Write from a stream of consciousness POV. Someone’s life is about to change in three minutes
After an hour and a half in handcuffs, and not the fun kind, I’m finally released from them and poked and prodded and searched by a tiny little thing in a uniform that’s too big, doing a job she’s too soft for.
Once they’ve determined I’m not bringing in drugs or weapons or bombs or guns (their words, not mine) even though I’ve told them countless times I have nothing on me but a pack of cigarettes, I’m finally sent to the nurse in a tiny room with a toilet behind a brick partition, a concrete bench and the nurse, looking like she could use a coffee or five, and maybe a shot of vodka.
I would kill for one right now. My high is slowly dying and I know I won’t get another one for a few hours. Maybe even a few months if they find out about what I’ve been doing since I was last in custody here at the fine county jail.
Nothing much changes in the months since I’ve been here. In and out since I was a kid, barely eighteen and hooked for multiple charges over the years. Misdemeanors at first, a few citations, a few months in (Thanks probation!) but I always found a way to get myself out.
The medical questions were always the same.
“Could you possibly be pregnant?” I shake my head. Even if I was, which I have never been thankfully, I wouldn’t be for long. That life will never be for me.
“I need a urine sample,” the nurse says, handing me a plastic cup and pointing me toward the toilet with no privacy. It’s a real sausage party in the other room, but I’ve done worse things for money, or a hit, or approval.
I give it to her, after several seconds of shooing away the anxiety around peeing around other people. There’s no place to wash my hands, just one ply toilet paper on a shelf in front of me, the kind where it takes half the roll to feel like you’ve made any progress wiping.
She dips it in front of me, not for drugs, at least not yet, but for an unwanted invader. The strip is tiny, the nurse tries not to wrinkle her nose at the smell of what has come from me. I can’t even begin to name the color as the nausea from coming down begins. I haven’t been hydrating during my benders.
Then we wait for what seems like an eternity, even though I know there’s nothing there.
The nurse looks down at the strip and then back to me.
“Congratulations,” She says, her tone flat. She doesn’t mean it. “You’re pregnant.”
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