the doctor's office

The doctor's office is a modern medical facility where Offred is taken monthly for obligatory fertility tests—urine, hormone, cancer smear, and blood tests—the same procedures as in the time before, but now compulsory. The office is located in a modern office building; Offred rides up in an elevator with a Guardian facing her, and in the black-mirror wall she can see the back of his head. Inside the waiting room, other Handmaids in red covertly size up each other's bellies, searching for signs of pregnancy. The nurse records their names and pass numbers on the Compudoc to verify their identities; he is about forty, six feet tall, with a diagonal scar across his cheek, and he still wears a pistol in a shoulder holster as he types with hands too large for the keyboard.

The Examination and the Proposition

When called, Offred passes through a doorway into an inner room that is white and featureless except for a folding screen covered with red cloth, on which a gold Eye is painted with a snake-twined sword upright beneath it—broken symbolism left over from the time before. After providing a urine sample in a small bottle left ready for her, she undresses behind the screen, folds her clothes on a chair, and lies naked on the examining table covered with crackling disposable paper. A cloth sheet is pulled up over her body, and a second sheet suspended from the ceiling intersects her so that the doctor will never see her face—he deals only with a torso. She reaches out to pull a small lever, and a bell rings elsewhere. The doctor enters, and though he is not supposed to speak to her except when absolutely necessary, he is talkative. He asks, "How are we getting along?" in a tic from the other time, then lifts the sheet, causing a draft that pimples her skin. A cold, rubber-clad, jellied finger slides into her; she is poked and prodded, the finger retreats and enters otherwise, then withdraws. He pronounces, "Nothing wrong with you," and calls her "honey." Her breasts are fingered in a search for ripeness or rot. Then, very softly, close to her head, he whispers, "I could help you." He explains that he has helped others, and when she asks how, he says, "How do you think?" and tells her the door is locked and no one will come in. He lifts the sheet; his lower face is covered by a white gauze mask, and his hand is between her legs. He says most of the old Commanders cannot make it anymore or are sterile—a forbidden word, since officially there are no sterile men, only women who are fruitful or barren. He urges her to let him impregnate her, saying, "You want a baby, don't you?"

Offred's Response and the Doctor's Power

Offred hesitates, recognizing the risk: the penalty is death, but they must catch her in the act with two witnesses. She says, "It's too dangerous. No. I can't." The doctor stops his hand and tells her to think about it, noting that her chart shows she does not have much time left. He says, "But it's your life." She thanks him, careful to leave the impression that she is not offended and is open to suggestion. He takes his hand away lazily, almost lingeringly, signaling that this is not the last word. He could fake the tests, report her for cancer or infertility, and have her shipped off to the Colonies with the Unwomen. None of this is said, but the knowledge of his power hangs in the air as he pats her thigh and withdraws behind the hanging sheet, saying, "Next month." After he leaves, Offred puts on her clothes behind the screen, her hands shaking. She realizes she is frightened not because she has crossed any boundaries or taken any risk, but because of the choice itself—a way out, a salvation. The doctor's office thus becomes a space where the regime's control over women's bodies is both enforced and secretly subverted, revealing the desperate bargains that even those in power are willing to make.