AN: Since Rodgerse just couldn't wait and needed a quick update to this one, I did my best to deliver.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Immediately upon arrival to the clinic, not having been given any information about her reason for being there beyond the fact that she'd been scheduled to be seen, Carol had given over the customary offering of her blood to the young man that had come to take it from her. In the clinic it was understood that you would either accept what was being done to you, and do so quietly and with no resistance, or there was a guard waiting to restrain you and force you into it. However you wanted it to happen, the choice was up to you.
Shown to the exam room, Carol was told to strip naked. She was offered nothing to cover herself, but she expected nothing either. Captivity had stripped her of every bit of modesty that she had. She'd have simply closed her eyes, held her breath, and walked through the cafeteria naked if that's what they told her to do. After all, what did it matter anyway? It was just her body, and for a good bit of her life she hadn't even really felt it was hers at all. It always seemed to belong to someone else a little more than it belonged to her.
The doctor had come in and offered something of a greeting. That, in itself, was a little strange. The doctors didn't usually do much speaking other than to give commands about what they wanted you to do or to ask a few questions. They didn't exchange niceties with inmates.
Carol didn't know if the doctors at Region Thirty Three were employed by the capture facility or if, perhaps, there was something of a medical circuit. It was hard to imagine how many doctors there might be left in the world. Of course, there was the possibility that, in the fully functioning world that Carol had only really heard about, there were even medical schools and things that were running again. Maybe, somewhere behind the walls that Carol had never been behind, the world went on entirely as it once had.
She mused on these things to distract herself while she was being examined. Medical situations had always made her nervous and now was no different than before. She focused on not focusing. She answered quickly and bluntly the questions that were asked of her.
No. She had no medical history of that. No. That neither. Yes. Her grandmother had passed away from heart complications. No. She'd never had a problem. Yes. Her blood pressure was often high. No. She'd never taken medication for it. It was stress induced. Yes, she realized it was high now. Yes. She felt tense.
Yes—she felt tense. She felt. She was decreed an animal, but still she felt. Even if the doctor didn't ask her that.
Yes she'd just been through training. Yes the bruises came from that. Some of the scars too. She brought some with her. Some from the wild, yes. Others from before the turn. Accidents—yes. That's what he called them. Accidents. He never meant for any of them to happen. Even the ones he deliberately did—the same kind of torture as they used in taming—his own kind of taming. They were accidents. For her own good. Always for her own good. Always her fault. She didn't know how to behave. She still didn't.
When she was asked to shift her body around, lie back, and put her feet into the stirrups, Carol shook her head at the doctor. She didn't verbally protest, but she shook her head at the woman who was still scratching information on various sheets of paper that were attached to a clipboard.
"It's a complete exam," the woman said. "Just a pap smear."
The woman seemed sincere. Her face showed something Carol didn't see often. She cared, maybe? Or maybe it was a false expression left over from some kind of training on what bedside manner should be like. Carol succumbed to her will and focused on the ceiling of the clinic.
"You had a baby?" The doctor asked.
Carol didn't respond. She didn't have to. She knew there was probably a scar from her episiotomy. She knew there were probably ways that doctors could tell these things even if they didn't have scars to see.
"Just one?" The doctor asked.
Carol didn't respond.
The doctor went about finishing what she was doing and then she physically moved Carol's feet out of the stirrups as a way to declare, maybe, that they were done.
"Stay down," the doctor said. "We're not quite done and you'll need to be lying down anyway."
Carol felt her heart pounding in her chest so hard that she was glad the part of the examination was done that required the woman to listen to the drumming of the organ. Otherwise she might believe that Carol's heart was on the verge of explosion.
The doctor walked over to look at Carol, and Carol lifted her head just enough to be able to see the woman well.
"One baby, or was there more?" She asked. "You don't want to talk about it, so I'm not going to ask you more than I need to know."
Carol swallowed. She didn't want to answer. She didn't want to talk about it, but her brain was acutely aware that, somewhere out there, there was a guard that was waiting to restrain her. Maybe two if that's what it would take. One way or another, they'd get the information out of her.
"One baby..." Carol said.
"More than one pregnancy?" The woman asked.
Carol nodded her head, but didn't offer words. The woman's expression didn't really change.
"Voluntarily or involuntarily?" The doctor asked. Carol didn't say anything and the woman shook her head at her. "There's no judgment here. I just need to know your history."
"Involuntarily," Carol said.
"Fine," the doctor said.
Carol thought that, maybe in a different world, the woman's face said she might have offered condolences. These days? Condolences seemed almost entirely out of place. Carol offered them to other prisoners whose stories she knew, and they offered them to her when she chose to share bits and pieces of her own, but it would be strange coming from someone who was on the outside. These days? The feeling of "us" and "them" was too strong for even sympathy to cross the boundaries.
The doctor returned to her clipboard a moment and then she spoke to Carol again. Carol leaned up enough to watch her as she went about doing things.
"Are you menopausal? Or...?" The doctor asked.
"I don't know," Carol said.
"Do you still have periods?" The doctor asked.
"Yes," Carol said.
"Regularly?" The doctor asked.
Carol sighed and shook her head.
"They never were," she said. "They're still not."
