None of the Above(8)

For things to be normal again.





CHAPTER 3


The ob-gyn’s office smelled like an unholy marriage of baby powder and Listerine. After I found a seat, I tried to find something to read, but it was all Better Homes and Gardens and parenting magazines, so I just sat there and waited.

Some of the other patients were really pregnant. Like, waddling. One woman struggled so much to get out of her seat that the nurse got her a wheelchair to push her to the back hallway.

It’d been a while since I’d been religious; my dad and I had come to a mutual agreement to stop going to church in the months after my mom died. There were only so many sympathetic looks and well-meaning attempts to set my dad up that we could take. Even so, I still remembered the Sunday school classes that my mom had taught, and all I could think about that day in the OB’s office was the book of Genesis—the part where Eve ate the apple and God told her he would multiply her pains during childbirth, and that she had to submit to her husband.

A woman who didn’t look quite as pregnant as the others sat across from me. She had a car seat with her and the baby nestled inside looked so happy and warm.

“Aren’t you the cutest thing?” I said. I leaned over and nudged the little pink bear hanging from the car seat handle. It jingled and the baby cooed and reached up.

I got my cell phone out and played some of the different ringtones. The baby gurgled and laughed, pretty much the best sound ever, and reached for my phone.

“You mind if she holds it?” I asked. “I’ve got some Purell in my bag.”

“Go ahead.” The mom shrugged. “You got kids?”

I laughed. “No, not yet. I’m a senior in high school. But I’m going to be a child development major next year at State.” The day I’d signed my letter of intent and accepted my track scholarship had been one of the happiest days in my life; it was amazing to know my dad wouldn’t have to worry about paying for college.

A nurse called my name, and I excused myself. She took me back to an exam room and handed me what looked like a stack of pink tissue paper.

“Dr. Johnson will be in soon. Everything off from the waist down, please,” she said. “Leave the opening in the front,” she added, and closed the door.

The pink thing the nurse gave me ended up being some kind of doctor’s gown. I undressed, wincing as my bare feet touched the ice-cold linoleum. When I put the gown on and tried to tie it up, the little paper strap tore a bit. I felt like a really badly wrapped birthday present.

While I waited, I studied Dr. Johnson’s Howard and NYU diplomas and her posters of the female reproductive system. Somehow, the pictures made girl parts look like an alien, with the uterus being the body, the cervix a bad hairdo, and the tubes and ovaries a pair of demented eyes.

I looked over at the exam table again. Where were the stirrups? Vee had told me about the stirrups.

When Dr. Johnson came in, she started out with a question about how high school was, I guess to make me feel comfortable. She asked me if I had a partner, and I told her that yes, I had a boyfriend.

“And are you sexually active?”

I blushed. “That’s kind of why I came for all this.” I made a vague gesture toward the poster on the wall.

“Of course. I saw from your family history that your mother passed away from cervical cancer.”

It sounded like a question so I said, “Yeah.”

“That must have been difficult.”

The worst thing was that cervical cancer is so preventable. If my mom’s insurance hadn’t lapsed when my dad was laid off from his last job, they might’ve caught it sooner. I shrugged and looked at my toes. The nail polish from the pedicure Faith had given me was already starting to peel.

Dr. Johnson didn’t say anything for a bit.

“So, when was your last menstrual period?” she said finally.

I shrugged again. “I don’t get my period. I train for track pretty much all year around.” Three or four of my more hard-core teammates had stopped getting their periods, too.

“Were you getting your period regularly before you started running?”

I shook my head. My aunt Carla had always said that I was a late bloomer, and it had always kind of bugged me, but then Faith would tell me how lucky I was that I didn’t have to worry about tampons and maxi pads and stuff, which made me feel better.

“Hmmm. Okay.” Dr. Johnson wrote something on my chart. She asked me a few more questions about my diet and birth control and stuff, and then stood up. “Well, let’s go ahead with the exam then, okay?”

She listened to my heart and lungs. Then she had me lie down and kneaded my boobs and my belly while I stared at the ceiling. She made a little surprised sound and I looked over at her.

“Are you aware that you have a small hernia? Two, actually.”

“What’s a hernia?”

It shocked me that anything could be physically wrong with me. For the past decade, I’d been getting physicals from an old buddy of my dad’s. Dr. Arslinsdale wouldn’t even make me get undressed when he examined me—he just mashed on my belly over my clothes, said, “You’re as healthy as a horse,” and offered me a sticker.

“It’s a very common thing,” Dr. Johnson said. “You feel this little bump here?” She moved my hand to just above my crotch. “It’s a small opening in your abdominal wall where your internal organs can come through. Give a little cough and you can feel it bulge a bit.”