The Trouble with Women

Implantation

Dear Dolores,

We are delighted to inform you that your appointment to join the Revolut RevolutionTM has been booked! (smiley face emojii) (party balloons emojii) (thumbs up emojii)

We look forward to seeing you at your family doctor's office at the time and date below. If you did not have a family doctor on file, we have booked your appointment at your nearest walk-in clinic for your convenience.

Please arrive 45 minutes prior to your appointment time with your government-issued Health Card and your appointment card. All recipients of Revolut will be offered a mild sedative before their procedure as well as a relaxing (and well-deserved!) spa treatment*.

Patient Name: Dolores Abigail Hill

Your implantation will be performed by: Dr. Eve Franco, Women's Health Centre, 333 Sherbourne Street, 6th Floor

At: 2:30pm

On: Monday, September 18

*Note, spa treatments are offered courtesy of Janus Klein Pharmaceuticals and may be withdrawn if daily limits are reached.

I'M NOT THE type of person who keeps mementos. I don't have a box jammed with ticket stubs or old love letters squirrelled away under my bed. In fact, I'm more typically the type of person who tosses things away that, it turns out later, I should have kept. But I've kept this.

I'd brought it with me to my appointment, folded in half and stashed between the pages of a book I wasn't reading but carrying around at the time in case the urge ever struck me. I'd shown my appointment card, handed over my health insurance and, after they'd signed me in, they passed it back under the shatterproof glass that separated me from the medical centre's receptionist.

"Thank you, Dolores. You can head over to the Revolut lounge across from the elevators and take one of the massage chairs. Someone will be along shortly to settle you in."

She smiled at me brightly for a quick moment before turning her attention to the woman behind me in line.

"Dolly," I said, a touch nervously.

"Sorry?" asked the receptionist. Her eyebrows were scrunched. I noticed she was due for a wax, which emboldened me a little.

"My name. I know it says Dolores on the card, but I don't go by that anymore. I prefer to be called Dolly."

She unscrunched her imperfect eyebrows and exhaled. "I see... that's fine then. Doesn't really matter, as long as we've got the right person on the file."

She paused to take a sip from the teacup that sat, tepidly, beside her keyboard. She leaned forward and said conspiratorially, which, looking back on it now, I wonder if she meant to be or was just joking:

"They keep track, you know."

I WAS 25 when I got my Revolut. Prime fertility years. The twenty-somethings got the first wave of implants, and in a lot of ways, we felt lucky. I doubt there were any massage chairs, manicures, or sedatives when they got to the fourth or fifth wave. Those were the older women. The ones who were on the wrong side of their fertility window, were the most established, moneyed and opinionated about the whole program. They were the most likely to be brought kicking and screaming under a legal injunction to their implantation appointments.

"The older a woman gets, the more insistent she becomes of her rights."

That's a quote from the last article Rebecca Thompson was ever credited for in the Toronto Star: