The waiting room at Golden State Fertility Center is soft lighting and muted voices.
Calm. Quiet.
Nothing like the courtrooms I'm used to, where tension crackles like electricity before a storm.
Nothing like the Miami clinic where we started this before Florida made it clear we weren't welcome, where the receptionist's smile had turned brittle when she saw our names together on the appointment book.
Kevin squeezes my hand. I squeeze back. Remembering the last fertility clinic we sat in. The one where they told us our insurance had been "flagged for state compliance review," like our love was a computer error that needed debugging.
That's the language they use when they strip away your future.
Compliance review. Like our love is a regulation problem, a glitch in the system that needs correcting.
Like we're the malfunction instead of the law that made loving illegal.
A nurse steps out, clipboard in hand.
"Mr. and Mr. Martinez?" she calls, cheerful like this is any other appointment.
But there's something in her eyes that says she sees us, really sees us, not just the appointment slot we're filling.
It isn't just any appointment.
Not for us.
We follow her past a parade of posters.
Beaming straight couples holding brand-new babies like trophies they've won.
Subtle, but it hits like a slap you weren't expecting.
This world wasn't built with us in mind.
Not in Florida.
Not even here in California, though at least here we're allowed to exist in it.
Inside the consultation room, she hands us forms thick as my grandmother's prayer book, the one she'd clutch during hurricanes when the whole world felt like it might blow away.
"If you could fill these out, the doctor will be with you shortly."
I open the packet. Heart drops like a stone into deep water.
Menstrual history. Prior pregnancies.
"Mother's Name." "Father's Name."
No room for two dads.
No boxes that fit us, like we're trying to squeeze into clothes cut for bodies we don't have.
Kevin notices my frown, the way it deepens like worry lines my father used to get when the bills came.
"What's wrong?"
I hand him the papers.
"Same as Miami. Like we're not supposed to be here."
Like we're ghosts haunting a world designed for the living.
He scans the pages, brow tightening like a knot being pulled.
"Maybe we should ask if they have something more... inclusive?"
His voice carries hope and doubt in equal measure, like someone asking if a miracle might be possible.
I shrug. Not because I don't care.
Because I've seen this before—systems that smile while shutting you out, doors that appear open until you try to walk through them.
At least here, they can't legally deny us service.
At least here, exclusion is oversight instead of policy.
"Maybe," I say. "But we're here. And they're going to have to get used to that."
The way my grandmother used to say it when people stared at her accent, her brown skin, her refusal to disappear.
Estamos aquí. We are here.
We get to work on the forms.
Fill in what we can. Leave blanks where we don't fit, like a connect-the-dots puzzle with missing pieces.
I feel the weight in Kevin's silence—not angry, but tired.
The kind of tired that comes from always having to translate yourself for a world that speaks a different language.
Know he feels it too.
This isn't just paperwork.
This is proof.
Proof that even here, even now, we're still fighting to be recognized as fully human, fully deserving of the ordinary miracles other people take for granted.
But we're here.
Filling out these forms with stubborn determination.
Making space where the system forgot we exist, carving out room for ourselves like my grandmother carved space at her dinner table—there was always room for one more, even when there wasn't.
This is the start of our family.
And we're not going anywhere.
Not this time.
We've already run once.
The nurse will be back any minute.
We have to decide how to handle this.
What kind of fight we're willing to have, what kind of change we're willing to demand.
Push back and ask for forms that include LGBTQ+ couples.
Might slow us down, cause tension, make us the difficult patients.
But could lead to real change, to other couples not having to sit here feeling erased.
Or accept what they gave us.
Fill out what fits, leave the rest blank, smile and be grateful for what we can get.
Faster, but doesn't fix the problem.
Doesn't clear the path for those who come after.
I glance at Kevin.
See my own uncertainty staring back, mixed with something else—resolve.
The same resolve that got us in the U-Haul, that made us drive across the country toward possibility instead of staying where we were tolerated but not welcomed.
We've faced every challenge side by side since we left Miami.
This won't be different.
We'll make this choice the way we've made all the others—together, with love, with the knowledge that our family deserves to exist without explanation.
And maybe that's enough.
Maybe that's everything.
The right to choose how visible we want to be, how much we're willing to fight, how much energy we want to spend on changing minds versus building the family we came here to create.