You think it'd be some kind of intimate candle-lit affair, right? A gentle older lady with warm hands and a discreet curtain? No. No, no, no.
It was a folding screen in a fly-ridden side room behind the magistrate's office, one limp curtain, and a chair that smelled like boiled cabbage and last month's shame.
The medic was a bald man with spectacles and sausage fingers who never once introduced himself. Just snapped on a pair of cracked leather gloves like he was about to gut a fish.
"Remove your garments from the waist down," he said flatly, not even looking up.
I blinked. "Buy me a drink first?"
He didn't laugh.
So I undressed. Grudgingly. Under protest. Making a point of folding my clothes with exaggerated care, like defiance could cover my ass better than silk.
He poked. Prodded. Checked for signs of infection, infestation, inflammation, and improper usage.
He made me squat. Cough. Breathe. He squinted at my brands and tattoos like they were mold samples. He sniffed me. Sniffed.
At one point he asked if I had ever exhibited signs of demonic infestation.
"Define 'signs,'" I said sweetly.
He didn't appreciate that.
He muttered something about rune compatibility and made me grip a brass rod while he scribbled down whether I glowed. (I didn't. That time.)
He checked my teeth. My eyes. My hearing. My pulse. My hips. Measured the width of them. For birthing capacity, apparently.
Then he asked, in the flattest tone imaginable, "Any recent conjugal injuries?"
I tilted my head. "Like emotional, or just teeth?"
He wrote "YES" and moved on.
Final step: he dipped a thin stick in a foul green potion and asked me to hold it… internally. For temperature, he said.
I asked if it had to be that end. He blinked once. I blinked twice. We compromised.
Once it turned purple (a good sign, supposedly), he declared me free of "active rot, dripping ailments, or obvious mutations," stamped the form, and told me to re-dress.
No goodbye. No good luck. Just the smell of vinegar and boiled something clinging to my skin.
I left with the distinct sense I'd been pickled, not examined.
But hey. Paperwork approved.
I am now, officially, safe to fuck.
—Saya, Certified Bed Hazard™