“RIGHT THIS WAY.”
A tall, thin woman with beautiful jet-black hair leads me down a hall. The walls are adorned with red and black paintings that have flecks of gold glitter on them in what appears to be a random fashion. Something tells me it’s not random at all.
I’m taken into a cozy room with seafoam green walls with buttery yellow accents. A grey pillow lays on the end of a long table covered with a fitted white sheet. There are two pictures hanging on the walls of the human body, one from the front and the other from the back.
“Please have a seat on the table and Bai will be in to see you shortly.”
“Um,” I stammer. “Do I leave my clothes on?”
“Yes,” she says sweetly. “For now, Bai will determine your diagnosis. She may treat you today, but often times she gets to know you first.”
“Okay.”
Once I’m alone, I peek around the room. It’s set up to feel relaxing and soothing, but I can’t help but feel I’m at some kind of gyno appointment.
My heart is racing, my palms sweaty, when a soft knock raps against the door and a short woman with the shiniest hair I’ve ever seen walks in. She has a sweet, simple smile and a notepad in her hand.
“You are Ms. Miller?” she asks, extending a hand. “I’m Bai. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you. Poppy Quinn made the appointment for me.”
“Oh, Poppy. She’s one of my favorites. I’ve worked with her for a couple of years now.”
“She speaks very highly of you,” I tell her, my nerves quieting just a bit.
“I hope she doesn’t use that crude language of hers when she does so. That girl needs a bar of soap.”
“That she does.”
Bai gets settled at the little desk and grabs an ink pen. “Tell me why you’re here.”
“I have a little kink in my neck. There’s a knot,” I say, rubbing the top of my spine. “The pain has started to spread down my back and even around into my stomach some today.”
“Okay. Got it. Do you know how you arrived at this condition?”
Yes. My head was rammed into a stainless steel refrigerator while a stallion of a man buried himself in me from behind.
“No.”
“Okay. Very good.” She looks up from her scribblings. “The first thing we will do every appointment is check your pulse and your tongue. In Chinese medicine, we learn so much about your health from these two points. I’m just telling you this beforehand because sometimes it makes people think I’ve lost my mind.”
Laughing, I nod. “I understand.”
“Let’s start with the tongue. Can you stick it out for me?”
Following her instructions, I watch as she stands and gets closer with a little light. “I’m not telling you what I’m looking for because it would be really confusing, but it looks good. You can close your mouth now.”
She jots a few notes on the pad and then comes back to me. “Now your pulse.”
She touches me above the left wrist, then on one of my fingers. Her face is passive and I can’t tell a thing about what she’s feeling. She moves to the right side and does the same series of touches down my arm to my fingers.
Clearing her throat, she sits down again and scratches on the pad. “Okay. I think I have enough here. We can get started today, if you’d like, or we can wait and start next time.”
“I’d like to start today, please,” I insist. “This hurts.”
She smiles. “That’s fine. I will need you to disrobe in a moment and lay flat on the table. I do need to be clear that I cannot do certain methods due to your condition.”
“My what?”
“Your condition. Acupuncture is one hundred percent safe during pregnancy, but to be cautious, I—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I say, leaping off the table. “Back up. You’ve mixed up my file with someone else’s,” I laugh. “I’m not pregnant.”
She looks at me like I’m crazy.
“I’m really not,” I insist. “I don’t even have a boyfriend.”
“You should have a physician check to be sure, of course, but the pulse is a very strong indicator in Chinese medicine. I’m sorry you didn’t know.”
“I can’t be pregnant, Bai,” I tell her, like I can change her mind and wipe this conversation from ever happening.
I can hear the blood rushing over my ears as I try to calm myself back down.
“If you say so, Ms. Miller. Only you know what can and can’t be true. But until I know, I must err on the side of caution.”
“You know what?” I say, gathering my purse off the floor. “Let’s start this next time. I need to take care of a few things today.”
“Good luck,” she says softly. “Please check out at the front with Ada and she can set up your next appointment.”
“Thank you.”
I fling the door open and nearly stomp down the quiet hall. It takes longer than I care to wait for Ada to give me my insurance card back and hand me a receipt. Declining another appointment, I storm out of the office into the hot afternoon air.
Whipping out my phone, I pound my finger into Poppy’s name. It rings four times before she picks up. I don’t bother letting her greet me.
“That doctor of yours is a quack!”
“What?” she laughs. “What’s going on?”
“She’s a quack. Bai doesn’t know shit about shit.”
I rattle on about how acupuncture is fake medicine and how I will never go there again and I might even do a blog post about the dangers of people that pretend to know how things work when really they don’t know anything at all. I jabber on and on, all the while trying to force out a little niggle in my brain that asks, “What if?”
My stomach drops as I round the corner. “She’s nuts.”
“She’s not nuts,” Poppy whispers. “Hang on.” I hear her heels clicking against the floor and the sound of chimes. “I had to come outside you were talking so damn loud. What the hell is going on?”
“You know what she said?”
“Quack, quack?”
“Very funny. No. She is a quack. She didn’t say quack. Ugh,” I groan. “Don’t distract me.”
“Fine. What did she say?”
“She had the audacity to say I’m pregnant, Pop. Can you believe that shit?”
The line goes quiet. My exuberant, chatty friend doesn’t say a word.
“Poppy?”
“Are you?”
“No, I’m not pregnant!” A flock of birds launch into a tree above me and I look around to see a group of people staring at me. Rolling my eyes, I storm by them too. “No, I’m not,” I say, quieter this time. “Why do I keep explaining this to everyone? You have to have sperm to have a baby.”
“Have you slept with anyone?”
“No. Not since Branch.”
“Layla . . .”
A full-on shiver that starts at my shoulders and rolls through my body like a Garth Brooks song hits me hard. I stand at the corner of Plane and Veroca and stare off into space.
“Did he use a condom?” she asks.
“Yeah. He did,” I say, shaking out of my trance. “So explain that and I’m on the pill.”
“Weirder things have happened.”
“To weird people, maybe. I’m not a weird person.”
“You were sick before the cabin, weren’t you? Were you taking antibiotics?”
I try to swallow, but my throat constricts at the same time. Bent over, halfway choking and the other half gagging, I nearly drop my phone as I try not to die.
“Layla! Layla, are you okay?”
“Yes,” I say past the burn. “Give me a second.” It takes longer than a second to get myself upright and fully oxygenated. “I’m here,” I croak.
“Dude, you scared me.”
“Don’t make this about you,” I laugh, my voice still hoarse from the coughing fit. Once my laughter has faded and the line is quiet again, I feel the heavy burden of being alone. Despite the sea of people racing by me on the corner of this street in downtown Chicago, I’m alone. “I can’t be pregnant, can I?”
“I don’t know. I tell you what—let me wrap up a project I have open. It might take an hour. Then I’ll meet you at your apartment. I’ll bring chocolate and tissues and a pregnancy test, then a bottle of champagne for after when it’s false.”
Despite my need to vomit all over the sidewalk, I smile. “Thanks, Poppy.”
“You’re welcome.”