“Forty-one.”
“Can you tell the court what you do for a living?”
“I’m a music therapist,” I say. “I use music in a clinical setting to help patients alleviate pain or change their moods or engage with the world. Sometimes I work in senior centers with patients with dementia; sometimes I work in a burn unit with children who are having dressings changed; sometimes I work in schools with autistic kids—there are dozens of different ways music therapy can be implemented.”
Immediately, I think of Lucy.
“How long have you been a music therapist?”
“For a decade.”
“And what’s your salary, Zoe?”
I smile a little. “About twenty-eight thousand dollars a year. You don’t go into music therapy because you have dreams of living the high life. You do it because you want to help people.”
“Is that your only income?”
“I also sing professionally. At restaurants, bars, coffeehouses. I write my own material. It’s not enough to make a living, but it’s a nice supplement.”
“Have you ever been married?” Angela asks.
I’ve known this question is coming. “Yes. I was married to the plaintiff, Max Baxter, for nine years, and I am currently married to Vanessa Shaw.”
There is a faint hum, like the buzz that sits over a bee colony, as the gallery digests this answer.
“Did you and Mr. Baxter have any children?”
“We had a lot of fertility problems, as a couple. We had two miscarriages and one stillborn son.”
Even now I can see him, blue and still as marble, his nails and eyebrows and eyelashes still missing. A work of art in progress.
“Can you describe for the court the nature of your infertility, and what steps you took as a couple to conceive?”
“I had polycystic ovary syndrome,” I begin. “I never had regular periods, and wouldn’t ovulate every month. I also had submucosal fibroids. Max had male pattern infertility—which is genetic. We started trying to get pregnant when I was thirty-one, and nothing happened for four years. So we started IVF when I was thirty-five.”
“How did that work?”
“I followed a medical protocol with various hormones and injections, and they were able to harvest fifteen eggs from me, which were injected with Max’s sperm. Three weren’t viable. Eight got fertilized, and of those eight, two were transferred to me, and three more were frozen.”
“Did you become pregnant?”
“Not that time. But when I was thirty-six, those three frozen embryos were thawed. Two were transferred and one was discarded.”
“Discarded? What does that mean?” Angela asks.
“The way the doctor explained it to me, they’re not pretty enough to be considered viable for pregnancy, so the clinic chooses not to save them.”
“I see. Did you become pregnant this time?”
“Yes,” I say. “And I miscarried a few weeks later.”
“Then what happened?”
“When I was thirty-seven we did another fresh cycle. This time I had twelve eggs harvested. Six were fertilized successfully. Two were transferred and two were frozen.”
“Did you get pregnant?”
“Yes, but I miscarried at eighteen weeks.”
