“Yeah, right on your jaw,” Wanda mutters.
“Heinteracted,”I correct. “Maybe in a less than socially appropriate way . . . but still. For a minute, the music got to him. For a minute, he washere.”
I can tell Mim doesn’t buy this, but that’s all right. I have been bitten by an autistic child; I have sobbed beside a little girl dying of brain cancer; I have played in tune with the screams of a child who was burned over eighty percent of his body. This job . . . if it hurts me, I know I am doing it well.
“I’d better go,” I say, picking up my guitar case.
Wanda doesn’t glance up from the chart she’s writing in. “See you next week.”
“Actually, you’ll see me in about two hours at the baby shower.”
“What baby shower?”
I grin. “The one I’m not supposed to know about.”
Wanda sighs. “If your mother asks, you better make sure you tell her I wasn’t the one who spilled the beans.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll act appropriately surprised.”
Mim reaches out her hand toward my protruding belly. “May I?” I nod. I know some pregnant women think it’s an invasion of privacy to have strangers reaching to pat or touch or offer parenting advice, but I don’t mind in the least. I can barely keep myself from rubbing my hands over the baby, from being magnetically drawn to the proof that this time, it is going to work.
“It’s a boy,” she announces.
I am thoroughly convinced that I’m carrying a girl. I dream in pink. I wake up with fairy tales caught on my tongue. “We’ll see,” I say.
I’ve always found it ironic that someone who has trouble getting pregnant begins in vitro fertilization by taking birth control pills. It is all about regulating an irregular cycle, in order to begin an endless alphabet soup of medications: three ampoules each of FSH and hMG—Follistim and Repronex—injected into me twice a day by Max, a man who used to faint at the sight of a needle and who now, after five years, can give me a shot with one hand and pour coffee with the other. Six days after starting the injections, a transvaginal ultrasound measured the size of my ovarian follicles, and a blood test measured my estradiol levels. That led to Antagon, a new medication meant to keep the eggs in the follicles until they were ready. Three days later: another ultrasound and blood test. The amounts of Follistim and Repronex were reduced—one ampoule of each morning and night—and then two days later, another ultrasound and blood test.
One of my follicles measured twenty-one millimeters. One measured twenty millimeters. And one was nineteen millimeters.
At precisely 8:30P.M.Max injected ten thousand units of hCG into me. Exactly thirty-six hours later, those eggs were retrieved.
Then ICSI—intracytoplasmic sperm injection—was used to fertilize the egg with Max’s sperm. And three days later, with Max holding my hand, a vaginal catheter was inserted into me and we watched the embryo transfer on a blinking computer monitor. There, the lining of my uterus looked like sea grass swaying in the current. A little white spark, a star, shot out of the syringe and fell between two blades of grass. We celebrated our potential pregnancy with a shot of progesterone in my butt.
And to think, some people who want to have a baby only need to make love.
My mother is on her computer when I walk into her house, adding information to her recently acquired Facebook profile. DARA WEEKS, her status says, WISHES HER DAUGHTER WOULD FRIEND HER. “I’m not talking to you,” she says, snippy, “but your husband called.”
“Max?”
“Do you have more than one?”
“What did he want?”
She shrugs. Ignoring her, I pick up the phone in the kitchen and dial Max’s mobile number. “Why isn’t your cell on?” Max asks, as soon as he picks up.
“Yes, honey,” I reply. “I love you, too.”
In the background I can hear a lawn mower. Max runs a landscaping business. He is busy mowing in the summer, raking in the fall, and snowplowing in the winter.What do you do during mud season?I had asked the first time we met.
Wallow,he’d said, smiling.
“I heard you got hurt.”
“Embarrassing news travels fast. Who called you, anyway?”
“I just think . . . I mean, we worked so hard to get to this point.” Max stumbles over the words, but I know what he means.
“You heard Dr. Gelman,” I tell him. “We’re in the home stretch.”
