I’m just spitballing here, but maybe like… fruity time. “Oh, she’s on her fruity time.” Right? Sounds fun. Festive, almost. It’s not visually inaccurate, but people love fruit! So now it’s not a horrible cycle of uterine unsheathing and it’s more like… you know, jams and jellies and stuff. It even sort of excuses women who like to pretend their vagina sends them into flights of bitchiness that they just can’t seem to control, like a panty diaper wearing alcoholic on her week-a-month bender. You know, I’m really liking this idea. Maybe make a mental note to e-mail some tampon manufacturers later. Marine shifted slightly on my legs and I got a notion.
“Hey…” I whispered.
She looked at me, eyes open as if to say “What the fuck do you want at this exact moment, you absolute shit?” Or maybe it meant, “I hope you have a boner because I find the word inoffensive but strangely sexy and I think we could make quiet hump on this bed. Come on. Be bold. Take me right here.” I assumed the former.
“Do you get periods?”
She pulled her fist back, clenching her jaw, but then thought better of it. Her eyebrows moved as she worked through alternatives before she clearly landed on pulling a finger back and flicking me on the balls. This was how I found out that my pants had been removed.
“Hnnwuack.” I made the sound of a duck having eggs forced from its egghole and then I groaned.
The middle-school period girl on the other side of the thin privacy curtain eeped and the room went quiet.
“Oh, nooo. I darn near forgot.” Doc’s voice was chipper and energetic. Nothing like the way she spoke to us. “A poor little boy hurt his wrist and so I’m letting him rest. He must’ve rolled over on it. Why don’t you come back later and we can talk about your little… visitor.”
See? Fucking disgusting. Visitor? Like some fucking uterus obsessed pervert climbs up in there every month and skins your baby bag like a fucking serial killer? Who in their right mind would call it that? That’s fucking bananas. Seriously, think about it. “Oh, it’s fruity time for her right now so she’s going to skip gym.” Way better. Way better.
The girl got sent away and Doc came back and yanked open the curtain.
“Seriously? Seriously? I needed five minutes.” She grabbed her cigarette and took an angry drag. “Swear to god.”
Marine was climbing off of me and Doc just stood there shaking her head.
I felt like her expectations of us were a bit high for a mob doctor who worked full time at a middle school. “Why even work here? I mean, considering…”
“Pay’s good. Unique benefits.” She turned around and grabbed my clothes from a cart behind her, throwing them onto me. “Get out. Both of you. You’re fine. And time’s wasting on that stabilizer. Tissue’s good for an implant. That’s what you’re after, yeah?”
She looked at Marine for an answer. Marine nodded.
Doc studied Marine for a second, taking another deep drag off the cigarette and talking as the vapor escaped.
“You’re not going to Graver, are you?”
Marine bristled. “I don’t see why it—”
“Fucking stupid little girl.” Doc walked off, past the curtain. I heard her sit in another chair, a creaky wooden one. “Take him and get out.”
I got dressed in a hurry since relations seemed to have deteriorated fairly thoroughly in the space of a few seconds. Marine left before me. I could see her through the glass on the door waiting in the hall. I stopped in the middle of the room.
“Thanks… Colleen?”
She sighed. “That’s not my name.”
“What is?”
“Doc. Don’t be a nosy shit. And get out.”
I walked to the door and before I grabbed the knob.
“If anything happens…” Doc’s voice was softer than normal. Not the chipper affect she put on for the kid, something realer. “Come see me.”
“Yeah…”
I opened the door and Marine turned to walk off down the hall without me, fuming from whatever the hell she and Doc had going on.
Whatever Doc’s objections, I guess we were going to meet Graver.
Chapter
TEN
Buses in the residential districts didn’t see a lot of use. Most could either afford to own self-drivers outright or at least take the car services. They were faster and, honestly, not incredibly expensive but most didn’t run to the parts of town Marine and I lived or frequented. I’d seen about a dozen CleanlyCars passing us. That was the budget line. They’d done the vinyl seat thing for a long time. Basically rolling pods with removable doors. At the end of the day, or if someone reported one of the cabs as too dirty, it’d roll through a wash center and get sprayed down with steam hot enough to melt a baby. The seats were modular now and they were upgrading them to cloth. What luxury.
I still spent nights lying awake sometimes trying to figure out exactly how we ended up in a financial situation where robots did everything but shit still costs
