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“Nitram, Tavros? Is a Mr. Nitram here?” An orderly—you think that’s the right term, anyway—stands in the doorway between the waiting room and the hallway behind him, a clipboard in hand as he looks around.
“Here,” you response, raising your hand even as you rise from your seat. “I’m here.”
“Follow me,” he says while checking off what is probably your name, and he turns on his heel without looking up. “The nurse will take your vitals and measurements, and then Dr. Estevez will do your papers,” he says as he walks ahead, not waiting up while you sidle though the narrow doorway.
Today is your first day meeting real, live humans, not just seeing them on the same old tired video tapes in nursery. The beginning of your eighth sweep, at least as marked by the nursery, was actually a good six months ago, but Aradia headed up north ahead of you to be your anchor. She’d apparently found some human contacts to help her settle, and now she was ready for you to join her.
You sidle again into a small, bright gray room with a cushioned table covered in kind of cheap-looking paper. There’s a rolling chair and you go to sit in it, but the orderly instructs you to hop up on the table. You do your best and the paper rips under your wide butt, which brings color to your cheeks, but the orderly doesnt seem to notice or care.
“Undress and put this on,” the orderly says, handing you a folded square of blue paper. “The nurse will be with you shortly.” He leaves before you can ask how he expects you to put on a sheet of paper than doesn’t feel much sturdier than what your ass just destroyed. You unfold it and it’s got sleeves, at least, but what you think is the front just ties together at intervals, which you think is kind of pointless and maybe a little perverted. You decide you’ll put it on backwards, which is marginally better.
When the nurse arrives you’ve been undressed and redressed in the stupid paper jacket for a good while, your clothes haphazardly folded on top of your very broken shoes. You’re very aware of your naked behind against the torn paper on the table, but you figure it’s better than putting on a perverse little show for the humans. The nurse is female, you’re pretty sure; what little you’ve learned about them from the dregs of their media and pop culture is that they tend to judge gender by the shape of their body, a strange affectation. She looks up at you as she enters, and smiles.
“You’re Tavros, right?” she says as she sits in the rolly chair. “I’m Nurse Sara. I see you figured out the paper gown,” she adds as she points at it. “I’ve had so many young trolls put it on backwards that I think I may know more about troll genitalia than the doctor does.” The nurse chuckles to herself while you realize that you’ve accidentally managed to do something right for once; you just let her think you were that clever, and nod.
Nurse Sara rolls over to a computer tucked in the corner, a beige box not unlike the one Sollux stole from the nursery common room that one time. She clacks away for a moment, then pulls a soft fabric measuring tape and a little metal box from the shelf. Next she pulls up a little plastic foot stool, and steps onto it to reach eye level with you, kind of.
The first thing she does is ask you to put your arms up, then she reaches around you to pull the soft measuring tape around the widest part of your chest. When she catches your quizzical look, she shrugs as she mouths the number to herself and steps down. “It’s kind of a dated procedure, to be honest. The federal government used to want to compare troll growth to human growth, so we have to measure things like chest circumference in male-bodied trolls.”
“Male-bodied?” you ask as she types in the measurement. “My body’s not male, I am. I know girls who look like me.”
“Well, the United States government doesn’t see it that way, and believe me when I say those girls will have a harder time than you out there,” Nurse Sara says as she steps back up. “Hold out your arm, I need to measure your bicep.”
In the end she doesn’t measure nearly as much of you as you expected. The metal box is another tape measure, which she uses to measure several dimensions of your horns. It makes you nervous when she sighs and shakes her head entering the various numbers. She checks your temperature, blood pressure and hearing; the way she pumps up the armband makes you wince, but she just pats you on the shoulder and asks you to roll up your sleeve. She draws your blood so efficiently and quickly you don’t even register when she’s slapped a band-aid over the small hole, then she’s telling you to go step on the scale, which will also record your height. You’re careful not to knock anything down as you jump down and turn around to put your back to the ruler on the scale.
“I think you’re the heaviest specimen I’ve had in this office in a while,” she says as she balances the little weights. “Almost four hundred pounds flat.” You look down in shame, but she gently tips your head back so she can slide a piece of metal against the top of your skull. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It just means you survived. Seventy-five inches.” Nurse Sara hops back down again. “Besides, troll bones are much denser than human ones, except for those whippy aquatic trolls.” Having never even seen a seadweller, you just shrug. “Okay, Mr. Nitram, you’re all set for Dr. Estevez. You can put your clothes back on now.” She flashes you a smile, and exits as you wave back from the scale.
