Page 10 of One Last Time

“All right,” the doctor said, sitting back in the chair to flip another page in his folder while he crossed his legs. “And we went over everything, didn’t we, Joan?”

The nurse gave Andino and Haven a sympathetic smile from the side. “We did—policy, sorry. We know you’ve gone through this more than once before.”

“Ah, there was something else we needed to discuss.”

The man’s finger tapped on the top of whatever paper he found interesting before he looked their way again. He tipped the paper up for the nurse to see. She nodded and murmured her confirmation as well on it all.

The private room was comfortable and comforting, one of the things Andino liked about it. Like much of the rest of the clinic, it was stark white right down to the furniture inside it. The walls, like many of the others in the clinic, were covered with family photos and newborn shots. Some had notes attached, others had notes written right on the photographs. All from families who had come here for help.

Andino couldn’t say, and didn’t know, whether or not—if they were even successful—that his child’s photograph would join the ranks. It wasn’t something he gave much thought to, and he didn’t think now was the right time to do it, either.

“And what’s that?” Haven asked.

“For one—we have three frozen embryos left from the two of you. So, unless we’re planning to do another retrieval, which neither of you wanted, we’re left with them to implant on procedure day. So, I want to confirm you don’t want to go ahead with another round to store more embryos.”

Haven glanced over at Andino.

No, they did not want to do that again.

Besides, if this round was successful, that would leave the remaining embryos left to store or donate what they gained from a second retrieval process. He understood very well that there were people who needed donated embryos for their own infertility journeys, but he didn’t think that neither him, nor Haven, were willing to do that. They’d already talked about it. They also didn’t want to store embryos. They couldn’t just destroy them when it was all said and done, either.

“We’ll go with what we have,” Andino said for his wife. “And we won’t be doing another retrieval whether this round of IVF is successful or not.”

“Three is still a good number for procedure day,” the doctor assured. “Before, you hadn’t asked to know the sexes of the embryos, but do you want to now?”

Andino let Haven decide that.

He’d never cared.

“Sure,” she said quietly.

“All males this time. Most were.”

Huh.

“And one more thing,” the doctor continued, but this time, he only looked at Haven when he spoke. “Knowing that you’ve had three successful pregnancies on your own without intervention, and a fourth that ended up ectopic—which caused a removal of your right fallopian tube—and now this … With the unexplained infertility, if you’ve settled on the decision not to have more children, then you should seriously consider sterilization.”

The suggestion came kindly.

Andino understood why the doctor brought it up, too. Even the doctor who had handled the births of their other children and was the one to diagnose Haven’s ectopic pregnancy had said the same thing. It was just as much about preventing something from happening again as it was taking control of their life, essentially.

It still felt like a punch.

Haven told the doctor simply, “We’ll have to think about that.”

SIX

“What if the final round doesn’t work?”

Haven’s quiet question had her best friend falling into silence beside her. Well, one of her best friends. She’d already spent a good portion of the night before crying in the phone to Valeria who promised she was going to make time to come to New York during the upcoming week because they needed girl time.

Val wasn’t wrong.

Today, though, Catherine sat beside her. They’d invited Siena, but she ended up running Lucky to the hospital because he had a high fever. It was always something with kids.

Catherine reached over, and snuck an arm around Haven’s shoulders. She said nothing as the two of them leaned closer together and watched their kids navigate the park’s play equipment. For the moment, it felt like exactly what Haven needed. Usually, it would be Andino comforting her when she dared to show that little bit of vulnerability about their current IVF journey, but he was somewhere across the city playing boss.

Haven only had her friend.