Page 49 of Breaking Ophelia
“Relax,” the nurse says, voice hollow.
I want to ask if she means physically, emotionally, or if it’s just a reflex from all the girls she’s had to peel off the ceiling after this. I want to say, “Fuck you,” but I’m busy counting the cracks in the roof, forcing each muscle to unclench one by one.
The doctor starts with the easy things— drawing blood, blood pressure, pulse. She calls out numbers and the nurse enters them into a tablet.
She presses cold calipers to my breast, squeezing until the skin turns white and the flesh bulges around the metal. “Thirty-four C,” she says, “no evidence of reduction, natural ptosis for age. No evidence of infection or keloid. Areolas symmetric.”
The nurse takes a photo, then another. I stare at the ceiling, fighting the urge to cover myself, to claw out her eyes, to run screaming from the room.
The next step is worse. The doctor tells me to “scoot forward.” Her fingers are cold, efficient, pressing into my hip bones,measuring the width with a tape, then comparing it to the distance between the pubic crest and my ribs.
“Pelvis: adequate for delivery,” she says, and I realize for the first time that this isn’t just about me. It’s about what comes after.
She snaps on a new set of gloves and spreads my knees apart, guiding my feet into the stirrups. My ass is barely on the table. I shiver, not from cold but from the humiliation, the way the air hits places that should only ever see darkness.
“Relax,” she says again, but it’s not advice. It’s a command.
She swabs the inside of my thigh with something sharp and minty. Then comes the click of the speculum, the crunch of metal forced into softness.
I wince. The pain is dull, but the shame is sharp as glass.
She inserts a swab, rotates it, pulls it out, drops it in a vial. “Cervical sample for culture,” she says, as if talking about a blood orange.
Then she leans forward, pressing the end of the scope deeper. “No evidence of trauma. External labia: normal, no scarring, no warts, no herpes. Clitoris: normal. Hymen: unremarkable, not intact.”
She says it like it’s an insult before retracting the instrument.
“Internal exam,” she announces, and rams her fingers inside, pressing so deep I feel it in my spine. She feels around in there, pushing so high I swear to God she’s in my womb. She checks for cysts, for fibroids, for whatever else can go wrong in a body made for breaking.
“All normal,” she says. “Good tone, no laxity.”
She pulls the gloves off, drops them in the trash. The nurse wipes me down with a towel, not even bothering to ask if I want to do it myself.
Through all of it, the Board watches from the other side of the screens. I know, because I can see their shadows, hear the scratch of pens on paper as they tally my worth.
The doctor steps back, turns to the monitor, and pulls up an ultrasound. She jellies up my stomach and presses the probe against my skin, smearing it in a wide arc from rib to pubic bone.
A blurry black-and-white fills the screen. She clicks buttons, measuring the size of my uterus, the thickness of the lining.
“Follicles present,” she says. “No evidence of hormonal disorder. Patient is currently ovulating.”
She says it loud enough for the men outside to hear. I can almost see them nod, see them make their notes.
She wipes off the jelly, then covers me with a paper sheet. “Sit up when you’re ready.”
I push myself up, my hands fists at my side, nails carving deep into my palms.
The doctor pulls up a stool, sits eye to eye with me. For the first time, I see something human in her—maybe regret, maybe just exhaustion.
“I know this is difficult,” she says. “But you need to understand. The Board values genetic integrity above all else. They don’t care who you are. Only that you can breed.”
I want to spit in her face, but I bite my lip instead, so hard I taste copper. “Can I get dressed now?”
“Blood work first and then yes.”
Why the fuck I need to be naked to get blood drawn is beyond me, but what good is making a stink? They’d probably make me do jumping jacks naked if I said something, so instead, I numbed myself out. Going deep into my mind, into a place where nothing can touch me.
The next station waits at the far end of the gym, a row of exercise machines and a bank of medical equipment. As I walk, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirrors they have set up. My face is white as paper, eyes huge and hollow, but my back is straight, chin high.
