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My muscles quiver and twitch. I wipe my damp hands over my pants. My breath is suspended until I hear footsteps and the door opening. I inhale deeply and push my chair back to stand up.
Amelia enters with a blond woman who looks to be in her thirties followed by a slim, balding man.
“Olivia, this is Mike and Susan Howard,” Amelia says breezily.
I shake hands with Susan first. She looks even more nervous than I feel. I turn to Mike. He doesn’t show any emotion; this might as well be a run to the grocery store.
“It’s nice to meet you both,” I say as warmly as I can to put them at ease. “Please have a seat.”
Amelia and I bustle about, serving them coffee and trying to make them comfortable. It works and the petrified expression leaves Susan’s face.
“I’ll leave you three to it then,” Amelia says, even if she looks as if she’d rather stay. That would be a disaster. She walks out, leaving me and the Howards alone in the conference room.
I turn on the recorder. “Why don’t we start with what led you to the decision of having a baby through a surrogate?” I ask.
Susan glances at Mike before swinging her gaze back to me. “We couldn’t get pregnant and the doctors couldn’t find a reason why it wasn’t happening. The years were going by and our one big dream had been to grow our family.”
Tears spring into her eyes as she says this and my heart squeezes for her. The longing for a child and getting disappointed is something I can understand very well because of the months I’ve worked at The Anderson Clinic.
“We weren’t getting pregnant naturally so we decided to go the IVF way. Our doctor recommended The Anderson Clinic and we made an appointment.” She glances at Mike and he takes up the story.
According to Ivy, Susan had miscarried several times before they decided to try surrogacy. Ivy had no reason to lie. As for Susan, I don’t know why she would leave such a detail out but of course, I can’t call her on it as no one knows that I have the story from Ivy’s side.
Mike clears his throat. “There was a chance of a miscarriage even if Susan did get pregnant. After a lot of consultations and discussions, we opted to use a surrogate.”
“My best friend’s sister offered to carry the baby for us in exchange for catering to her expenses while she was pregnant,” Susan says.
I hold my breath, waiting, hoping that it was not Ivy.
“Her name is Ivy. She’s a well-known author now. In the big leagues,” Susan says with a note of pride.
I’m glad that she doesn’t hold Ivy’s success against her. I know the whole story but it’s still fascinating to listen to it from Susan and Mike’s point of view.
“Then there was a hitch. My eggs were not viable. That had been the problem all along,” Susan said, throwing another glance at her husband. “The next step was convincing the surrogate to use her egg. She agreed.”
“In essence making the baby half hers,” I said. “Why do you think she agreed to that? I mean, it’s one thing to be a surrogate when the baby is completely unrelated to you but when you donate an egg, you become invested in the baby.”
It’s not difficult to imagine Ivy agreeing to that kind of arrangement. She’s sweet and incredibly kind-hearted. I’m sure she felt bad for Susan that her eggs had turned out to be unviable and she would have wanted to do anything to help.
Susan inhales deeply and Mike covers her hand with his. It’s heartwarming to see that their love survived all that.
“Like I told you, she was hard up for money and she really wanted to get her writing career started. She also really felt for us because we’d known each other for a long time, even though her sister, Molly, was the one I was close to.”
I nod. “So she got impregnated with the embryo.”
“Yes,” Susan says. “We were all so excited. Mike and I couldn’t believe that we would finally have the baby that we wanted so badly. It was an awesome two or three weeks while we thought everything had gone well.”
“We got a call from the hospital soon after, saying that there had been a mistake,” Mike says, a slight tremor in his voice. “They had used the wrong sperm and the baby was not related to us at all. This of course made the surrogacy agreement null and void.”
“Our first concern was Ivy and how she had taken the news. She asked for some time to digest what had happened. We were disappointed that the baby would not be Mike’s but at that point, all we wanted was a baby. The genes didn’t matter.”
When I wrote Ivy’s story, my compassion was with her and Alec, and to be honest, I hadn’t paused for a minute to consider the couple who lost the baby they had believed to be theirs. Now, my heart goes out to them, as I imagine being in that situation, with one woman holding the future of your family in your hands.
“I won’t lie. It came as a huge shock when Ivy called and said that she had decided to keep the baby,” Susan continues. “No amount of begging could change her mind. Her sister, my best friend at the time, begged her as well but she was determined to keep it and there was nothing we could do.”
“The Anderson Clinic was responsible for this mistake but they washed their hands of the whole thing apart from this apology letter that they sent us.” Susan fishes for her handbag and removes a printed letter that has obviously been reread many times.
For the next half an hour, Susan and Mike complain about The Anderson Clinic, and I ask as many questions as I can. When the hour is up, I bring the interview to an end.
