“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.
