at Tolstoy’s gets swallowed back into his throat. The wine tasting reverses. Oysters leap from our mouths back onto their shells, whole and untouched.
Back, back, back.
The contract unsigned.
The resignation letter un-shredded.
The pastries I brought to the test kitchen reappear in the box.
And finally, that first night: I’m walking backward through his office in the dark, hands outstretched. I find his chest—bare, warm, solid—and instead of stumbling forward into disaster, I’m pulling away. Retreating. Leaving him before anything starts.
Back to long before I loved him.
“Ma’am?” the nurse prompts impatiently. “Your partner’s sexual history?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’m not sure I ever did.”
“You don’t know.” Her judgment is unmistakable now. I’m definitely not making it up. “So you had unprotected sex with someone whose sexual history you’re unfamiliar with, no idea if he gave you any STIs, and now, you’re here because you might be pregnant. Do I got all that right?”
I consider that maybe I should sharpen the tip of Excalibur so I have something ready for judgmental bitches like this one next time we cross paths. “That about sums it up, yeah. You’ve got a way with words, you know.”
“Well.” Papers shuffle. “The doctor will be in shortly. We’ll need a piss sample.”
She presses something into my hand—a plastic cup, lukewarm and slightly sticky like it’s been sitting out in a sun-drenched dumpster or something.
“Bathroom’s two doors down on the left,” she says. “Think you can manage it?”
She doesn’t stick around to find out.