10
Giovanna
Iwake like I’m dragging myself out of the ocean surf onto a rocky shore. I feel gritty, my throat so dry it’s on fire, and my mouth tastes like metal. Heavy as lead, my eyelids scrape across my eyeballs when I try to open them, and the world swims in and out of focus.
I’m naked, the air cold against my skin, my body sore everywhere. Literally everywhere. My arms won’t move. Neither will my legs. Panic curls through me sluggishly, muted by whatever it is they’re drugging me with. When I tug against the restraints, they only bite tighter, the coarse ropes digging into my skin already rubbed raw.
There are voices. Two women. They are distant at first, like they’re speaking through water. The weight of holding my eyes open is too heavy to bear, so I let them close and focus on trying to make out what they’re saying.
I recognize one voice; it belongs to the nurse who has been helping me. Her clipped, efficient tone has become something my brain reaches out to hold on to. She clearly doesn’t want to be here, and she tries to help me when she can. But I can’t get out of here if she keeps drugging me. Why won’t she untie me? Why won’t they let me go?
The other woman’s voice is lilting, soft, but occasionally she drops a word with an accent or that doesn’t sound quite right.
“Is she pregnant yet?” the woman with the accent asks, keeping her voice down.
“It doesn’t happen that fast. I’ve explained this to you,” the nurse snaps. “She should be in her luteal phase if her period was ending when she got here, but it can take time before blood tests are definitive. You wouldn’t want to get a false result, would you?”
Pregnant. The word claws into my foggy mind, jagged and painful. My stomach turns, bile thick at the back of my throat. I turn my head and heave, but nothing comes out.
The accented woman hums, unbothered. “Would it be more efficient if we inseminated her?”
A silence follows, long enough that I can hear my pulse thrumming in my ears as the nurse brings a cool cloth and places it over my eyes. It sends a chill through me, and I start to shiver.
“Maybe,” the nurse replies at last, her voice flat, as if she’s discussing the weather. “But she’s been inseminated at this point multiple times.”
Inseminated? Multiple times? Me? I shake harder. I hear the nurse sigh softly and she puts a blanket over me. It does nothing to warm me. I was inseminated?
“Do it,” the accented woman orders.
The nurse’s voice sharpens with sarcasm. “Would you like to provide the sample yourself right now?”
The woman laughs without humor. “Very funny. I’ll bring in Mr. Abbiati tonight. I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to provide as many samples as you need.”
Mr. Abbiati? Antonio? For insemination? Fuck.
The nurse mutters, “Great,” her voice dripping with disdain.
The door opens and shuts again with a click. Silence, except for my shallow, frantic breaths. My heart pounds so hard my chest aches, and I roll my head to the side so that the heavy washcloth falls off my face.
The nurse comes closer. “At least they put your mattress on a frame and gave you some sheets and blankets,” she says. “Would you like something to eat before…”
Before what? Before I’m inseminated?!
The thought makes me want to vomit, and I turn my head and dry heave over and over while she holds a bin for me and smooths my hair back from my face.
When I’m done, she sighs, her voice light, almost gentle. “I’m going to give you more meds, okay? I promise it’s better this way. I know I wouldn’t want to be awake for this.”
I try to wet my lips, but my mouth is beyond parched, and my tongue sticks when I try to speak. The sound that scrapes out of me is broken, cracked. “How long…”
I want to ask how long I’ve been here. How many days have blurred into this endless cycle of drugged darkness and brief, terrifying wakefulness plus nonstop aching? But she thinks I mean how long am I going to be here.
“Until you’re pregnant, sweetheart.” Her voice softens, though it carries no comfort. “That’s my understanding. Unfortunately, the basics of the ovarian cycle seem to elude these people. They don’t believe me when I tell them that you can only get pregnant a few days out of the month. But the good news is we can do a pregnancy test next week. Hopefully this will be over soon.”
“Good news?” The words scrape my throat raw.
Her smile flickers, tight, forced. “I guess ‘good news’ is relative. But being pregnant is better than being—well, it’s better than…” She shudders, cutting herself off. “At least they should keep their hands off you then, and I’ll explain to them that regular exercise is good for a mother-to-be.”
The room tilts, spins. I’m trying to hold on to her words, but they slip like sand through my fingers.
