Marlee stopped taking the pill when she was fifty-two. She had been bleeding each month—albeit hardly and close to tar—so she figured she was fertile, sort of, that something would attach itself to her uterine lining even if not completely thriving. She thought herself to be a woman who could have babies easily and forever if she didn’t take measures. She had had two, and each one had been planned insofar as the condom was removed that month for that purpose, and one spermatozoon had made contact both times on the first try, digging their pushy little heads into her waiting eggs so that the following month, the test read positive. At her recent mandatory checkup with her new primary doctor, Marlee went over the facts of her body quickly to get the meeting over with, and when mentioning the pill and then receiving the pause, Marlee said, “I’m still bleeding,” and was told, “That’s because you’re taking the pill,” and Marlee said, “Oh.”
Marlee was not stupid. She had earned a master’s degree in business administration and had applied decades of fundraising expertise in development offices in Seattle. Moreover, she acquired great wisdom, leading and sometimes winning household wars for close to thirty years. The correct day to stop the pill was not on her mind. When Marlee was thirty-eight, she learned she was anemic from bleeding too much, and the pill lightened the flow. Who knew the reason she had pressed her cheek to the kitchen counter was not from cooking yet another meal but from oxygen deficiency? The pill allowed her to do many, many tasks.
Her new doctor typed Marlee’s spoken data in her digital record.
“I’ll stop then,” Marlee said.
“Your hormone replacement therapy could be pills—the most common, but there are patches and creams too.” The doctor peered at the screen. “You don’t have high blood pressure or any—”
“Can’t I just stop taking the pill?”
The doctor regrouped. “You could, but you may find the sudden change difficult. You might find the hot flashes and night sweats
