The Price of Silence (chap 10-12)

Catch up:

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

10

I lie in bed that evening, watching the minute hand of the clock. It's 8:30 on Friday, like the note said.

I might be miserable. I might wax morosely about the state of the world and how meaningless my life is. I might kiss strange men I hardly know. But I'm not suicidal.

Going to meet a man in an unfamiliar place was dangerous before all of this. He must really be new here or had believed all the propaganda. Like, really...a note? He expected me, a barren woman, to just be able to go for a late-night stroll?

I shouldn't have kissed him. I really shouldn't have led him on like that. Maybe he'll report me for my whorish behavior since I didn't go to meet him. I think of dating back then, when friends pressured me to join those stupid dating apps. The audacity of some men, sending unsolicited photos of their penises before even saying hello. It was so primitive, like baboons presenting their buttocks for prospective mates.

To think, dating was once called "courting." It still is, for some families of this regime, only the courting is heavily supervised by fathers of their precious virgin daughters. Purity balls existed before the regime, but it was equally uncomfortable to witness. Young girls pledging chastity to their fathers, making him the guardian of her intact hymen. The fathers would vet the future man who would inevitably and inelegantly penetrate his daughter on their clandestine wedding night. The two newlyweds wouldn't know a thing about sex or foreplay as is the intention of right-wing abstinence-only education. Imagine, waiting for the supposed magic of your destined first night as a bride only to be tragically broken-in like a new broodmare.

Not that modern dating was much of an improvement. Sure, it was nowhere near as uncomfortable as awful familial boundaries, but dating was potentially dangerous for women. There were rules, spread by word of mouth, about how to remain safe. Take your own car. Meet at a public place. Never leave your drink unattended. Put your keys through your fist like makeshift brass knuckles. Aim for the genitals if he doesn't take no for an answer. If he has a weapon, don't resist. Just survive.

Survive.

I close my eyes, counting my breaths. They synchronize with my heart beating. Sometimes my feelings of depersonalization are so strong, I check my own vitals obsessively. What's the point of my body? It doesn't produce children. Yet, its electricity keeps me live, like a pointless machine. Sometimes I think of myself as an appliance. An old broken stove someone keeps forgetting to have moved. Power still runs through me enough to turn on the oven light; otherwise, I'm useless.

I wish I could astral-project. I once got into Wicca and mysticism as a teenager and was fascinated with the concept of astral projection. I longed to part from my body and drift through the cosmos, feeling no chains hold me down.

I guess, in a way, memories could be astral-projections. They're recollections of better times, even if the times were bad. I would take bad times over worst times such as this.

I fall into a doze, though I'm lucid enough to know it's a memory...

College. Studying on the moth-eaten couch in my shitty, roach-infested apartment. My pharmacology notes littered the coffee table and I was struggling to stay awake. My third cup of strong coffee did nothing to perk up the lethargy.

"Fuck it..." I hissed, gathering all the papers and placing them back in my binder.

It was exam week and I was fried. My biology class started at the ungodly hour of 7am and lasted until 10am. My nursing courses took up the whole afternoon. I hated the pharmacology TA. He was a legacy hire allegedly distantly related to Dr. Jonas Salk, which I didn't fucking believe at all. He was only 32 but dressed like a 60-year-old British professor. He didn't like women being in academics and had too much admiration for Nazi doctors.

I really didn't want to walk into that classroom tomorrow to have him peer over us taking the exam like we were wasting our time. I thought his microaggressions were saved for those performing poorly in the class; yet, I had a B average and he still targeted me.

His latest transgression was telling me, "Making your voice lighter and friendlier might get more attention in the future." I purposefully talked from the throat for the next three classes.

I wake up slightly, ruminating on how much I would prefer the microaggressions to the full-on condescension I face today. The room has darkened on its own, meaning an hour or two must have passed. Drowsily, I roll over and fall back under...

"Ma'am, you can't visit with him unless you put on a mask. It is not optional." I exasperatedly informed an irate woman.

My own mask barely conceals the musky perfume she overapplied that morning. Her paunched face reminds me of the sad dog from the Looney Tunes cartoons.

