Heat Race - Tanya Chris Page 0,69
with a rubber mallet and, in his later years, turn and cough. He’d never been sick beyond what chicken soup and his mother’s TLC could cure, and he’d never had anything up his ass that wasn’t attached to one of his mates. But now the doctor—a man who seemed hardly older than Jack Henry himself—was about to shove a wand up there so he could take a peek around.
Jack Henry was positioned face down and ass up with his stomach resting on the padded examination table. He clung to Elias with one hand and metaphorically groped out along the bond with his other, trying to pick up a hint of Jasper and Saul.
“Might be a little cold,” Dr. Morris warned as he inserted the wand.
Jack Henry gasped. Cold wasn’t the word that came to mind. Big was more like it.
“Sorry. Vaginas are shaped differently. I wish they made a wand specifically for anal ultrasounds, but we don’t check omegas for fertility these days. I wasn’t even taught how to do it in medical school. Don’t worry, I looked it up.”
Looked it up wasn’t very reassuring. You wanted the person shoving a wand up your ass to have some experience with it.
“So I’m just going to turn this on.” Dr. Morris flipped a switch on the machine connected to the wand. It flickered on to show a black-and-white image of… Jack Henry had no idea what that was. A grainy, blobby mass of grey.
Dr. Morris rotated the wand, causing the mass on screen to shift, then gave an excited squeak. “There, see it?”
Jack Henry shook his head. He didn’t seen anything except fuzzy grains of gray sand, but Elias said, “That’s the fertilization chamber?”
“Looks like. That’s where the egg and sperm meet,” Dr. Morris explained. “Assuming you’ve got an egg sac capable of depositing an egg there, so let’s just follow this higher up to… uh huh.”
“Are there eggs in it?” Elias asked.
“Based on what medical science understood two hundred years ago, omega eggs are only produced during heat. There isn’t a stash of them waiting to drop like in a woman. But if Jack Henry’s sac is capable of producing eggs, one will be deposited in the fertilization chamber the next time he goes into heat. Then, if it gets fertilized, it’ll travel along the—”
“The transportation tube. I know.”
Jack Henry gave a weak cough of protest. He didn’t know.
“Can you see it?” Elias asked.
“We’d need a CAT scan to pick up something that small, but I’m hoping I can find his womb. That’ll require a manual examination,” he warned as he withdrew the wand. He made Jack Henry roll over, then propped his feet up in a set of stirrups.
Jack Henry sighed in relief. The wand had been entirely too alien. But then Dr. Morris stuck his fingers up his ass and started digging for gold. Jack Henry steadfastly looked at the ceiling, which Dr. Morris had decorated in stars, apparently knowing where his gaze would be fixed. Jack Henry definitely didn’t feel like making eye contact as Dr. Morris put his non-digging hand on his stomach and smooshed up and down.
“Never palpated an omega womb before,” Dr. Morris said, “but I’d say that’s what I’ve got here.”
Jack Henry winced. Whatever Dr. Morris was palpating, it didn’t enjoy being palpated.
“That womb is going to need to do a lot of expanding to hold a full-term infant,” Dr. Morris said as he withdrew his hand from Jack Henry’s ass. “But that’s what it does, supposedly. I guess we’ll find out.”
“Maybe,” Jack Henry said as Dr. Morris snapped off his gloves and disposed of them in a receptacle. “I haven’t decided if I want to get pregnant yet. I didn’t even know if I could. I guess you’re saying I can.”
“Well.” Dr. Morris drew up a stool next to the examination table. “You’ve got the right equipment for it, but that’s not a guarantee of success. You might not make eggs. The eggs might not descend into the fertilization chamber or, having been fertilized, they might not make it to the womb. Your womb might not expand as expected, in which case the fetus would fail to thrive. There are a lot of variables in play.”
“Is there any danger to Jack Henry?” Elias asked.
The doctor paused long enough to make Jack Henry nervous. He was already conflicted about having children, though mostly because it was a hell of a possibility to suddenly have thrust on you. He’d never considered that it might