“Off the charts,” he says. I feel what I always feel in these moments: guilt. Like I’ve done something wrong, screwed up my body and left the mess for someone else to repair.
“I’m an overachiever.” He doesn’t laugh.
The clouds in my head are still drifting, but they’re thin. I’m not yet sure if a storm is approaching. He picks up his clipboard and clicks open a pen. “Your mother,” he says. “Still alive?”
Yes, thank God. I mean this with no sarcasm. It’s a primal thing, primal and maybe something more.
“She have any significant history of medical problems?”
It took her three years to get pregnant with me. Three years of driving from Connecticut to Manhattan to visit her fancy Park Avenue doctor. I grew up hearing about all the work they’d done on her and pictured her body as a construction zone, foundation of concrete, smell of fresh lumber, walled off from the world by an electrified fence and a warning sign.
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