Excerpt of Baby Bank by Sarah Robinson

“I caught your show the other night,” my gynecologist said from between my legs as he cranked open the speculum.

I kept my eyes glued to the ceiling tile above me, which had an informative list of the symptoms of herpes. Casual reading, I assumed. “At the Comedy Loft?”

I lowered my gaze when Dr. Nicholas Allen’s head popped up above the sheet draped across my knees. “That’s the one. You know, I loved your set on being bisexual and how that meant twice the rejection instead of twice the dates. My wife and I laughed and laughed. Really great stuff.”

I gave him a tight-lipped grin and bob of my head. “Thanks. Always nice to meet a fan. It’s pansexual, by the way.”

“Of course. Right. So, how’d you come up with your stage name?” he asked.

“It’s a play on my name. Tori Miles, Mila Torres.” I didn’t usually answer questions like that, but since he was inside me… “With my day job, it’s easier to have some distance between that and my comedy.”

“Makes total sense. You know what you should add to your next set?” I could feel the giant cotton swab making crampy friends with my cervix as he chatted away like he wasn’t basically breathing into my bearded clam. “Vagina jokes. I’ve got tons of them.”

Definitely something I wanted to hear from my gynecologist.

“For example,” he continued. “Did you know that in older literature, the labia are referred to as meat curtains? Or the wooly beaver. Or a pink taco. Honestly, there’s so much material there you could write a whole set on it.”

“I think vaginas already have a monopoly on monologues,” I replied.

He snorted and I swear to God I felt a spray. “That’s clever. See, Mila? You’re a great comedian!”

I hadn’t asked for his validation, but this wasn’t an uncommon conversation with the male species these days.

“You can go ahead and sit up now,” he said after another minute. “All finished.”

I shimmied my butt farther back onto the table and closed my legs. “All look good down there?”

“The nurse will call you if the results come back as abnormal, but I’m sure you’re fine. It would be good to start thinking about your reproductive future though.” He was pulling his gloves off with a snap and depositing them in a red biohazard box. “At thirty-four, you’re considered almost an advanced age for pregnancy, and every year that goes by, your eggs will continue to degrade. Freezing them now could give you more options in the future for having children later in life. Have you considered having a family?”

“You know, strangely, no one has ever asked me when I’m going to settle down and have kids,” I replied, tapping a finger to my chin to highlight the sarcasm dripping from my words.

But my sarcasm went directly past Dr. Allen. “Really? Well, you’re lucky. Most women are hounded about that kind of thing. I’ll give you a few pamphlets on fertility specialists that we work with often. Great people. Give them a call and get a consultation if you’re interested. Certainly, no need to sign on the dotted line just yet, but good to get the information, right?”

“Right.” I hugged the thin paper gown tighter around me and focused my gaze on the diagram against the window of an IUD plugging up a uterus.

“Unless you’re thinking about having kids soon?” Dr. Allen looked up from the small computer he was working on off the small countertop next to the sink. “Single women have kids all the time lately. Not much you need a man for these days.”

He chuckled at that last line, and I bet he thought he was clever. He wasn’t entirely wrong though.

“If—and it’s a big if—I were thinking about having kids on my own, what would the process be?” The question came out of my mouth before I could fully form a thought around it. “You know, out of curiosity. Not saying I’m actually considering it.”

He didn’t seem as shocked by my question as I was. “Well, right now, there’s no reason to suspect that you couldn’t carry a healthy pregnancy. An intrauterine insemination procedure could place the sperm and then you’d wait until a missed period to pee on a stick and see if it worked. There are even do-it-at-home kits, but I’d recommend going through a fertility clinic rather than the turkey baster route for better chances.”

I nodded as if I was actually considering his words. It kind of scared me to realize that…I actually was. Was I having a stroke? Was this some sort of belated quarter-century crisis? “And what about…sperm? Can you just go to a sperm bank and ask for sperm?”

“Not without a credit card,” he teased. “But seriously, you’re probably looking at twelve hundred dollars a pop on average. Though some places offer a discount for military or Costco memberships.”

Discount sperm was not on my to-procreate list.

“Twelve hundred dollars?” My brows lifted as I tried to remember how much my former law school roommate used to get for his donations to a sperm bank. “I thought guys only got fifty bucks a deposit or something like that?”

“Oh, they do.” Dr. Allen shrugged his shoulders. “Markups are second nature in this industry. The sample goes through rigorous testing, but also, the bank wants to make a profit to keep the doors open.”

“The way of the world,” I replied…