The doctor looked oddly amused. Carol heard a soft laugh escape her. The sound of laughter was always a strange sound to the ears.
"They're regularly irregular," the doctor said. "But—that's your regular."
Carol surprised herself when she heard the sound of laughter again and realized that, this time, it was she who had become amused. She nodded, appreciating that the one moment of laughter managed to help calm her just a little.
"I'll mark down that you're still fertile," the doctor said. "It's better that way, anyway."
"Better for what?" Carol asked.
The doctor shook her head, a look coming over her face that maybe suggested that she hadn't meant to say anything—she was becoming too relaxed in her rigid role.
"It doesn't matter," she said.
"I don't get to know why I'm here?" Carol asked.
"You're here for an examination," the doctor said with a sigh. It was either because she was tiring of hearing that from people who had also gotten the envelopes—many of them had been passed around—or it was because she didn't entirely like the idea of not saying anything more. Either way, she wasn't pleased with the answer that she gave. The doctor stood a moment, frozen in place, and then she paced a few steps and changed her position so that she was easier for Carol to see from her location. "We're doing examinations and gathering medical information. It's easier to have it all in one place. Before you leave? In just a moment? I'm going to chip you. Your information is stored in the computer databases and in your chip."
Carol started to sit up and the doctor waved her hands at her, already shaking her head.
"There's no reason to fight this," she said. "It's going to happen one way or another. I can call the guards in here—but it's not going to make it any more pleasant."
Carol shook her head at her.
"Why?" Was all she managed to say. The word sounded foreign to her. It had been a long time since she'd been able to sincerely ask that question to anyone. It had been even longer since she felt like she might get a response. These days? There wasn't an answer to why. There was simply the understanding that things happened the way they happened because that's how it was declared to be.
The doctor shook her head.
"It's a new practice."
She held up her arm and worked her short sleeve up to her shoulder. She revealed to Carol a slightly faded tattoo, but then she held her arm out oddly and pointed to a small and slightly purple mark.
"Everyone's getting them," she said. "It isn't a choice. That's all the scar that you'll have from it."
"I don't care about the scar," Carol said, not meaning to but letting loose an ironic laugh. "Look at me!"
The doctor frowned.
"Do I have to get the guards?" She asked.
Carol sighed and dropped back on the table to stare at the ceiling again. She shook her head and effectively ended their conversation. The answer to any "why" was still the same. At least, now, it was simply that it was something everyone must do. At least this time it wasn't because she was wild. At least this time? Like it had been the last time she'd really asked "why" with all her heart? It wasn't that she was wild and unfit to care for her daughter.
"Are you going to cooperate?" The doctor asked, apparently missing Carol's shake of the head.
"Yes!" Carol said, more loudly than she intended. "Yes," she repeated with less force. "Just—do whatever you've got to do."
She waited, keeping her promise to cooperate, as the doctor got everything that she needed prepared. She moved the way she was told to move. She listened quietly as the doctor explained to her what to expect from the "procedure"—not that it mattered anyway. And she listened as she was told to hold her breath since, in capture facilities, rare were the times when prisoners merited any kind of assistance with pain. After all, animals didn't know or care when they were hurt.
Carol was determined not to make any sound while the chip was implanted, and she almost succeeded. The doctor didn't scold her for the sounds that did escape her, or for her flinching. Instead she offered her a soft apology as she cleaned and bandaged the upper part of her arm, her brand new chip, which Carol had decided was more than likely a tracking device, located now on the inside of her right arm and not too far below her armpit.
"You did great," the doctor said, still wrapping the spot. "Better than—at least half the people I've had in here."
Carol just nodded. There was nothing to say for a moment and she didn't trust herself to speak.
"Gonna throw up?" The doctor asked.
Carol swallowed. She did feel a little nauseous, but it was strange to be asked that.
"Have other people?" She asked.
"More than you might imagine," the doctor responded. "It's a sensitive area. When I got my tattoo? That was the part where I was cursing the guy's lineage all the way back to his great-great grandparents."
Carol laughed to herself, and was once again thankful for the laugh.
"Then why there?" Carol asked.
"We put it deep," the doctor said. "In case someone freaks out? They can't dig it out."
"Can't get rid of it," Carol mused. "Not without sacrificing your dominant arm."
The doctor neither confirmed nor denied Carol's interpretation of the practice.
"Keep it wrapped tightly for the rest of the day. By tomorrow, you can take it off and the bleeding will have stopped. If it hasn't? Tell them you need to come to the clinic. The officers already know that it's a request that might be made of them," the doctor said.
"Did I pass the test?" Carol asked, starting to sit up. The doctor offered her a hand and she accepted it more readily than she usually accepted someone's assistance. She wasn't even trying to pretend, at the moment, that she was treating her right arm as though it were a totally foreign appendage and keeping it hugged to her body.
"What test?" The doctor asked.
"Whatever test you're giving me," Carol said.
The doctor looked at her, lost all expression, and held her eyes for a moment. It was unnerving to be looked at it in the eyes that way by someone who wasn't a fellow captive. Finally, she nodded, but she didn't say anything else before she gathered up her things and left Carol to dress before the guard came knocking at the door to escort her out of the clinic and back to the general population.
