"Except the results," I said, hopping up on the table before anyone could order me to do it.
Helena's eyelids fluttered shut for an instant. This still wasn't easy for her. She was being strong for me. I've never had anyone do that before but Ric.
Okay, Irma said. Cut the surly ingrate act. We need to know why we are the way we are, or will be.
I nodded, Helena taking the gesture for solidarity and loosing a sigh.
I was no longer a lamb to the slaughter when the nurses came in and unwrapped my torso to spread some gel on my abdomen. I told them I'd get a really naughty tattoo there before any future incidents like this. If you can't avoid 'em, surprise 'em.
The gel was warm and sticky like blood, and the radiologist, a white-coated woman named Irene, gently but firmly ran a wired paddle over me while staring at the TV screen. The pressure was uncomfortable, but at least it only lasted a few minutes. I was wiped off and told I could use the bathroom and "change back" in a small adjoining cubicle.
What would I "change back" into, I wondered.
My heart was pounding again, my fate in the hands of these two doctors, one for the reproductive organs and one for the head.
Dressed, I was led back into a consulting room. This one had no ominous equipment lurking in it, no stirrup-equipped tables or televised sneak peeks into discreetly hidden organs. Just two women doctors wearing bravely smiling faces.
Uh-oh.
"Sit down, Miss Street." Dr. Torres gestured me into the chair beside her built-in desk. "You've always had severe menstrual cramps."
"As long as I can remember, which can be ... spotty. Could this IUD have caused that?"
"Most possibly. The body doesn't like foreign objects in it, even donated organs."
Or blood? I wondered. All of Ric's had been replaced.
Helena sat forward, impatient. "This is speculative, Dr. Torres. Delilah could have spontaneously ejected the IUD during one of her painful periods and never noticed."
"Also possible," the doctor conceded, "but not the case. The IUD is still there."
An ugly chill - or the silver familiar - climbed my spine. The familiar usually "defaulted" to a thin hip chain. Had it automatically girded the body part that was most compromised?
"If you found the device," Helena said, "you can remove it."
Dr. Torres pursed her fluorescently fuchsia lips.
We gotta get that brand and color name before we leave, Irma nagged.
Even Irma was trying to distract me from what was coming. I'd been screwed up for real, my body writhing monthly to rid itself of a parasite that had existed inside me for more than half my lifetime.
"Not necessarily," Dr. Torres said.
"You can't remove it?" Helena was disbelieving. "What type is it?"
Reaching a hand with short, unpainted fingernails inside a bottom desk drawer, Dr. Torres finally pulled out what looked like the T-shaped end of those white plastic "strings" on clothing price tags, a tiny, tamponlike string dangling from the end.
Gross, Irma moaned. I am so glad I'm all sass and no moving parts.
"The common form now," Dr. Torres said, "is a plastic and copper T. It can also have embedded hormones instead of copper. They are very safe and effective, although not for women who've never had children."
Helena's face had gone almost as white as mine always was. "And for children who've never had periods? What would one of these things do? Nothing but cause unnecessary trauma."
"I understand your anger, Dr. Burnside. It was unconscionable to use such a device. It would, though, prevent pregnancy later."
"No need," I burst out. "I had a major phobia about any of that insertion stuff." No wonder I'd fought off vamp boys so fiercely. "And I've been taking the Pill to help with cramps for years. That's double exposure for no point. I want that thing out of me. Now!"
Hold it, Irma urged. You don't know that this IUD is the source of all your pain.
There is periodic pain, and then there is unrelenting psychic pain. My brain rebelled at processing all this bad news.
"We can't take it out," Dr. Torres said in a soft, sad voice.
"What?" Helena and I expressed simultaneous shock.
The gynecologist stood to pull a thick, spine-worn trade paperback book from the shelf above her desk, riffling through.
"The IUD as a birth control device goes back to prehistory, practically. About sixty years ago, it was modernized and offered as an option to the Pill. They experimented with different shapes, but plastic was the 'new'