It feels like you wait forever for Dr. Estevez, and when she does finally arrive she seems rushed. “So, Mr. Nitram,” she says as she leafs through a few sheets on her clipboard, which you think must be a print out of the stats Nurse Sara put into the computer. You’re not sure why she needed that when she could have just looked at the computer, but maybe your numbers go with your papers. She’s the federally appointed doctor here, not you, so you bite your tongue. “You seem fairly healthy.”
You perk up; that seems like a neutral, maybe even positive way to start.
“Do you intend to stay on in the state of West Virginia?” she asks, flourishing a pen. You shake your head, then actually say no when you realize she’s not looking at you.
“Where is your final destination?”
“New York City, with Aradia Megido.”
“I examined her, too, I remember,” Dr. Estevez says as she scribbles. “Bright, chipper. Did very well on the intelligence testing.” You just shrug, because you’re sure she did much better than you. “Do you have transport to take you to New York?”
“Uh, yes. Aradia pre-paid my bus ticket up there.”
“And you’ve been taking your medication for the past two months, is that correct?”
“Yes.” You don’t mean to fidget.
“Okay.” There’s a few more silent moments of the doctor’s pen moving.
“So, is that it? Do I get to leave the district?”
“Not quite.” She glances at your horns, and your stomach twists. The doctor takes a seat at the computer, clicks a few items, and opens a document that looks to be headed with a state seal. New York’s, maybe. “Under New York City law, and by extension New York state law, you are banned from all forms of public transportation, with the exception of licensed and willing TLC vehicles,” and she stands up to finally look at you, “due to the exceptional and possibly dangerous size of your horns.”
“But then,” you begin, mouth dry, “how am I supposed to get around?”
“Walking is permissible,” she says with a shrug. “Technically a bike doesn’t fall under public transport, but I would advise against it. I’m told the NYPD don’t take kindly to large-horned cyclists.” The orderly who led you to this room before pops in with a print out of the document still on the screen, which the doctor accepts with a small word of thanks.
“What I can tell you,” she continues as she signs her name, “is that in cases like yours, the federal government will cover the full cost of horn reduction.”
“Reduc—reduction?” you gulp, hands sliding along the bottoms of your horns protectively.
“I’m told it’s no worse than clipping your nails at a larger scale,” Dr. Estevez says. “It’s free, and it’ll certainly improve your quality of life. I can print out the paperwork for that now, too.”
“No,” you say with a single vigorous shake of your head, which makes the doctor take a step or two back. “No, definitely not!”
“Are you sure?” the doctor asks, looking at you expectantly as she taps the butt of her pen against her clipboard. “They will eventually grow back to your original size, however slowly now that you’re an adult, and we can carve any shape you like, within the limitations of your horns—”
“I like my horns the way they are,” you say slowly, licking your lips nervously. “Please.”
“Fine.” She signs the last page with an air of finality, and hands you both clipboard and pen so you can sign the final form too, to show that you understand the severe limitations of your soon-to-be new home. “I hope you don’t end up regretting it.”
It takes another two weeks for the paperwork to go through. Aradia greets you at the bus stop on the sidewalk, arms wrapping around you tightly before she gives you a smiling, closed-mouth kiss. She looks tired.
Her apartment—now yours, too, especially once you find a job—is a fairly long trip away from the bus’s drop off point, and she starts to lead you to the subway before you inform her that’s not allowed. She’s indignant, and you sigh even though you know it’s not directed your way; it takes her five tries before she can hail a cab that will accept you. You feel worse for how much the cab ride costs, but you have no money to help cover the cost so you just swallow the guilt as best you can. She doesn’t seem upset about it, though, just happy to have you here.
“Okay, so,” Aradia says as you follow her into the apartment, “I want you to meet my new friends! Tavros, that’s Rose,” she says, pointing to a small dark-skinned human with braided hair sitting on the couch, who looks up with a bemused face and a short wave, “and this is her brother, Dave.” He’s the opposite of his sister, dusky-pale skin and yellow hair, wearing dark shades indoors.
“I heard a hell of a lot about you, Nitram,” Dave says as he walks over and leans in with his hand held out for you to shake. “And when I say a lot, I mean a lot.” And you think you see his eyebrows arching over the tops of his shades.
You try not to let the flutter in your heart show as you shake his hand.