"This is complete bullshit! All this fuss over some flu! I haven't worn a mask once and I'm still fine!" she complained.

"Covid-19 is not the flu. It is a debilitating and lethal virus and we do not want to catch it." I told her sternly.

"I don't give a fuck about any of you! Let me see my husband!" she roared obstinately.

"Ma'am, you are going to have to leave. You are disrupting hospital business." Brosco, the hospital security guard said, intervening.

"Oh, you need a big nigger to solve your problems? That's the problem with you retarded little bitches! Can't even fight your own fights!" the woman blurted out.

I wake up again, my back aching.

I wish I could say that type of bigotry was an isolated incident. I think we deluded ourselves in those days, thinking that this was our new normal. We wanted everything to be normal and in that desperation, we became complacent. We allowed the worst of human behavior to happen out of some misguided approach to "finding middle ground." Except that the middle ground between progressivism and fascism is a bottomless hole. We allowed their vitriol and hate to become social norms.

We became too apathetic. We asked about mass shootings like we discussed the weather. We made morbid jokes about climate change killing us. We catastrophized about every inhumane thing that would happen after 2028 now that a true fascist was in office. I think we still secretly hoped the rule of law and checks and balances could save us. No one would allow such a horrendous mass culling and complete destruction of democracy.

When the news media stopped, we stopped laughing.

When martial law was declared, we stopped making jokes.

When street-sweeping forces were gunning down protestors and purging whole districts, we stopped believing in humanity.

We did this to ourselves. We tried to make amends with people who don't see us as worth living. And yet...life as I live it is now normal.

11

Five hyperactive children bounce all over a hospital room. The children of an Appointed Senator, said Senator being treated for heart trouble. His wife is thin, too thin, her purple dress too large on her slender frame. Many of the tradwives follow insane diets, often to their detriment.

This tradwife is brunette and her youngest boy is undoing her hair-bun despite her sharp protestations. Her cheekbones are sharp as knives, adding to her gaunt-like appearance.

"All I'm saying, sir, is that I need some extra help with the kids. It's hard to homeschool the girls when I still have a child who's potty-training." she begs of her husband.

"God doesn't reward impertinence, dear. I daresay he's punished me in that regard." the Senator chuckles like he told a joke.

The Senator is the polar opposite of his wife, his rotund belly barely contained behind his robe. He has to be twice her age and she can't be older than 23, meaning she was definitely popping out kids before she was 18. No doubt, her marriage was arranged to this man out of some political favor the Senator might have offered her father.

I hold one of the quieter children. She's five years old and has strawberry-blonde hair. She still sucks her thumb, which isn't a great sign. I'm not surprised though. Many children of the regime show signs of slow development and neglect. I hear rumors of some "problem children" getting sent to "betterment camps." Such children are probably neurodivergent and don't respond well at all to traditional punishment methods. Not that neurotypical children fare any better in the long term from repeated beatings.

The young girl plays with a felt doll, one with red braided yarn as hair. The wife looks over at me and I'm struck at how pitiful she seems. I'm used to tradwives looking down on me, treating me like a street beggar. Either they're holier than thou and think I shouldn't even breathe the same air as them or I'm a chance to show how merciful and pitying they are of poor wretches.

No, this wife's expression is like her eyes are screaming help to me in bold, underlined italics.

I don't know what she expects me to do. I have much fewer privileges than her. I can't even talk.

I admit that I generally dismiss the tradwives as being uppity, traitorous bitches who voted for their own disenfranchisement. But I'm realizing that many of these women may not have signed up for this. As I understand it, most tradwives were the wives of men who helped the nation become what it is today. They were the instruments used to lie to the public, claiming that women would benefit greatly from "Becoming Dutiful." That was actually a slogan of one famous conservative pundit. She was like Nancy Reagan but with more Botox and noticeably fake breasts. She'd be on the popular news stations sometimes, talking about the imperative of women returning to "dutiful, submissive, demure roles." I wonder what became of her. Did they lock her back up in her cage once the men got what they wanted?

This woman looks used up. I can't think of a better term for it. It sounds misogynistic and puritanical, like more of the object lessons from school abstinence programs. "You don't want a girl who's all used up like an old car!"

