The clinic smells like bleach and lavender, but somehow it feels safer than the sterile fear we left behind in Alabama. Marcus squeezes my hand, and I squeeze back, remembering the last medical office we sat in back home—the one where the doctor told us they were "discontinuing services indefinitely."
That's the language they use when they strip away your future: indefinitely. Like time itself becomes a weapon against you.
Dr. Lopez greets us with a warm smile and kind eyes. She's calm, confident. The kind of woman who looks like she's seen it all and still somehow manages to care. But more than that—she looks like she's seen what happens when care becomes contraband, when healing gets criminalized, when your body becomes evidence in someone else's moral court.
Once we're settled in her office, she gets straight to it.
"Tell me a bit about your medical history," she says. "And about your journey here."
So I do.
I tell her how my old gynecologist in Birmingham brushed off my heavy bleeding and the cramps that took me out for days. How it took forever for anyone to take me seriously. How the fibroids were finally discovered—late, but still in time to be removed.
You've heard this story before, haven't you? Different decade, same script. Black women's pain gets footnoted, minimized, erased. Our bodies become case studies in what happens when medicine meets prejudice.
Dr. Lopez listens carefully, nodding. "And the surgery caused some scarring in your uterine cavity," she says gently. "That can complicate conception, but it's definitely treatable."
I nod. There's a lump in my throat. She didn't flinch. She just... knew.
But I need her to understand—this wasn't just bad luck or one bad doctor.
"This isn't just about fibroids," I say. "My doctor didn't listen to me because I'm Black. Alabama has some of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country for Black women—it's a pattern. A system."
She meets my eyes. "I'm familiar with that history. According to the CDC, Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women."
"Do you know about Henrietta Lacks?" I ask.
She nods. "Yes. She's part of why I do this work."
Something in me loosens. Because she understands what I'm really asking: Do you know that our bodies have been harvested, experimented on, dismissed, and criminalized for centuries? Do you know that asking for help means risking everything?
Marcus leans forward. "I don't like doctors, to be honest. I've read about Tuskegee, the experiments, the lies. It's hard to trust. And what happened in Alabama... it felt like more of the same. Different century, same disregard."
Dr. Lopez doesn't rush us. She listens. Takes notes. Then she says, "You're right to be cautious. The disparities in care are real. That's part of why Harmony Fertility Clinic exists—to change that."
Marcus and I glance at each other. We don't say it, but we're both thinking the same thing: thank God we found her.
I let the silence settle. Then I say, "That wasn't the only reason we came here."
Dr. Lopez looks up from her notes, waiting.
"We were living in Alabama," I continue. "But after they passed that fetal personhood law... IVF just wasn't an option anymore."
Dr. Lopez's expression tightens with understanding. She's seen this before. The medical refugees. The fertility diaspora.
"They essentially made it illegal," I explain. "You can't freeze embryos without declaring them legal children. And if anything happens to them—even in storage—you're criminally liable. We couldn't afford that risk. So... we left. Left our jobs, our church, our whole life."
Dr. Lopez sits back slightly. "I'm so sorry you had to go through that. That law has forced so many families to make impossible choices."
Marcus reaches for my hand. "It felt like exile," he says quietly. "Like we were being punished for wanting a family."
"I'm still angry," I say, sharper now. "People shouldn't have to uproot their lives just to build one. And the families who can't afford to leave? They're just... stuck. Trapped in a state that turned their reproductive organs into legal minefields."
Dr. Lopez nods gravely. "You're absolutely right. You're not the only ones—we've seen more and more families relocating because of laws like that. It's creating a reproductive apartheid in this country."
The words hang heavy in the air. Reproductive apartheid. That's exactly what it felt like. Geographic segregation based on your right to control your own biology."Based on everything you've shared," Dr. Lopez says, "we'll start with comprehensive fertility testing for both of you. Blood work, ultrasounds, and a semen analysis."
I nod, trying to keep up, but it's a lot. Hope and anxiety start doing their familiar dance in my chest. After months of bureaucratic warfare, medical care feels almost surreal.
Marcus frowns. "Wait—why do I need tests? Isn't the issue with Aisha's fibroids?"
Dr. Lopez doesn't flinch. "Possibly. But we won't know for sure unless we look at the full picture. Fertility's complex, and stress—including the stress of relocation and legal persecution—can affect both partners. Trauma rewrites your biology in ways we're still learning to read."
Marcus lets out a breath and nods. Even his body bears witness to what Alabama did to us.
Then comes the part I've been dreading since Alabama.
"What about cost?" he asks, his voice quieter now. "Our savings took a hit with the move."
Dr. Lopez leans forward slightly. "I understand. Fertility treatments can be expensive, especially when you've already had to make significant sacrifices just to access care. We have a financial counselor who'll walk you through your options. Illinois has better insurance coverage than Alabama did, and there are payment plans and sometimes grants for couples who qualify."
We leave the office with a stack of paperwork, appointment slips, and something we hadn't felt in months: genuine hope. Not the desperate kind we carried out of Alabama, but the steady kind that grows in good soil. The kind that acknowledges the machine while nurturing the dream.
Before we dive into tests and treatment, Marcus has another idea—one that doesn't involve clinics or co-pays.
"What about trying more natural methods first?" he asks as we walk to the car. "I keep thinking about that ad for Black ancestral healing we saw online. Less invasive, faith-aligned. And you've already been doing the herbal steams, the ancestor baths... those help, don't they?"
I pause, thinking about the rituals that have kept me grounded through all of this—lighting candles, steeping roots passed down from my grandmother's stories, quiet prayers whispered into warm water. They calm me. They connect me to something larger than medical reports and legal battles. Something older than the laws that chased us here.
"They help me feel connected," I say slowly. "Like I'm holding hands with the women who came before me. But Marcus... prayer and herbs won't undo my fibroids. They won't make scar tissue disappear. And they definitely won't undo the months we lost running from Alabama."
He nods, but I can feel the resistance in him—the hope that we can still do this without fully surrendering to a medical system that's failed people like us before.
"I just want it to feel... less clinical," he says. "More sacred."
"And I want it to work," I reply, not unkindly but firm. "Sacred doesn't have to mean powerless, Marcus. Maybe the sacred is learning to work with the machine instead of against it."
We fall into thoughtful silence as we drive through our new neighborhood. Neither of us has all the answers, but we're here. In a place where we can actually try. Where creating embryos won't make us criminals. Where our bodies belong to us again, even if they're about to become something new.
That has to count for something.