I received a call from another doctor a week later, after I’d been treated for what may have been an early miscarriage. After my mother finished that first call, she was silent on the subject and its outcome, and I went to subsequent appointments to the gynecologist on my own.
So when the call came, I answered, and listened as the doctor told me the results of some tests he’d ordered. Endometrium. Progestins. Oligoovulation. The medical terms ran together, but I understood it wasn’t good.
I had problems, it seemed, reproductively.
If I ever wanted a child, said the cool voice on the other end of the phone, I might want to get started.
I choked on his words. And a part of me flew away, to the corner of the room, and watched as another girl, a straight-backed stranger, kept her grip on the phone.
“But,” I sputtered, “I’m still in high school …”
My voice trailed off. Everything slowed.
I couldn’t understand why a doctor, of all people, was advising me, a girl from East High School, to have a baby. Was he a purist, simply sharing sound medical advice with a patient, regardless of age and socioeconomic status? Or perhaps he simply did not expect anything else of me.
He ignored my silence and continued to discuss my body as organism—one I had better make use of soon, he said, if I ever intended to.
Since meeting Ruben, I’d been playing with fire, having sex without birth control and going through the monthly drama of praying for my period. But despite my actions, I did not want a child in high school.
Or did I?
The future could be wonderful, in theory, but the closer it loomed, the murkier it became, the less I knew how to grab hold of it.