I mean it in a sense that each one of these kids took a piece of her and she had hardly any pieces left for herself. One more baby would probably kill her. Before birth control was ever invented, some women had so many children that they went insane. They often had abusive husbands who didn't care about consent. Marital rape wasn't a crime until the 1980s. It definitely wasn't a crime now. All women were basically property, the tradwives just get more clout for it.

I move on to my other patients. I avoid the eyes of Dr. O'Shea, knowing better now to deter him from any further titillation. The flesh was weak and easily shredded by bullets. If he's irritated, I don't notice. I keep my head down, walking demurely like a dutiful nurse. I am to be seen and not heard.

The geriatric wing down the hall has its doors locked today. Three light sconces above the sign are blaring red, usually meaning the ward was being deep-cleaned. I had a nasty feeling it wasn't just infection they were neutralizing. The regime has no use for elderly people, after all.

I hear someone clearing their throat directly behind me. It startles me and I don't think before I'm whirling around to see who's creeping up on me.

It's the tradwife, on her own, somehow.

I stare into her frantic eyes. Her wide pupils reflect the sterile white of the fluorescent lights which brightly contrast the icy blue irises. She's close enough that I can see tear tracks through thick powder.

Dr. O'Shea appears and he gives each of us a brief glance before quickly heading down the hall to the loud generator room. I look around for Adjudicators and cameras.

This is so fucking dangerous.

I keep pace with them, hoping my brisk walk will only be seen as an effort to quickly help a patient. We breeze through the heavy door into the generator room and the cacophonous machinery drowns out my own relentless thoughts.

It's only when Dr O'Shea and the woman suddenly stop that I realize the woman is holding something. Something that's wrapped tightly in a towel. Something bloody, red seeping through the fabric.

I watch in horror as Dr. O'Shea takes the bundle with gloved hands and carries it over to a large blue container. He places it within the container and reaches for a mask and a pair of goggles. He puts up his gloved up to tell us to stay back. We back up a few paces and remain still while Dr. O'Shea uncaps a bottle of unlabeled substance. He pours a measured amount into the container and I cover my mouth and nose as the caustic fumes of chemicals mix with a coppery odor.

I nearly gag as I realize that he just dissolved a miscarried fetus with acid.

12

Dr. O'Shea examines the tradwife as I stand silently behind him. It's a position no woman is comfortable in. Her legs tremble in the stirrups and she's grimacing as Dr. O'Shea removes the speculum.

"I'm very sorry, Mrs. Holton. You aren't pregnant. I fear you may have fibroids." Dr. O'Shea announces.

I am an accomplice.

This man...this fucking asshole...has just made me an accomplice. An accomplice to Crimes Against the Unborn. This is different than the underground cell. We try to avoid surgical abortions because we can hardly make the bunker clean enough for that. We have no autoclave, no professional equipment, no anesthesia (besides Titan's private stash of pain pills, that is). We always go with abortifacients. If we're in dire straights and the smuggling routes are compromised, Titan hits up a green witch on the black market for herbal concoctions, though they often have side effects that last days.

But now I've been witness to the unlawful destruction of a human life. It's absurd. I'm aware that it's absurd. The fetus couldn't have been more than four months and unviable, but the law has never made sense. The law was made by men who didn't know women's anatomy beyond the obvious.

The woman leaves with a smile on her face, even to me. She nods her head in thanks. I nod in return, bewildered beyond belief.

"Can you come assist me in the geriatric wing, nurse? I have a recalcitrant patient in need of dressing changes." Dr. O'Shea manages to droll disinterestedly, like this is just an everyday, banal existence.

I want to slap his stupid handsome face.

Instead, I nod in acquiescence, face like marble.

We walk at pace to the red-light wing. Dr. O'Shea presents his badge and the doors open, revealing two Adjudicators.

"Geezers have already been dealt with, O'Shea. No cause to bring a nurse." one of the Adjudicators says in a low voice.

"They were not geezers. They were people. I need the nurse here to tend to the cleaning." Dr. O'Shea answers evenly with a touch of derision.

