Heat climbed my throat.
Her jaw stayed tight after she said it.
Polina gestured toward a curtained alcove. “Clothes off. Everything except underwear. You’ll be examined, then dressed.”
My feet stayed still. “Examined by who?”
“A female clinician.”
“I want her name.”
“No names tonight.”
I almost laughed.
No names on the door. No names from the staff. No names for the men waiting on the other side of the walls.
Polina stepped closer, lowering her voice. “You can still leave. If you stay, don’t waste your strength fighting the attendants. Save it for the men who paid to sit out there.”
The words settled cold in my stomach.
I looked at the other women. The blonde at the vanity had closed her eyes while an attendant brushed blush over her cheek. The girl whose necklace had been taken watched my face with both hands clenched in her lap, as if she wanted me to leave so she could believe leaving was still possible.
Petya’s face rose behind my eyes. His bruised jaw. His hands around the marker. The way he’d hugged me like he could hold our whole ruined life together with his arms.
I followed Polina behind the curtain.
The examination was quick, gloved, and humiliating in the quietest possible way. The clinician wore black slacks and a cream blouse under a white coat. She showed me where to sit, told me before she touched me, and kept her voice low enough that the women outside the curtain wouldn’t hear every word. The paper sheet crinkled under my clenched fists. The overhead bulb made the white coat glow while I stared at a crack in the molding and counted my own breaths.
When it was done, I sat on the edge of a padded bench with the sheet still across my lap.
“Verified,” the clinician said.
Cold moved through my stomach.
Polina brought the dress.
It wasn’t a dress in any honest sense. It was a pale silk chemise with narrow straps and a soft fall of fabric that skimmed my body instead of covering it. Ivory, maybe. Pearl. The kind of shade wealthy women called one thing and laundromats called impossible.
“No bra,” Polina said.
My face heated. “Of course not.”
She paused with the garment over one arm. “You can be angry and still lift your arms.”
I lifted them.
The silk slid over my skin, cool enough to make me shiver. It settled against my breasts, my waist, my hips, and every place I wanted armor. Polina adjusted the straps, then stepped back.
“Shoes?” I asked.
“Not for you.”
Of course not. Men would spare no expense when they were buying shame, but shoes were apparently where the budget collapsed.
Polina led me to a vanity. I sat, and the bulbs around the mirror warmed my face. She pulled the pins from my hair one by one. Dark strands fell over my shoulders, still carrying the shape I’d forced into them before the train ruined half my work.
“You have good hair,” she said.
