This is The Guardian.

It was different from the Asceptic ones I had visited when I lived in New York City.

This was high-end, with mild, luminous lighting and a floral smell walking throughout.

In the far corner of the waiting room, a TV was showing a family of penguins in Antarctica,

waterling along an icy shore.

I was unconvinced by its message of optimism of nature trying to think against the odds.

On the walls of the waiting room, there were posters of young couples in bloom,

tethered to each other, smiling intently, some of the women with protruding valleys.

Most of these expressions read like success.

I tried to internalize these positive messages, playing eye-to-tiger in my mind as some in victory.

But it was hard to manifest the strength of rocky ascending the stairs and triumph while I was hungry, thirsty,

and clad in a burgundy hospital gown, crocs, and a green hairnet.

For two weeks, I had injected hormones into my abdomen daily and sprayed more into my nostrils.

These were meant to increase the size of my eggs and offset ovulation.

All I could tell was that they induced a state of elislessness broken only by extreme hot flushes.

While my body was being optimized for egg extraction, my partner waited with me in the clinic.

I looked like a patient ready to go under the knife.

He was primed to jerk off in another room to a selection of adult entertainment that included girls gone wild and Latinx holiday.

Afterwards, I sat with my partner, tense and despondent, waiting to hear what happened.

The doctor came in and said, we were only able to extract two eggs.

Two eggs. Two. This was the lowest number yet.

We will try to fertilize the two eggs with your partner's sperm and I am hopeful that it will be effective, she continued.

...