Chapter Three
Trial Two: Report
Ovulation took place 15-17th January 2018. Recorded by calendar and body temperature.
Insemination attempts followed on the three dates shown above. Less anxiety was involved and Natasha notes she believes a better sample to have been received. Post-insemination Natasha remained lying flat with hips elevated for twenty minutes.
Natasha noted symptoms of breast tenderness and mood changes as of 01/20/2018. This was noted by team members also.
Urine Pregnancy test conducted on 01/25/2018, at ten days post-insemination. The test gave a positive outcome, pregnancy was documented.
01/30/2018: Normal Menstrual cycle resumed. Pregnancy resulted in an early miscarriage. Two months of recovery to be taken before resuming experiment with trial three.
Trial two not successful.
When she had seen those lines it hadn't been real to her. It wasn't that Natasha doubted the test in front of her, she was pretty sure it was working and even if it wasn't there was always a blood test if needed. It felt strange to see this, to be part of something so normal. She was pregnant. She was actually pregnant, for the first time in many, many years. How did she go about telling Steve, it didn't feel like she imagined it should, this was a friend - a friend she had used almost every technique in her arsenal to get aroused in the first place. There had been no pleasure in sleeping with Steve, there wasn't supposed to be and that was something that Natasha had learned to accept.
She still remembered the first man they made her sleep with, he was easily in his forties, she was fourteen. It was legal, but that didn't make it right. She had vomited afterward and suffered bleeding, but that was what her life would entail. Sex in the world of the Red Room girls was as mechanical as learning what gauge you wanted for a specific fire range. Steve was different, he was brought up the way people their age should be, kind and courteous with manners and the understanding that getting a girl pregnant meant you were marched off to get married.
Now Steve was having to sleep with her for results, and Natasha was understanding for the first time that there was value in her skills - or at least, in those specific ones.
She pressed her hand gently against her lower stomach. There was something living in there, something which they wanted to live but it was too foreign for her. Natasha was closed off, numb towards the possibility of a baby coming out of this. She knew the plan, knew it wasn't likely to succeed, but she knew most of all that they had to try and make this work.