SHORTLY BEFORE MIDNIGHT
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Lucy put her palms under the sink faucet and let the water run over them. Mesmerized by the fluidity and transparency of the stream, she watched it until time seemed to run in slow motion.
She brushed back her long locks of dark hair, which had been caked with tears on her cheeks, and splashed her face again and again. She needed to extinguish the heat that consumed her.
She raised her face to the mirror, and before her little slanted eyes found her reflection, she took a towel and covered it. She knew what she would find there if she didn’t, and she hated it; it was better not to see herself for now.
Her heart was pounding hard. A knot oppressed her chest, and she was short of breath. It was understandable. She had just found out.
“Are you okay, honey?” Rosa asked.
“Yes. Yes. Thank you.”
No. She wasn’t okay, and she wouldn’t be for the next few days.
“I know how you feel. It happened to me once. It’s horrible.”
And just when Lucy thought they wouldn’t come back, there they were, the tears.
“Oh, baby! I didn’t mean…” Rosa put her chubby arm around her, gave her a slight squeeze on the shoulder to encourage her, and tried to meet her gaze with a touching, if insufficient, warmth.
“Don’t worry, Rosa. I’ll be fine.”
“Really?”
Lucy nodded. No, and you know it, she thought, and finished the sentence aloud, “…But I appreciate your understanding.” And she really meant that.
Rosa Tyler was the only person with a heart in that facility, the only doctor in her team of physicians with true devotion to caring for others. The rest of her peers were soulless people; selfish monsters who cared about nothing but themselves and success at work. No wonder Rosa had asked to be transferred after the infamous Major Surgery; anyone with decency would have done so.
“I don’t want you to leave,” Lucy said, and Rosa drew a broad smile on her round, dark cheeks.
“Oh, Hikaru!” Rosa called her, and Lucy managed, for an instant, to reciprocate her with another smile.
“It’s been a long time since anyone called me by my name,” she said.
Both of them faced the restroom mirror and looked at each other. They both wore light blue scrubs, although next to the other doctor, Lucy looked scrawny and tiny. She had Neo Asian features, dark hair, and milk-white skin, or as Rosa fondly put it, skin pale as vanilla yogurt. Instead, Rosa was black as chocolate and four times wider than Lucy.
Rosa’s breasts were huge; yes, they were. Those breasts could breastfeed several children. Not a word about breastfeeding, Lucy thought as a warning; and, again, the tears.
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“It’s the f-fifth I l-lose,” she confessed. She stuttered when she felt bad.
“Oh! I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t know that.”
“Oh, Rosa. I’ll never be a mother.” And she burst into tears.
“Don’t say that, honey.”
Rosa hugged her again, and Lucy cradled her face between those giant breasts, those breasts that had breastfed, something she doubted she could ever do. And she cried.
“One day you’ll be an excellent mother, Lucy, you’ll see. And if not, there’s nothing wrong with that either. Nothing to be ashamed of, y’know?”
“I know… It’s just that… I do want to be-be one.” Lucy turned away. “I don’t understand w-what’s wrong with me, R-Rosa. I’ve run every test on myself, every single one, and I’m fine. I should conceive normally. I’m not sick, and I’m not undernourished, as Gonzalez said. I’m skinny by nature, nothing else!”
“Don’t listen to that jerk, honey. Just as you were born skinny, Gonzalez was born soulless.”
Lucy chuckled between sobs.
“It’s f-funny you say that. I was just thinking you were the only person who has feelings in here. Oh, Rosa! I don’t want you to leave. If you—if you leave, there won’t be anyone left with the ability to feel anything but an obsession with work.”
With her thick brown fingers, Rosa took her by the chin and smiled at her with the warmth of a real mother. “You’re wrong, honey,” she said. “You will stay to remind this bunch of big-headed jerks there are more important things than a scalpel and a couple of stitches.”
Do you really believe that, Rosa? Precisely I, who am accountable for…
With tearful eyes, Lucy took a deep breath.
“You think what’s wrong with me is a pu-punishment?” she asked, and before Rosa could say anything, she continued, “When I lost my first baby, I didn’t think about it that much. I assumed the cause had been the lack of sleep or even exposure to lab chemicals. But now… Look at Peterson; three months ago, she gave birth to a chubby, healthy baby. And I? Do you think he is punishing me?”
Rosa took a deep breath. “As temperamental as a god can be, I doubt he would seek to punish us any more than he already has.”
Lucy got upset. “So,” she said, “You t-think I’m the one who’s punishing me? Do you think I punish myself for what we’re doing? For what we’ve done? Be-because the Major Surgery.”
Rosa shook her head, sad. “I don’t know, dear,” she whispered; there was no longer sweetness in her voice, only sorrow. “I do know that losing a pregnancy is a horrible thing, though, and there’s nothing supernatural about it. It’s something that happens. There doesn’t have to be someone to blame.”
The big woman showed a goodbye smile and left the restroom.
Lucy stood with her arms down, looking at the threshold where her friend had disappeared.
Yes, Rosa; there is always someone to blame, she answered to herself. I also hate myself for my involvement in the Major Surgery; only that you, unlike me, have had the decency and courage to quit this operation.
So, Lucy gathered the strength to get out of there. Taking those three or four steps and peeking into the corridor meant a real effort.
The restroom might not have been a very private place, but it was a quiet place where she could hear the water running. There was no medical equipment there, no monitoring devices uttering their constant beep, beep, beep. The restroom was a sanctuary for Lucy, a place where she could vent her sorrows and take refuge from her coworkers, at least for an instant.
However, it was about time to return to the struggle her job entailed.
Yes. Her work had stopped being a pleasure and had become a struggle. It’s been like this since you got into this damn project, she recalled, and the voice that rang in her mind was the harsh voice of her conscience, which she’d always thought she obeyed.
Upset by the complaint raised by her reflections, she smoothed her light blue scrubs in front of the mirror for the last time. She took a deep breath and went down into the corridor; a gray and tasteless corridor, without sets or windows. No escape from here, she thought; although that shouldn’t come as a surprise; everything related to the Order felt like a prison.