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Scenes From a County Health Department Lucas Thornton
Scene I: Five-Star Review
This room is designed to torture me. On the wall, there is a chart that
rates every type of contraception on a scale of one to five stars. The coveted five stars of infallible infertility belongs to vasectomies and tube-tying. Two stars, my level, is home to condoms. Admittedly, it’s a step above the one-star pull-out method, but according to this chart, fifteen out of one-hundred women still become pregnant with condoms. On top of possibly having chlamydia, I might be a father. I wonder if chlamydia can transfer from mother to child. If so, poor kid.
Scene II: The Test
The waiting is the worst part. The test isn’t even that bad. It only
hurts for a moment. The doctor, a middle-aged woman, has obviously seen this before, since she was speedy in shoving a dry Q-tip down my urethra. Somehow my shirt, which I was holding up, found its way into my mouth and
