I look at his hand in surprise. He's offering it to shake mine like we’re equals.
“Ivy,” Antonia urges when an awkward moment passes.
“Oh. Sorry. Yes. I’m Ivy,” I say, shaking his hand. What have those weeks in my prison done to me? Have I already forgotten how to be normal?
The doctor momentarily focuses on my right eye but then smiles at me. “It’s very nice to meet you.”
“Can I bring you more coffee, Doctor?”
“Oh, no thank you, Antonia,” he says, eyes still on me. “I’d like to get started.”
“All right. Ivy, can I bring you something?”
I turn to Antonia. “Um. No, I’m fine. Thanks.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then.” With that, Antonia is gone, and I’m left alone with the doctor.
“Are you with IVI?” I ask first thing.
“IVI?” He raises his eyebrows.
“The Society.”
He pauses. “No, I’m not with any society,” he says, looking rather confused. He reaches into his pocket to take out a business card and hands it to me. “Your husband actually flew me in from California. I have my own practice there. I’m an otolaryngologist.”
I study the card, then look back up at him.
He must see my confusion now because he smiles. “Ear, nose, and throat and I specialize in vestibular disorders. Your husband called my office and explained things. He’s a bit worried about you.”
At that, I feel my eyebrows go up. “Santiago?”
“Yes.”
“Is worried about me?”
He nods, again looking confused.
“Hm.” I remember his words to me last night. How cold they were. He’s not doing this for me. He’s doing it to ensure the safety of his children should I ever become pregnant with any.
“Shall we get started?”
“Okay.”
He gestures for me to sit on the sofa and resumes the seat he’d just vacated. From inside his briefcase, he pulls out a folder and opens it, and I get a glimpse of my name on the first sheet of paper.
“What are those?” I ask.
“Some of your medical records. Mr. De La Rosa was kind enough to send them along. I haven’t had a chance to read them completely yet as this was rather short notice, but from what I’ve read, it doesn’t look like you’ve had any treatment for the disorder?”
I shift my gaze from the papers to him. I guess I’m not surprised Santiago has my medical records.
“Just a diagnosis when I was young.” My mother had decided treatment wasn’t necessary. I just had to “get over it.” Her exact words. Because treatment would make the condition public, and she couldn’t have that. I was flawed enough. My dad argued about it with her but ultimately gave in.
“I see,” he says, looking through more of the papers in that folder before taking out an electronic pad and asking me a long list of questions.
I’m not sure what to expect, but I spend the whole morning with Dr. Hendrickson. After a physical exam where he hid his shock well at all the bruises because even for me, this is extensive, we spent time on simple exercises, some of which I’ve found online but never really committed to doing. I didn’t mind so much about those, and I thought about a bargaining chip with Santiago. I didn’t tell the doctor that I’d been kept in a locked, blacked-out room for weeks. I’m not sure what Santiago had told him, but there would be no point. Even if he was horrified, what could he do? Call the police? They are in Santiago’s pocket. IVI would never allow a Sovereign Son to get into trouble with the police. It would be too inelegant.
Instead, I asked him about swimming, told him how it used to help. And I didn’t have to mention going outside. He brought that up himself and said he’d add that to his discussion with Santiago.
Once he left, Antonia let me have lunch in the kitchen with her, but she had to take me back up to my room after that. I know she felt awful about it. That’s the only reason I didn’t fight it. I’ve gotten her into enough trouble.
So instead, I went back upstairs to my dark room, stripped off my clothes and handed them to her to lock away, and resumed my place on the bed to wait.
I don’t know how many hours pass before Santiago enters my room again. I’ve already had dinner, and I’m wide-awake, waiting for him. I don’t know if it’s the grin on my face that makes him pause just as he enters the room, but for exactly one millisecond, I feel like I have the upper hand. The element of surprise. I’m almost gleeful, and it’s strange. Almost like a madwoman. I’ve rehearsed all day how I’ll tell him that his seed isn’t up to the task. That all this fucking and still no heir to the devil’s throne. Some more crude things too. Anything to unman him. I know he’ll punish me for it, but it will be well worth it.
“Wife,” he greets, looking around the room at the additional candles.
“Husband,” I match his tone and narrow my gaze, letting a smirk play at the corner of my mouth.
He grins too and walks over to me.
I don’t move, keeping my relaxed posture of half lying down, half sitting up.
He pushes the hair back from my face, cups it to turn it slightly so he’s looking at my right eye, studying it for some reason. His strange words from last night come back to me.
“Just remember when you look upon yourself next week, loathing your own reflection in the mirror, you only have yourself to blame.”
I pull out of his grasp, the glee of moments ago faded. Turned uglier.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“You on your knees to start.”
My belly flutters as my gaze dips from his face to his crotch and back. Fine. He wants me to suck him off? I can do that. I may bite tonight, though. So I push off the blanket that’s barely covering me and drop to my knees before him. Before he can order me to, I reach to undo his belt.
He closes his hand over mine to stop me.
“No.”
“What is it? Don’t tell me you came in here to talk.”
His gaze is on the bed at my back. I turn to it. See what he sees. That tell-tale smear of blood.
I look back at him grinning wide, the feeling inside me ugly, not me. Not at all.
Santiago’s jaw tightens.
“What’s the matter, dear husband? Another month gone and after how much you’ve tried, I dare say done your best, there’s nothing to show for it? Have you considered having your sperm checked? Maybe the fire that deformed—”
He has me by the throat in an instant pushing me backward against the bed, my back bending painfully, his hand cutting off my air so I’m left sputtering. He looks like he has a hundred things to say to me. A thousand curses to hurl my way. But instead, all he does is haul me up onto the bed, sets his knee beside me, and eyes locked on mine, he closes his other hand over my sex.
He loosens his grip on my throat a little as I claw at his forearm. He must see I can’t breathe, but he doesn’t let go entirely.
Holding my gaze, he pulls the little string of the tampon, and I feel it slide out, slick with blood, then he pushes his fingers inside me, and I force myself to grin as he brings them up between us, looking at the bloodied digits.