Page 19 of Storm in a D Cup

‘Impossibile,’another guy said shoving the instrument even further up. ‘It shouldn’t hurt – this is not normal.’

‘How come no one ever told you your uterus isretroflesso?’ the doctor barked at me.

‘Retrowhat?’

‘Not in the right place…’ fumbled one of the doctors, searching for the right word.

‘Not in the right place?’ They made it sound like it was someplace completely different.

‘Tipped!’ he said in triumph.

Tipped? Was he kidding me? I think I’d know if my own uterus was tipped.

Believe me, if I hadn’t had that thing inside me I’d have jumped off the table and headed for the hills. Abnormal, my uterus? It had worked just fine for the last forty-three years.

‘Oh, no, no. It’s OK – false alarm. It’s just the speculum that’s broken inside her,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘Can I get a new one, somebody, please?’

And this was a private, expensive fertility clinic. I wondered what would’ve happened if I had been poor and sent to just any doctor. But then I realized that, according to Murphy’s law, if I had been too poor to afford a fertility clinic, the babies would have spilled out of me like in Shrek’s nightmare.

And so, as the doctors looked down on me, all smiles, we waited for the delivery of an unbroken speculum that wouldn’t just snap inside me again.

‘Live nearby?’ one of them actually asked me. I raised my evil eyebrow at him and then turned away to fight back the tears burning at the back of my eyes as he hacked his guts out, wiping his mouth on his glove.

I don’t know how or why, but a feeling of total humiliation was setting in. Ladies, to those of you who are in the uncertain process of trying to have a baby, or have managed to do so with great difficulty, I salute you to the moon and back. You have to really, really want a child with all your heart to put yourself through all that. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I admire you. I don’t think that I could ever have that kind of strength.

On the way back from the operating room to the doctor’s office on the ground floor, the walls began to cave in on me and my vision became blurry.

‘I don’t feel so good,’ I murmured before everything went black.

When I came to, I was overwhelmed with the urge to hurl, so I tried to sit up from a gurney they must’ve put me on, but the doctor kept pushing me onto my back.

Damn you, let me sit up!I wanted to scream, my face cold and clammy, my lips shaking, but when I gagged he finally understood and helped me up. So much for an understanding and empathic vocation.

Julian was holding my hand, his face pale.

‘I’m OK now,’ I wheezed, trying to fill my lungs and get up, but both Julian and the doctor pushed me back down again, Julian tearing off a piece of paper towel from a roll behind him and wiping my forehead.

‘Your blood pressure just plummeted,’ the doctor explained, his fingers tight around my wrist, checking my heartbeat.

So did my faith in you, you butcher,shot through my mind, but luckily all that made it to my mouth was: ‘I’m OK now.’ I whispered to Julian, ‘I want to go home. Please.’

But both men shook their heads.

‘You’re not going anywhere until I’m sure you’re OK,’ Julian said.

The doctor said nothing, his hand still on my wrist, eyes on his watch.

My heart was beating erratically, I could feel it pounding in my ears, but mostly, I don’t know why, I felt humiliated. Like an animal in a slaughterhouse. I had never come this close to my physical fragility before. All my life I’d fought like a tigress to be like other people by using my mind, while my body had simply been something my mind dragged along behind it. And the fact that my body was now in the limelight what with the IVF and tests only made me feel inadequate by tenfold.

So being all bruised up on the inside, I did the only thing I could do – put on a brave face and keep it light.

‘I must’ve given him a scare and a half in there,’ I said as I forced a grin while Julian and I drove off half an hour later. ‘There was enough material in there today for a lawsuit.’

‘Never mind him – you scared the crap out ofme,’ Julian said. ‘What am I going to do without you if you drop down dead?’

‘Be free,’ I quipped and he cast me a stern look that melted the moment our eyes met. Yeah, he’d take it really nastily if I croaked, of that I was sure. Good man.

‘Seriously, Erica – why are we doing this? I can only imagine what happened to you in there to make you feel like that. You’re no queasy girl.’

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