we're in this doctor's office, me and mom, and auntie and cousins and niece. his wife has just had a baby. the baby is a girl, very pretty. his wife looks like daniel pearl's wife. she is happy. the doctor has meant for this to be a kind of welcoming party for the baby, but it is only hours after the birth and the mama is tired. she is laying on the examining table with the baby wrapped up in paper and gauze. one of the party games he wants us to play involves pushing another examining table up against hers, having me lie down next to her and then connecting us with two tubes to exchange fluids. one tube runs from my breast to hers, the other from her womb to mine. he tells me this will assist the baby i'm carrying in my womb to grow properly, and will assist his wife in transfering milk from my breasts to hers, to help her feed her newborn. he demonstrates with a doll, but scares me by injecting poison into the doll. i am shocked that i am pregnant again, since i just had my third child two weeks prior. everyone pats my belly and tells me to get my husband to have a vasectomy; the doctor says he performed his own vasectomy hours ago, shows me diagrams of the procedure. he has a grey and white beard and laughs about everything scary.

the other mama is very tired; he tells us all the party is over and that we should go home. we all get in the elevator and when i look up i see that the building we are in has 400 floors. the elevator has to switch shafts several times during our descent, going sideways at times. sometimes it even drops at an alarming rate, making little sadie (my niece) and i experience weightlessness. we are kind of scared but no one else feels the effects of the elevator free-falling but sadie and i. we arrive safely on the ground. when we step out of the building i find we were actually in my grandparents' old house in ontario.

i get in an old beat-up boat of a car to start driving home. it's a long drive and i'm excited at the prospect of a solo road-trip across the country. i drive for hours and hours and i can see my belly growing. when it starts to touch the steering wheel i realize i am lost. i pull into a gas station that is just about to close. a bunch of little girls who are maybe 8 or 9 are standing outside the glass door waving money at the proprietor and swearing at him for not selling them packages of cigarettes. i decide i need a smoke and knock on the locked door to ask him to sell me some. he shakes his head, thinking i'm going to buy a whole bunch and give them to the girls but i assure him that it's just for me. the girls all look deflated and sad when i tell them to forget it and go home.

he lets me in the booth and he and i start smoking together. he starts in on some diatribe about how it's so much bullshit that pregnant mothers are told to not smoke and drink - back in his day there were big pregnant mother parties in pubs and bars where they all got sloshed and smoked cigars, and look at how he and all his generation turned out...just fine! i am shocked that i can't seem to remember i'm pregnant again, and stub out the smoke and ask him for directions to white rock. he shrugs and gives me a map, but tells me i'm heading in the wrong direction and i'm closer to newfoundland than i am to b.c. i sigh and walk back towards my car, tossing the pack of cigarettes on the highway. the gaggle of 8 year old girls swoop in on it like vultures, picking over the cardboard box and foil wrappers, laughing and lighting up and throwing the garbage at me. i get in the car and drive away.