1
KATE
Kate sees the familiar nameplate on Dr. Williams’ office door and feels a knot in her stomach. She doesn’t know why, after all this time, it still affects her like this—she should be used to it by now. But every time she walks through his door she’s filled with hope, and every time she walks back out, she feels utter despair and sadness, unable to believe that fate could be so cruel.
As if he knows what she’s thinking, Matt grabs hold of her hand as they sit in the clinic’s waiting room. Squeezing it, as if he is somehow able to transfer his boundless optimism onto her.
He kisses her head as she leans into him. “I think this might be the one,” he says, over-enthusiastically, as if believing it hard enough will prove him right.
“It’s certainly the last one,” she says wearily.
“Let’s see,” says Matt with forced joviality.
“Kate!” exclaims Dr. Williams as he opens his door.
She should call him Ben, as he’s requested a hundred times. But using his first name means she knows him well, and if she knows him well, it would be admitting how long this has been going on for.
“Doctor,” she says, as she stands up and walks toward him with an outstretched arm.
“Good to see you,” says Dr. Williams. “Matt, how are you?”
The two men greet each other as if they’re old friends, meeting at a football match. Kate finds herself wondering at what point the bonhomie will be replaced with the business in hand. She suspects it’s when her legs are in stirrups and said hand is gloved.
“So, are we all ready?” asks Dr. Williams, now seated in front of them at his desk. He doesn’t look up from his computer screen to see Matt’s determined nod.
“Okay, so all your numbers are looking good,” he says, almost to himself. “We’ve identified the strongest embryo which, I’m pleased to say, is of the highest grade.”
Kate feels Matt looking at her, knowing that he’ll be beaming from ear to ear, but she doesn’t have the energy to return his eagerness because she’s heard it all before. “Highest grade,” “4AAA blastocyst,” “It doesn’t get much better than this”—all had been bandied around during their last three attempts, but it hadn’t made that line go blue on the pregnancy test, had it?
Matt’s enthusiasm had propped Kate up at first, when test after test proved inconclusive. She’d relied on his positivity to bring her back around the right way after they were told that the reason they couldn’t get pregnant was due to “unexplained infertility.”
“It means there’s nothing wrong,” he’d said as he practically skipped out of Dr. Williams’ office three years ago.
Kate didn’t have the heart to tell him that it also meant that there was “nothing right.”
Instead, she’d adapted her diet, stopped drinking, and stood on her head after sex. But nothing had resulted in them being able to conceive, hence they now find themselves in the clinic. Again.
Once Kate’s lying on her back with her legs in the air, she sings Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” in her head, to distract herself from the fact that there is a doctor, an embryologist, a nurse and a medical student all staring intently at her lady parts. Galileo Galileo, she hums, in an attempt to take herself to another place.
“Once you’ve had a baby, a smear test will be like just going to the hairdresser’s,” her sister Lauren had offered when they’d inadvertently run into each other at the doctor’s. Kate hadn’t wanted to share her infertility struggles, so had been caught on the hop. Of all the things she could have said she was there for, a smear was the first thing that popped into her head. She could have kicked herself.
You would have thought that an older sister with three children would be the perfect antidote to the situation that Kate finds herself in. Someone who would sympathize, offer unbiased advice and a shoulder to cry on. But Lauren is not that person, or perhaps, more to the point, Kate doesn’t see that person in her. Instead, she sees a woman who is living the life she had assumed she’d be living, and sisters or not, Lauren’s perfect little set-up is not the kind of support network Kate feels she needs to be immersed in right now. And anyway, she thinks, how could she possibly understand what I’m going through when she only has to look at her husband to get pregnant?
She jumps as she feels a sharp pain in her groin.
“Okay, so we’re inserting the embryo now,” says Dr. Williams, though Kate doesn’t know if he’s talking to her or the eager student, who can’t seem to get close enough to see what’s happening.
As it turns out, it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve been poked and prodded, it will never feel like going to the hairdresser’s.
She wants to push the invasive hands and instruments away, restore her dignity and tell them she’s had enough of being treated like a laboratory rat. But then she looks at Matt, with his gentle smile and hopeful eyes. She could so easily take herself down the why is life so unfair? route, but in the rare moments of clarity, when she knows that having a good life isn’t dependent on having a child, she is so grateful to have him.
She’d always wanted a baby with the husband she loves, more than anything in the world. Had been consumed by it at one point. But the pain and constant disappointment were taking their toll. If she’d had her way, they would have stopped at the third IVF attempt. She was exhausted, both physically and mentally; her nervous energy depleted by the tales she’d had to spin to friends and work colleagues who raised a knowing eyebrow whenever she refused an alcoholic drink.
“This is it,” she’d said to Matt, a couple of nights ago, as they were snuggled on the couch watching TV.
She felt him stiffen and sit up straighter. “What, this is our last chance?” he asked, seemingly floored.
Hadn’t he noticed how tired she was? Seen her desolation every time they looked at a blank pregnancy test? Couldn’t he see how their whole lives had been taken over by the process of getting pregnant?
“I’ve had enough,” she’d said quietly.
“But we…” he stuttered. “Darling, we’re so close now—I know it. We can do this.”
Something inside her had snapped. “You keep saying we, as if we’re going through this together.”
He’d looked at her, hurt. “Aren’t we?”
She chastised herself for taking her frustrations out on the person she loves the most. But isn’t that always the way?
She thinks back to how carefree they’d once been. How they’d met on the newsroom floor of the Gazette and bonded over mutual banter about a loathsome editor. It had made the day go quicker, made the shifts under the editor’s watch seem a little easier to bear. Whenever he’d march into the open-plan office, shouting his morning mantra, “Who are we going to throw to the lions today?,” Kate and Matt would race to send each other an email with “YOU?” in the subject heading. It was a regrettable day when the editor himself received Matt’s email.
“I’ll miss working with you,” said Matt, as he and Kate sat in the pub ruing their stupidity. “But every cloud has a silver lining.”
She’d thought he was referring to his new job at rival newspaper the Echo. She couldn’t stop grinning when he added, “Because now I can ask you out.”
They’d spent blissful evenings trawling the pubs of South London and lazy weekend mornings reading the papers in bed. But now she can’t remember the last time they’d done either.
Instead, they’d been referring to ovulation charts before they made love and subliminally avoiding social events with their pregnant and blessed-with-children friends, which seemed to be just about everyone they knew.
In their effort to have a baby, they’d lost the ability to be spontaneous. Ironically, they’d given up what should have been the halcyon days of pre-parenthood to the restrictions of being responsible for another human, despite the painful absence of one.
“Done!” says Dr. Williams with a flourish. He puts the catheter back on the tray and pings his gloves off.
“So, we’ve got two more in the freezer?” asks Matt. “Before we have to go through egg retrieval again, I mean?”
“Yes, we’ve got two more good quality embryos left to go on this cycle.”
“But even if they don’t work, we can still go again, can’t we?” Matt continues.
Kate doesn’t want to have this conversation. She has an urgent need to empty her painfully full bladder and all the time there’s a viable chance of a baby being inside her, she refuses to acknowledge that they’ll have to go through this again. Because that would mean that the little human being who is having to work so hard right now isn’t going to make it.
“Let’s concentrate on the here and now,” says Dr. Williams, as Kate swings her legs down to the floor. “So, just carry on as normal, and I’ll see you in a couple of weeks’ time for the blood test to see where we’re at.”
Kate looks to Matt and smiles. She can’t help but notice that he’s got his fingers crossed.
Copyright © 2020 by Sandra Sargent
