Chapter 4
Four
The receptionist hadn’t exaggerated when she’d said someone would be out to get me shortly.
I’d barely had time to shift through the small stack of magazines on the table – all healthy living and parenting themed – before someone stepped through the frosted glass door on the other side of the room and cleared her throat.
“Arabella Murphy?”
My gaze shifted from the smiling image of a woman cradling her round belly to the nurse from the elevator. She stood with her arms crossed, a tablet tucked under one of them, a scowl on her face that was at odds with the overly cheery atmosphere, and the door propped open with one hip.
“Ara, please.” I stood on shaky legs. “That’s me.”
She rolled her dark brown eyes to let me know it was obvious and pushed the door open wider. “You can come with me.”
I obeyed in silence, moving to the side once I’d stepped through and waiting for the nurse to show me where to go.
She released the door, which closed with a quiet whoosh, then started walking without indicating I should follow or even glancing my way.
I let her get a few steps ahead, wanting to see if she would say something, then hurried after when she didn’t.
Apparently, she was the type of person to hold a grudge.
She led me down the hall, passing rooms that were dark and empty.
Exam beds and random medical equipment were visible through the inky blackness, which shouldn’t have been surprising, but was after the posh waiting room.
The setting was as sterile as every other medical facility I’d ever been to.
All white and impersonal, the walls lined with informative pictures displaying the stages of pregnancy and motivational sayings.
Phrases like You can do it! and Believe in yourself!
screamed at me, making it difficult not to roll my eyes.
I could do it? Do what? Get the hell out of here without having to submit to this ridiculous law? Not unless I wanted to go to jail.
The nurse, who still hadn’t introduced herself, turned a corner and abruptly stopped beside a digital scale.
“Up you go,” she said, not looking at me, her tone sounding like someone giving a petulant child an order rather than a medical professional.
Since I had literally no choice but to go along with whatever she told me to do, I set my purse on the floor and gingerly stepped onto the scale.
Wires ran from it to the display on the wall, which was literally right in front of my face, and I watched as the numbers flashed once, twice, three times before finally settling on a weight.
“One hundred and thirty-four pounds and three ounces,” the nurse announced as she made a note in the tablet, pronouncing the words like she was a professor in a very large lecture hall, and she wanted to make sure the students in the back could hear.
I stepped off, and she immediately waved to the height chart mounted on the wall beside the scale. “Back straight. Feet together.”
Grinding my teeth to stop from snapping at her, I complied.
“Five feet six inches,” she said a second later. “Healthy weight, although you’re going to want to be careful not to gain too much.”
She snapped her tablet’s cover closed and gave a crisp wave down the hall. “Follow me.”
Like before, I had to hurry to keep up.
She led me to what looked like a typical exam room.
The lights flicked on automatically when we stepped through the door, illuminating the bed in the center, the small sink in the corner, and a machine I didn’t recognize but assumed was for ultrasounds.
I stared at it as I took an obligatory seat on the bed, barely registering the crinkle of the paper under me as I imagined seeing an image of the child growing inside me on the machine’s small screen.
A shiver moved through my body, and I hugged myself.
This couldn’t be happening. I couldn’t be here. I didn’t want to go through this.
“We just need to do a few preliminary tests,” the nurse was saying as she dug through the cabinet mounted on the wall above the sink.
“Bloodwork to make sure you’re healthy and, of course, your blood pressure.
We’ll need to take your temperature, which is something that will be monitored on a daily basis – ”
“Why?” I asked, finding my voice for the first time since she’d called my name.
She paused in the middle of arranging vials, her eyes narrowed when she glanced at me. “To track when you’re fertile.”
“Oh,” was all I could think to say.
She shook her head like she thought I was an idiot, then went back to arranging her paraphernalia of medical torture. “As I was saying, we’ll want to establish a good baseline so we can compare it as you go through the program, and we need to do a thorough exam to make sure you’re healthy.”
“And if I’m not?” I asked, a wave of hope sweeping through me. “I mean, what if I’m sick or something? Will I be disqualified?”
