Thursday, May 23, 2013

Shards To A Whole: Chapter 98

McGee-centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.

Chapter 98: Operation McSciutos

And like a year and some earlier when Abby went on Depo in the first place, going off of it isn’t just something that happens quick and easy. It’s not like a light switch that you just flick off.

Granted this time she was only eight days away from her next shot, so they didn’t have to wait that long to get into the “no birth control” part of life.

But, well, there’s no easy way to tell when it stops working. Obviously, there’s a really visible sign that’ll show up eventually, but, if you’re trying to get pregnant as soon as possible, and if you succeed, that sign doesn’t show up, and if you don’t want to be taking a pregnancy test every morning, then you need to have an idea if you even had a target to shoot at, let alone hit it.

So, even before her last appointment should have been, Tim and Abby swung into research mode.

And they’re good at research. They’re in bed, each with their own computer, learning the intricacies of ovulation.

He’s reading away, and looks up, “You know, this really should have been part of the Sex Ed stuff in health class.”

Abby nods. “Yeah. That would have been useful.”

“I mean, who knew the cervix moves around depending on where you are in your cycle, let alone opens and closes?” Honestly, Tim’s finding all of this pretty cool. The idea that her body does all of this stuff and they can pay attention, record data, and use it to make a baby faster and easier makes his inner science wonk really happy.

“I didn’t. I knew about the temperature thing, but not the cervix thing.”

They read some more.

“Think they have an ap for this?” Tim asks.

“Huh?” She looks up from her computer screen to him.

“Just seems like a waste of time to have to print out a chart, take your temperature, write it down, and keep track of it manually.” He’s googling. “Huh… Yeah. Not seeing anything. I mean, sure you can’t make a device to check the other stuff, but how hard can it be to make a thermometer that’ll keep track of your temperatures, and then upload it to your phone on its own?”

Abby shrugs. “You’d be better at answering that than I’d be.”

“You know, it really shouldn’t be that hard to make.” He’s grinning.

“You’ve got a project for this weekend, don’t you?”

“I think I do.”



Three digital thermometers, a selection of chips, the internals of a few old phones, a soldering iron, some duct tape, and a few hours on Saturday took care of the having to manually record temperature information aspect of this. Sure, it wasn’t the prettiest thermometer ever, but unlike the ones at the drugstore, this one would automatically upload Abby’s information to the program he wrote anytime it was less than twenty feet away from her phone.

And that was pretty cool.

And unlike the rest of this, it was part he could actually help with, so that was cool, too. (Apparently being turned on messes with getting good baselines for cervical position and vaginal fluids, so though he was more than willing to help with keeping track of that, his involvement would have been counter-productive.)


And so, first thing Sunday morning, Operation: McSciutos began.

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