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Chapter 1
Like a fairy godmother about to grant a wish, Dr.Evans positioned herself between the stirrups my feet rested in and lifted the wand. Across the room, my husband, Kyle, scrolled through his phone, probably looking at hockey scores. The first two times we’d done this, he stood beside me, his fingers laced through mine and his eyes fixed on the monitor Dr.Evans studied while she guided the catheter toward my uterus. When she’d reached the target and released the miracle potion, he squeezed my hand and smiled. Today, she discharged the embryos, and he yawned.
During our previous rounds, he’d kept me company after the procedure while I was required to lie still. We’d talked about our baby’s future. Kyle wanted a little girl who took after me so he could see what I had been like as a kid. Honest to God, I’m not sure how I ended up with such a sweet husband. The baby’s gender didn’t matter to me. I only wanted to pass on a piece of my parents, keep the DeMarco bloodline going. I also prayed that the baby inherited Kyle’s big heart and disposition. Compared to me, he was usually a lot less grumpy.
This afternoon after Dr.Evans finished the transplantation, Kyle said he needed air and followed her out of the room. I wished he’d stayed, because we needed to talk. I had to find out what was distracting him.
When I was finally allowed to get up, a nurse led me to Dr.Evans’s office, where Kyle and the doctor were waiting. They stopped speaking when I entered, and I wondered if they had been talking about me. As soon as I sat down, Dr.Evans launched into the usual postprocedural instructions. My mind wandered as she spoke. I already knew this.No rigorous activity; don’t take a drugstore pregnancy test, because they often result in false negatives; come back on day eleven for a blood test.
As if she knew I wasn’t paying attention, Dr.Evans shifted her body so that she was angled toward me. “It’s important that you both remain optimistic, emit positive energy.” This was new, and I laughed, because positive energy, really? It was such bullshit. Dr.Evans didn’t appreciate my laughter. I could tell by the way she pushed her glasses off her eyes into her long silver hair, the way she did when she told me something she didn’t want to and couldn’t bear to see my reaction. It was exactly what she’d done the two times she broke the news the IVF didn’t work.
“I’m serious,” she said. “Your mindset is important.”
Sure Kyle would find this as funny as I did, I tried to catch his eye, but he was staring at the mauve-colored wall behind Dr.Evans’s desk with his arms folded across his massive chest.
“Okay, then, I’ll try.” I was willing to try anything. In four months, I would be forty.
When we were ready to leave, Dr.Evans walked us to the door and placed her hand on my shoulder. “I have a good feeling about this time, Nicole,” she said.
I didn’t believe her, mostly because she usually called me Nikki and only used my full name when she was concerned about something.
On our way home, I clutched the overhead bar as Kyle dodged double-parked cars. At a red light, he lowered the window and stuck his arm out, reaching for the windshield wiper to clear it of the slush. In the city, the precipitation was a combination of rain and snow, but by the time we drove the two hours back up to Mount Stapleton, itwould all be snow. They predicted eighteen inches. Kyle had suggested canceling our appointment so that we didn’t have to travel in blizzard-like conditions. Of course, I’d told him we had to go today. It wasn’t like we had a choice in the timing.
“I’m tired of doing this drive,” he’d complained.
I didn’t blame him. I was sick of the long ride myself. We could have chosen a clinic closer to Mount Stapleton, but the clinic we’d picked had the highest success rate in New England. When I’d met Dr.Evans, I felt an instant bond with her. While I still liked her, it turned out she wasn’t such a great doctor. If she were, we would have had a baby by now, a little boy with Kyle’s cleft chin and chocolate-brown hair or a girl with my bumpy nose and sinkhole-like dimples. Really, I wouldn’t wish my nose on anyone, but Kyle’s was worse.
“Do you think I’ll be able to stay positive over the next couple of weeks?” I asked.
Kyle sighed as he raised the window. “I’m not doing this again.”
When I turned to look at him, I saw hostility etched into his rugged profile. The furrow between his blue-gray eyes was more pronounced than usual, and his stubble-covered jaw was tightly clenched. “Doing what?”
“Jumping through hoops to have a baby.”
My hands ached because they were balled into such tight fists. “You have the easy part.” My voice cracked. “I’m the one who’s the real-life voodoo doll.” More than two hundred shots the past two years.
Kyle jabbed at the blinker. The ticking sound that echoed through the car reminded me of a bomb about to explode. “There is no easy part. It’s bankrupting us, financially and emotionally.” He jerked the car into the left lane. A horn blared, and he yanked it back, barely avoiding a collision.
“Well, let’s hope it works this time so that we don’t have to do it again.”
His eyes moved from the road to me. “You’re not listening. I’m not—”
“Watch out!” I reached for the dashboard as the car in front of us stopped for a red light. Kyle slammed on the brakes and muttered under his breath. The Jeep slid to a stop. “Let’s talk about this when we get home,” I said.
“I’m done talking about it. Whatever happens, this is the last time.” He switched on the radio.
I punched the power switch to turn it off. “You don’t get to decide that.”
The light changed to green. Kyle inched the Jeep forward. “We can’t pay for another round. We can’t afford the ones we’ve done.”
“You can’t put a price on this.”
“Where’s the money going to come from, Nikki?”
So far, we had spent more than $57,000 on in vitro, emptying our bank account and maxing out our credit cards. Kyle was a carpenter, and I worked at a small magazine. We did better than most year-round residents in our tiny mountain town but were by no means wealthy. Adding in our mortgage and car loans, we would be paying off our debt until we were grandparents. The air in the car thickened so it became impossible to breathe. I lowered my window and stuck my head outside like our black Lab, Cole, used to do. Soggy snowflakes landed on my face and ran down my cheeks as they melted.
“Close that,” Kyle said, using the switch on the driver’s side door to raise the window himself. Strands of my curly dark hair got caught in it.
