In Utero

Saturday Morning

It used to be that on Saturdays we would sleep late, and then, rising gently into the day, we'd brew a big pot of coffee and sit on the couch for huge swathes of time reading the newspaper or messing around on the internet, maybe catching up on personal email. On Sundays I would ride my bike over to Book City and pick up the New York Times which I might read a good portion of on that day, but then wade through the rest over the course of the week. 

This Saturday, however, we had a number of things on the go and Friday night was a bit of a yard sale. I had to finish proofing the magazine so that I could get my notes back to the designer so that he could continue to work while we could head to the cottage for the long weekend. This meant working very late into Friday night which was unfortunate because I also had to go to the clinic before 8:30 on Saturday morning. 

We decided to drive directly from our house, to the Clinic and then on to the cottage from there. It was actually nice to be up and out of the house on a quiet weekend morning. There weren't many people around and it was a beautiful warm day. A perfect summer day. 

The Clinic on Saturdays is a different story. You have to enter through an alternative entrance that requires quite a bit of fumbling around with entry codes and a limited number of elevators that work. Drew waited for me in the car so that we wouldn't have to pay for parking, as he always does. At the first locked door, there was a curious bottleneck and I realised that the eight other people standing there, fiendishly trying to type in the correct code, were likely all trying to get to the Clinic. The eight bodies could be divided pretty neatly into four couples, and the thought crossed my mind that maybe they were all coming in for IVF--it would be easier to coordinate on a Saturday what with the exigencies of work--which may also have meant that I was in an elevator with four different mens' specimens. 

When we arrived at the Clinic on the eleventh floor, the place was packed. There weren't enough seats and an administrator brought out three extras. Everyone, except me, had brought their partner. There was one beautiful lesbian couple--they were both thin and pretty and put together. I wondered if they perhaps hadn't been doing this for as long as some of the others who looked 'Saturday morning disheveled' and like they couldn't be bothered to get dressed for this. 

The other ununusual thing about Saturdays at the clinic is that it is not the same staff. The nurses were different; the receptionists different, even the ultrasound technician was different. And they did things in reverse order, with the ultrasound happening first and the blood giving after. It threw me off. 

I was glad to leave though it took about twenty minutes longer than normal and wondered a bit about how to, or if i should even both, hiding my bruised veins from my parents who we were spending the weekend with. Anyway, I was glad to have a few days off from the Clinic and only my dad mentioned the bruises, asking "did you give blood recently?" To which I simply responded, "yes."