Katy sat in the waiting room until she called her name, then went to the examination room and changed out of her clothes into the hospital robe, just as she had done last week. She was very round and pregnant now, and her breasts hung large and low over her ball of a stomach.
"Let's see what we can find today, shall we?" Dr. Cruthers said with a halfhearted grin. He was a kindly older man, and she valued his attempt at making the situation less stressful, however much that attempt failed.
He placed a stethascope on her belly and moved it around. "Huh. Uh huh. Nuh. No, we're not getting a clear reading on the baby's heartbeat, I'm afraid. Or you may be having twins, given your size. Maybe we should have another try at the ultrasound."
He dimmed the lights, wheeled out a computer with a huge screen attached, and lubricated Katy's bulging stomach with some blue gel. He put a plastic sensor on her belly and looked up at the shifting images on the screen. Five, ten minutes passed as he slid the tool around and stared at the bluish images, which seemd to make no sense at all.
"Well I must say, Katy, I've never seen anything like it, not in my 40 years in medicine," he said calmly. "There seems to be something strange about your amniotic sac that won't allow the ultrasound signals through. As I said before, it's much like trying to x-ray through lead."
Katy lowered her eyes. She had not expected anything different today.
"I could call in the specialists again, but I'm afraid the results would be the same as last time. The good news in all of this, dear girl, is that you seem otherwise entirely healthy. And clearly your baby is growing. We'll just have to wait and see."
Katy dressed and went out to the waiting room. Her parents, their faces gaunt and tired, waited for her. They drove home in silence and Katy went up to her room, where she was spending all of her time since dropping out of Sugar Loaf college over the summer.
She stared at her foot locker, where those THINGS were. How had all this happened. She wished she could destroy that collar and that dildo, so no one else would have to face these problems.