MJA Eric Dark Creative Writing Prize - There must be joy

Highly commended (Practising and retired doctors category)

The waiting room is pretty typical for an obstetrician–gynaecologist. Lord knows I’ve been in a few. There are baby photos on the walls and baby photo albums filled with happy snaps adorning the tables. Maternity and child-rearing magazines make up the bulk of the proffered reading material, all at least two years old of course, and there is a play area for patients’ children offering brightly coloured blocks and educational puzzles as child-friendly distractions. In a nutshell, a place of pure torture for the reproductive failures among us: the ones who are seeing the doctor not for pregnancy care, but for care related to non-pregnancy — or, worse, lost pregnancy.