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Recognizing that he did her an injustice with the assumption that it would implode. But he knew he couldn’t possibly be the father of her child, and her adamant insistence that he was set her up for a shock that would rock her, at the very least.
“I’m infertile.” He blurted the words. Like the nerd he’d once been.
Turning, one slow step at a time, she stared at him, mouth open.
Yeah. He watched her expression, trying to figure out what she was thinking, what way she was going to go, to help her deal with the ramifications if he could. A farewell gesture between coworkers with fringe benefits.
When she didn’t say anything, he stepped up to fill the gap. “I looked up your ob-gyn and saw that she works at The Parent Portal.”
She continued to stare at him.
“A fertility clinic,” he added, as though speaking to someone who might not be following his conversation.
“I’m infertile,” he repeated. He’d never just outed his infertility before. And there he’d done it twice.
Based on the wide-eyed look she still wore, she couldn’t seem to grasp the information—not even the second time.
“Don’t lie to me, Greg,” she finally said. “Say you don’t want a child, or don’t want one with me. Tell me you don’t ever want to be a father, fine. I already told you I’m fine to not even name you on the certificate. Just, please, don’t lie to me.” With that she turned and headed toward the door.
He could let her go. He’d done enough. And had his own demons to deal with.
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“You want me to have the reports from the three separate fertility clinics I visited in Nevada sent to Cheryl Miller?” The question came anyway.
Even more slowly than before, she turned back to him, sliding around rather than stepping, her black foam-padded shoes seeming to stick on the carpet. Funny of him to notice the innocuous when he was forcing a woman to see something she most certainly could not seem to comprehend.
She appeared to be at a loss for words. At least she wasn’t hurling insults, calling him names.
“Why were you visiting The Parent Portal?” he asked then, gently.
He could not possibly be the biological father of her child, not after having held on to hope as long as he could. For more years than his marriage had lasted. After the third round of tests in six years, he’d finally accepted that which wasn’t going to change.
No way he could let her problem send him backward to revisit something he’d already dealt with.
“How many visits have you made there?” he asked. His first question had received no response, but she was still standing there, facing him, not the door. If yesterday’s visit had been the first, he could definitively rule out wrongful fertilization.
Maybe, if he hadn’t been through a nightmare of his own where a wrongful act had impacted one of his patients, he wouldn’t be so quick to think it could happen.
“Have you been seeing Dr. Miller long?” He phrased his question a third way.
“Six months.”
Six months. She’d been visiting a fertility clinic while they’d still been lovers?
He’d had no idea.
How did a woman sleep with a guy and not tell him that she was investigating her options for having a baby?
He felt his own mouth drop open now, as he stared. Completely...he wasn’t even sure what. Angry, now, for sure.
Had he known her at all?
“We didn’t talk about such things, Greg.”
Her pragmatic tone, filled with a bit of...warmth, brought him back to his senses. She was right. They’d been coworkers with benefits. He’d once considered them friends with benefits. Before he’d realized that they’d never even shared details of their lives.
“You’ve been planning to have a child.”
