Page 19 of Jake and Conner
"I can't believe you've been keeping this a secret all these years."
I shrugged helplessly and stopped looking at Raph to look at my dog instead. Kitty was sitting underneath the table, in front of my feet. I ran a hand through her soft fur. She always grounded me.
"Is there some way you can make it stop?" Raph asked. "This must be super annoying. I mean, especially since you don't have a partner." My friend paused. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."
I shook my head, trying to ignore what he'd said.
Do not think of Jake. Do. Not. Think of Jake.
I let out a shaky breath. I was getting hard again. God, what a mess. I should be used to this by now, but I didn't think I'd ever be. "The doctors told me there was only one way to make it stop permanently." Focusing on that was much better than focusing on memories of Jake. Even if this particular memory was infuriating in its own way.
"What did they say?"
"Hysterectomy."
Raph's eyes narrowed in thought and I realized he wasn't sure what exactly I was trying to say.
"It's when they take out your uterus," I explained.
"Oh." My friend considered this for a moment. "So like, major surgery."
"Yeah." I rubbed my forehead, feeling hot. I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep talking to Raph. My thoughts were starting to get fuzzy around the edges, slippery. Hard to hold on to for too long.
"I can see why you wouldn't want to do that."
Wouldn't want to do what? Oh. Surgery. I shook my head. It wasn't that I hadn't wanted to do it. "The doctors didn't. They said I..." What was it that they'd told me? Something stupid that had made me angry, I could remember that much. "They wouldn't do it before I had a baby." And something else. There was something else. "They needed my alpha's permission too." I spat the words.
Honestly, it had felt as if we were still living in the middle ages.My alpha's permission.What sort of bullshit was that? I wasn't even married. When I pointed this out the doctor just kind of shrugged at me and said that would change. These were the rules, they couldn't do anything about them.
I had beenlivid. How dare these people who didn't even know me make decisions about my body and my future?
Suffice to say I left there pretty quickly, surprised there wasn't any actual smoke coming out of my ears.
Raphael looked at me as if he didn't know what to say. I didn't blame him. All of this was so far out of the realm of anything I thought I'd ever face. "That's bullshit," Raph said finally.
I nodded, and then I rested my head in my hands. "Total bullshit."
I remembered returning home after that appointment.
~
Jake was there, waiting for me. He'd wanted to come along, but his work had called him away. "What did they say?" he asked as I kicked my shoes off and watched them fly into a corner of the room. "Nothing good, huh?"
I glared at Jake. None of this was his fault, but he was there, and so he took the brunt of my frustration with the world at large. "They said the only way to stop this is to take my uterus out, but they won't fucking do it."
Jake's eyes widened just a fraction, whether that was because of what I said, orhowI said it, I wasn't sure. I didn't particularly care, either.
"Is that what you want?" Jake asked.
I stomped past him into the kitchen. I hadn't had the time to clean up after breakfast that morning, so I cleared the dirty dishes off the table. It was something to do with my hands other than grabbing things and hurling them at the wall. "I don't know what I want," I stated, chugging a handful of cutlery into the sink. "But I'd like to have that option!"
Jake hung back in the door to the kitchen, as if he knew that coming any closer was dangerous. That didn't stop him from asking more questions, though.
Looking back now, I wished sometimes that he hadn't said anything. Not that day.
"Why won't they do it?" he asked. "Do they think it's not safe?"
I whirled around to him. "It's not a health concern!" Turning back to the sink, I turned the faucet and water came rushing out of it. I wished it were more than a small stream, though. I wished it were a roaring waterfall, loud enough to drown out my thoughts, wild enough to dispose of bodies--starting with the bodies of our lawmakers. "They can't perform a hysterectomy on an unmarried, childless omega, so I just have to suck it up. Isn't that great?"