"They were produce. But sure...go clean up the shit stains. Just don't fuck in the morgue, the stiffs might get jealous." the other Adjudicator snaps.

"Don't forget the info I have on you, Anders." Dr. O'Shea threatens.

The Adjudicator grimaces but lets us in all the same.

I follow mutely behind the doctor while he leads us into the hall. It's a derelict, the calming blue now seeming like an ocean in a gale. Every grouted tile was scoured clean, and the rooms only held empty beds with freshly laundered sheets.

The doctor opens a door to a staircase. It's narrow, only intended for staff.

"Here. You'll want to dab some in your nose before we go down." he says, offering me a pot of something.

Vapor rub. The stuff I once used those times I was sick, which was a lot, working in a hospital. I smear my finger in the gel and apply the mentholated ointment to each nostril. The nostalgic smell isn't a pleasant one. It's one of illness and endless headaches. The ache of your chest as severe bronchial coughs rattled your ribs. That awful clinging smell of mucus and feverish sweat.

We descend the stairs.

"I warn you...it's not a pretty sight." Dr. O'Shea advises.

I look upon the room in horror. It's worse than a morgue. A huge crematorium takes up most of the basement, now cleaned of its latest batch of ashes.

I'm not surprised. I'm shocked, but not surprised. I expected something like this to be happening. Mass graves get tedious after all. The smell of decaying flesh lingers even after the lime powder and burial. It's all about efficiency now. No last rites, no loved ones sitting bedside while you peacefully pass on. All that is time-consuming and not beneficial to the regime.

"Why the fuck did you bring me here?" I ask him.

Dr. O'Shea hesitates. I can feel his eyes on me, but I don't look back at him.

"Place is soundproof. Figured you'd want an explanation." he surmises.

I shut my eyes, huffing in exasperation. I laugh humorlessly.

"I know about you. You help people. You help people who men in power want to die." he explains. "You risk your life helping people."

"How do you know that?" I ask, eyes snapping open, finally looking at him full on.

His face is unsmiling. The day has worn him ragged. He needs to shave or he'll be disciplined. Only men over 40 can grow beards. His eyes have noticeable bags.

"I just do. It's better if you don't know who knows what." he says matter-of-factly. "It's less to torture out of you, if it comes to that."

I roll my eyes. "Living is torture." I scoff.

"This isn't living." he says shortly. "This is surviving."

"What the fuck do you know about survival?" I snap back. "You're a man! You're a man with a career! A man who's allowed to talk and go places without a chaperone!"

"I'm a Jew." he answers defiantly.

I stare at him for a moment.

How strange it feels in that moment...like we're reliving history only this is America and Americans aren't the good guys here. The Americans that were against fascism and liberated the Jews from the death camps were long gone and forgotten. The Holy States, despite having the Bible codified in the law of the land, still deplores Jews. They regard the Biblical Jews as "Proto-Christians" and any mention that Christ was ever called "King of the Jews" is now considered heresy.

"Well...you..." I swallow obstinately. "You can fake being Christian. I can't fake not being a barren woman."

"Many women of the regime who were deemed barren have fallen pregnant." Dr. O'Shea informs me. "Usually they find out after they've been raped. The terms 'barren' and 'unlikely to conceive' have been muddled."

"Even if I was fertile, I'll kill myself before I become some bastard's white baby machine." I seethe.

"I've been called to scenes where wives did try to kill themselves." Dr. O'Shea says soberly. "I'll patch them up and some old fuck fake psychiatrist will label them as mentally defective and send them off to be disposed of. The husbands just moved on to another woman."

We stand there for a moment. The quiet of the room is unsettling and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

"They'll be wondering where I am." I say. "I have check-ins every so often. To make sure I'm not slacking."

"Will you meet with me? Every so often? Just to talk?" Dr. O'Shea asks.

I grimace. "Look. I'm not going to fuck you. Just so you know that."

"I didn't ask for that." Dr. O'Shea answers gently. "I won't do anything like that."

"Forgive me if I don't believe you." I respond. "This regime is full of men who only think with their dicks."

He sighs. "I know. You don't owe me anything. But it gets so lonely. Just...think about it."

We climb back up the stairs into the blazing blue.