Free Heteroflexibility by Mary Beth Daniels Page B

Christian Mother.
    The cover showed a mom looking up at a dad with a baby on his shoulder. The bold headline said, “Gays threaten traditional marriage.”
    I snatched it up, turning to the back. It didn’t have a label. The doctor’s office didn’t subscribe to it. Someone had left it there.
    The story began with a hysteria-inducing account of kids being forced to go to a teacher’s lesbian wedding, then kindergarteners being exposed to information about gay lifestyles with books like Heather Has Two Mommies .
    Since when did five-year-olds learn about sex at all? This was ridiculous. Of course the idea would make parents upset, but it wasn’t true. The article went on to bash Roy and Silo, two male penguins at the Central Park Zoo who were given an egg to hatch. Propaganda, they claimed. I dropped the magazine back on the table.
    “Zest Renald?” The nurse in pink scrubs scanned the room.
    I stood up, expecting the pain again, but it was gone. Great. I’d rushed in here for nothing. The urgency I’d felt an hour before had dissipated. I wasn’t going to die after all.
    She led me down the hall. When we got far enough from the reception desk, I said, “You know, I’m feeling a lot better. I think it was a false alarm.”
    “You didn’t schedule your annual. Dr. White wants to see you.”
    Oh, man. What happened to impersonal health care? I wanted to be a number again, a check box on a form. Dr. White waved at me as he headed toward his office.
    Nurse Kim led me into a room. “Let’s do the whole deal since you’re here,” she said, handing me a cotton gown. “Annual exam. Pap smear. Tie up the front!”
    Bah. She closed the door, and I turned toward a wall of babies. A couple of the pictures were mine, actually, as Dr. White had kindly referred a few people to me after I sent him some business cards. I compared them to the work of some of the other professional photos, scattered among the home snapshots and printed announcements. I did okay. With more experience, I’d be as good as them. Once I found another studio space.
    I changed into the gown and sat on the paper-covered table, another pain shooting up. Thank goodness. I wasn’t crazy. Even though I’d had the pain before, it was so random that I hadn’t paid a lot of attention.
    I shivered in the air conditioning. Nurse Kim stepped back inside to take my blood pressure. “So what’s all the fuss about?” she asked. “The front desk said you came in all shaky and convinced you were dying.”
    “I’ve been having shooting pains.”
    “How long?”
    “Not sure. A few weeks, I guess.”
    “Does it hurt when you have intercourse?”
    The pressure built around the cuff. “I haven’t had sex in a while.”
    She nodded and turned her attention to the gauge.
    The air hissed out in a long exhale. “Probably nothing major. We’ll take a look.”
    “My mom died of cervical cancer.”
    She flipped open my chart. “We’ll take a good hard look.”
    Two quick knocks on the door were followed by Dr. White’s head poking inside. “Everybody decent?”
    “You’re on time today,” I said.
    “No babies rudely disrupting my schedule,” he said. “Little buggers never can arrive during their appointments. That’s why I spank them.” He sat on the stool. “So tell me about these pains.”
    “It’s random. It shoots up when I’m sitting.”
    “Let’s go ahead and lay back and see what we see.”
    I fell back on the papered pillow, staring at the ceiling where the staff had tacked a poster expounding the virtues of self-breast exams.
    The speculum went in, and I tried not to tense up. Despite having shifted from doom to calm, I began edging back toward certain death. The touch of the swab was so painful that I recoiled.
    “Sorry, Zest,” Dr. White said. “It’s pretty red down there.”
    So I was dying. The cancer was eating away my insides. I remembered my mom, coming home from the first chemo, pale and weak, eventually throwing up and