'They Said Not To Do It' by Sumitra Singam

 

But I’m doing it anyway and now there’s pee all over my hands and maybe since I have to wait five hundred years to see if it’s two lines or one, I can wash my hands and my God it takes a long time to sing three happy birthdays but also that’s only twenty-three seconds and I still have nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds to wait but what there’s a line! No it’s just the control line so that’s good the test will be valid but it also not because the IVF nurse specifically told me they’re inaccurate with fertility treatment, so wait for your blood test, but how am I supposed to wait ten whole days when for weeks it’s been daily trips to the clinic for bloods and scans and needles and creams and pessaries at twenty-two past four exactly in the morning and did you know the parking is seventy-five dollars for five minutes at that time? And all so that my psychopathic womb will stop just pretending to be a normal hospitable thing and actually become one in real life like one of those show homes with more throw pillows than sense and what the hell do they do with the throw pillows when they’re in bed asleep, put them on the floor? So wouldn’t you just not have them in the first place and it’s this thinking that’s got me into this situation in the first place so I’ll snap out of that completely unmaternal mindset and smile into my new throw-pillow-embracing self and holy watch what you wish for, Batman, there are two fucking lines on the pee test and what the hell am I meant to do with that, they told me not to do a fucking test and I did one anyway