“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 andempty. 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 likeYou can do it!andBelieve 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. Thelights 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 expectfifteen 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.”
