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I had almost given up on the whole thing before they assured me about the drugs taking away all the pain.
“Long live the drugs.” Blake lifts her tea mug in a toast, echoing my thoughts. I clink mine with hers, and she asks, “And then, what? How do they make the little babies?”
“They’re going to take my eggs and fertilize them with my donor’s sample in the lab. Then they’ll let the fertilized eggs grow for five or six days in vitro, so that the weak embryos will die, and after that, they’ll implant me with the strongest blastocyst and freeze whatever other embryos have survived.”
Blake puts her mug down. “Sounds like a genetic version of The Hunger Games.”
I chuckle. “No hatchets will be involved, I promise. But do you still want to stay, even if I have to get up at the crack of dawn?”
“Yes, if it’s no bother for you?”
“It isn’t.”
“I have a 6.30a.m. class to teach, so I’ll probably have to get up with you, anyway.”
“Great, should I make up the spare bedroom for you?”
Blake gives me puppy-dog eyes.
“Or we can share my bed?”
“You wouldn’t mind?”
“As long as you don’t hog all my blankets.”
That’s how I end up going to bed spooning my best friend, comforting her as she quietly sobs into the pillow until she falls asleep.
Even if it’s on a weekday, the harvesting goes smoothly. No run-ins with Dr. Is It Too Late To Say Sorry and the drugs deliver the painless harvesting experience my doctor promised. The implantation appointment falls again on Sunday, so I go into the clinic over the weekend more relaxed than ever.
Still, as I sit on the gyno chair in a dedicated room and stare at an overhead screen showing a hollow ball of 200 to 300 cells, a beautifully developed five-day-old blastocyst as the doctor called it, I get emotional.
That’s my baby.
They’re showing me the embryo before implanting it, then the doctor shoves a tiny tube up my uterus, which I barely feel, and it’s done. There could be a life already growing inside me.
That night, as I go to bed, I feel a little pinch in my lower belly.
I drop my hand over my still-bruised stomach. “Was that you, little one?”
I’ve read somewhere that women are sometimes able to feel the moment the embryo implants. Could that be what just happened?
I don’t know, but I like to imagine so. “Hello you,” I whisper. “Welcome to your home for the next nine months.”
Warmth spreads over my chest and joy swells in my heart. I let myself drift off into a peaceful sleep, dreaming of a future with a baby. A future where I’m not just a successful career woman, but also a mother. A caring, loving mom who will nurture and cherish her child with every fiber of her being.
18
JOHN
After my run-in with Marissa on Monday, I wait an entire week to make my next move. Mostly because Marissa is going to be stressed enough with the last steps of her IVF cycle to also have to deal with me.
I overhear from Dr. Townsend in the staffroom that he had a smooth implantation the day before. That must be Marissa; she was the only patient scheduled that day.
Which means Marissa could already be pregnant. And I could have the worst timing in history, but I don’t care. I let her go once because the circumstances weren’t ideal. I’m not making the same mistake again.
This brings me to my second predicament. If she won’t go on a date with me, I’ll have to bring the date to her. I thought of waiting for her on her doorstep—it wasn’t hard to learn her address from common acquaintances—but that’d probably feel like too much of an ambush to her. An invasion of her private space.
Instead, I stake her office building, waiting for her to take her lunch break the following Monday. Bless social media for providing all kinds of information on exes.
