Martha with a naughty eye twinkle. She handed me a green paper gown and requested I change into it. “Take off everything.”
“That’s Just the Way It Is”was the title of a ’90s song by Phil Collins. I had a sudden vision of my mother singing it—or rather, humming it. I couldn’t have been more than six or seven, but I remembered her singing so clearly with her soft, wavy hair, her pretty smile, and peaches-and-cream skin that smelled like rose water. If genetics was to be believed, I had the DNA to be a good mother even if I didn’t have much luck with life.
When Dr. Archer came in—a smile teasing his countenance, as usual—and asked how I was doing and if I was ready to roll, I asked him if he knew the song. He did, fondly. After those pleasantries, he told me what was on the menu today. He really said menu , as if we were ordering a box of à la carte goodies from Godiva instead of a bunch of tests to determine the best way to get me pregnant.
We started with the ultrasound. I had the image of my mother in my head as I lay down, but it vanished when chilled gel was squeezed across my stomach to the pelvic bone. I sucked in a breath. My abdomen quivered, and so did the glob of jelly on top of it.
“Sorry,” Dr. Archer mumbled automatically. “Try to relax.”
Why was he sorry when he’d do it over and over until he got the right images? And why should he be sorry for doing his job? If anyone should apologize to me, it was Nirvaan. Had he really expected Zayaan to hold my hand in here? God, how embarrassing.
I winced as the probe pressed against my empty bladder.
“Does this hurt?”
I sucked in a breath. “No. Just some pressure.”
“Mmhmm,” the doctor hummed and continued with the probe.
I craned my neck toward the monitor. My insides looked like a nebula of exploding stars in black and white and sounded like it, too, with the accompanying erratic beeps.
“You said your cycle is irregular?”
“That’s right.” I tensed up but more from what had flashed through my mind than the probe pushing at my ovaries.
I hadn’t always been irregular. For the first two years after my menarche, I’d bled every month like clockwork. Then, after the night of my eighteenth birthday, I’d had to go on the pill. I’d begun to lose weight I couldn’t afford to lose. I’d become emaciated and depressed. The birth control pills had exacerbated my hormonal imbalance and mental state, messing up my system for good.
I gave Dr. Archer the gist of my medical history.
He gave me a breather after the ultrasound and left the room with a brief commiserating squeeze of my arm.
Dr. Archer was a good, gracious man.
A nurse came in with a toolbox dotted with blood-drawing paraphernalia. She stabbed me twice—without compassion—before hitting the right nerve and drew several tubes of blood samples from my arm to check hormone levels, thyroid and pituitary gland functions, and infections. They needed to make sure I was in peak medical health and that nothing would hamper the fecundity of my reproductive organs.
Martha came in and plied me with water, some ibuprofen, and a fresh paper gown.
Then, the nurses left me alone for so long that, at one point, I cracked the door open to check if they’d forgotten I was in there. They hadn’t. They were waiting for the painkiller to take proper effect. I’d thought they’d given it to me to relax my muscles after the ultrasound, but Martha explained, it was to prepare me for the HSG, the hysterosalpingogram.
I closed the door, took a deep breath, and blew it out in ten counts. To deny I was anxious would be fruitless. I hated medical processes. I especially hated procedures that couldn’t be done without me lying on my back with my legs spread wide and exposed. It wasn’t the pain I minded. In fact, I welcomed the pain. It kept me grounded in the here and now and not on past traumas.
My shrink had shown me how to take control of my mind when all it wanted
“That’s Just the Way It Is”was the title of a ’90s song by Phil Collins. I had a sudden vision of my mother singing it—or rather, humming it. I couldn’t have been more than six or seven, but I remembered her singing so clearly with her soft, wavy hair, her pretty smile, and peaches-and-cream skin that smelled like rose water. If genetics was to be believed, I had the DNA to be a good mother even if I didn’t have much luck with life.
When Dr. Archer came in—a smile teasing his countenance, as usual—and asked how I was doing and if I was ready to roll, I asked him if he knew the song. He did, fondly. After those pleasantries, he told me what was on the menu today. He really said menu , as if we were ordering a box of à la carte goodies from Godiva instead of a bunch of tests to determine the best way to get me pregnant.
We started with the ultrasound. I had the image of my mother in my head as I lay down, but it vanished when chilled gel was squeezed across my stomach to the pelvic bone. I sucked in a breath. My abdomen quivered, and so did the glob of jelly on top of it.
“Sorry,” Dr. Archer mumbled automatically. “Try to relax.”
Why was he sorry when he’d do it over and over until he got the right images? And why should he be sorry for doing his job? If anyone should apologize to me, it was Nirvaan. Had he really expected Zayaan to hold my hand in here? God, how embarrassing.
I winced as the probe pressed against my empty bladder.
“Does this hurt?”
I sucked in a breath. “No. Just some pressure.”
“Mmhmm,” the doctor hummed and continued with the probe.
I craned my neck toward the monitor. My insides looked like a nebula of exploding stars in black and white and sounded like it, too, with the accompanying erratic beeps.
“You said your cycle is irregular?”
“That’s right.” I tensed up but more from what had flashed through my mind than the probe pushing at my ovaries.
I hadn’t always been irregular. For the first two years after my menarche, I’d bled every month like clockwork. Then, after the night of my eighteenth birthday, I’d had to go on the pill. I’d begun to lose weight I couldn’t afford to lose. I’d become emaciated and depressed. The birth control pills had exacerbated my hormonal imbalance and mental state, messing up my system for good.
I gave Dr. Archer the gist of my medical history.
He gave me a breather after the ultrasound and left the room with a brief commiserating squeeze of my arm.
Dr. Archer was a good, gracious man.
A nurse came in with a toolbox dotted with blood-drawing paraphernalia. She stabbed me twice—without compassion—before hitting the right nerve and drew several tubes of blood samples from my arm to check hormone levels, thyroid and pituitary gland functions, and infections. They needed to make sure I was in peak medical health and that nothing would hamper the fecundity of my reproductive organs.
Martha came in and plied me with water, some ibuprofen, and a fresh paper gown.
Then, the nurses left me alone for so long that, at one point, I cracked the door open to check if they’d forgotten I was in there. They hadn’t. They were waiting for the painkiller to take proper effect. I’d thought they’d given it to me to relax my muscles after the ultrasound, but Martha explained, it was to prepare me for the HSG, the hysterosalpingogram.
I closed the door, took a deep breath, and blew it out in ten counts. To deny I was anxious would be fruitless. I hated medical processes. I especially hated procedures that couldn’t be done without me lying on my back with my legs spread wide and exposed. It wasn’t the pain I minded. In fact, I welcomed the pain. It kept me grounded in the here and now and not on past traumas.
My shrink had shown me how to take control of my mind when all it wanted
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