I tried to keep the hope out of my voice, but based on the way the nurse glared, I knew I’d failed.
“That rarely happens.” Her tone was crisp. Impatient. “And it would take a lot for you to be disqualified. You are, after all, the hope for humanity.”
Was I? That was the one thing I’d never gotten about this program.
So few of us were fertile that despite the forced pregnancies, the population was still dwindling.
We were only required to have one baby, after all.
How could anyone expect fifteen percent of the female population to rebuild everything we’d lost? It was ridiculous.
The nurse pushed a small, wheeled metal cart toward the bed, the things she’d retrieved from the cabinet laid out in a neat row on top of it like she was presenting them to me.
My mouth went dry as I looked them over.
A needle with tubing attached, three vials, alcohol swabs, cotton balls, and two Band-Aids.
“No need to be so nervous,” the nurse said, her tone dripping with irritation. “We’ll get the other stuff out of the way first then deal with this.” She paused as if trying to decide whether or not to say something, then asked, “You’re not scared of needles, are you?”
“No,” I assured her.
“Good.” Her head bobbed twice as she unwrapped the blood pressure cuff from the hook on the wall. “That’s always a bit of a challenge when it happens, but we get through it. We have to. For the sake of the human race.”
Was she required to fit that into conversation as many times as she could? Probably.
She wrapped the blood pressure cuff around my arm and, an instant later, it started to expand and tighten.
While that happened, the nurse put a small clip on my finger and practically forced a thermometer into my mouth.
Between her cold, irritated demeanor, the lack of conversation, and that I still didn’t even know her name, it all made me feel like a turkey being prepared for Thanksgiving dinner.
Did she treat everyone like this, or was it just because I’d pissed her off? Probably the latter.
She didn’t bother telling me what my temperature or blood pressure were before making a note in the tablet, and she didn’t even glance my way as she readied the vials.
“Arm out,” she said, her gaze not once straying to my face.
I complied, and she tied a tourniquet around my forearm. She tapped the flesh on the inside of my elbow, then probed it until she located a good vein. The alcohol swab was cold against my skin, and the needle biting when she slid it in. Thankfully, she got the vein on the first try.
The nurse allowed one vial to fill, then another and another, setting each one on the tray. Then the tourniquet was gone, and the needle pulled out, and she was applying the cotton ball and Band-Aid to my arm.
I sat in silence as she scribbled a couple things on the vials.
“Now we just need a urine sample, and we can get you to the fertility counselor.”
“Fertility counselor?” I questioned.
I’d been expecting to see a doctor next, so this part caught me off guard.
“Of course.” She let out an annoyed huff. “We need to go over what’s expected of you, what your options are, the procedures, and have you sign papers saying you understand, and that the government isn’t liable if things don’t go the way you want them to.”
Things already weren’t going the way I wanted them to, but I kept that to myself. No need to piss this chick off any more than I already had.
“Oh. I hadn’t thought about that.”
“Most people don’t,” she said, the statement making it seem like it should have been obvious. Which was insane.
Everyone knew about The Fertility Act, but women didn’t talk about what happened in the program.
Yes, there were stories of married women who’d been deemed fertile but hadn’t been able to conceive without the help of the Department of Fertility, and stories of women who’d volunteered their wombs over and over, but they were all sweet and uplifting.
Propaganda. No one mentioned that the women who’d gone back two, three, and four times had been compensated, the sum they received in exchange for offering up their uterus growing bigger each time, or that there were women who hadn’t wanted a baby at all who’d been forced to give birth.
No one talked about the prison hospitals, or the toll having a baby took on a body.
No one talked about the women who didn’t make it through, because, I wasn’t a fool, I knew that happened. Nothing was foolproof.
I was so lost in thought that I jumped when the nurse slammed a plastic cup onto the metal table.
“The bathroom is to the right and two doors down. Make sure you wipe front to back twice before urinating.” She tapped the two small, square packages on top of the cup that I assumed were some kind of sanitizing wipe, then in a forceful tone said, “Twice.”
Wordlessly, I stood, taking the cup and wipes as I did. They felt as heavy as a bomb.