by Kaylee, Katy
But Ted - we’d only been teenagers but he’d had me begging and screaming with ecstasy as I’d come again and again. How much better would he be now as an adult with even more experience under his belt?
No, Veronica. Bad girl. I shoved those thoughts away. I wasn’t ready for a relationship and I might never be, not after Chad, and not with my child on the way. I wasn’t going to pursue this with my doctor of all people…when I couldn’t think of being in a proper relationship. That would be thoughtless, selfish.
I needed to push my attraction to the side. I was an adult, for crying out loud, surely I could do that. I needed to focus on the entire reason that I was doing this: making a baby.
Just not, you know, the old-fashioned way.
“Hey!” Ted grinned at me as I walked up. I could see his gaze flicking over my form, and I had to fight down a blush. So I had spent an hour on my wardrobe this morning to pick just the right summer dress. So what?
“How’re you feeling?” he asked, offering me his arm.
I took it, unable to stop my blush this time when faced with his southern charm. “A little nervous but determined.”
“Good. Nerves are completely normal, trust me, if you didn’t have nerves I would be worried.” Ted winked at me and then got the door for me, leading me in.
The inside of the bank was pleasant, with a nice lobby and reception area. It reminded me of any other doctor’s office, which was a relief.
Ted signed us in and spoke quietly to the receptionist while I looked around at the pictures of smiling people holding babies that hung from the walls - past customers, I supposed. The receptionist got up and left, and then a moment later an older, dark-skinned woman entered with her gray hair in a messy bun and thick horn-rimmed glances.
“Melody.” Ted hugged her hello, and then turned and gestured for me to come over. “Dr. Johnson, this is Miss DeMarcus. Veronica, this is Dr. Johnson, she’s the head of this clinic.”
“Ted told me that you were a little unsure so I thought I would give you a tour,” Dr. Johnson tells me. “Help set you at ease about the entire process.”
“I really appreciate it,” I told her, even as I had to fight down a bit of a laugh.
It wasn’t anyone’s fault, but Dr. Johnson looked almost exactly like my Algebra teacher in high school. I couldn’t remember if Ted had the same teacher or not, but I sure hoped he did, otherwise he wasn’t going to understand why I was stifling giggles.
“Right this way, then,” Dr. Johnson said, and began to lead us through the clinic.
As soon as her back was turned, I leaned in to Ted. “She looks like Mrs. Haversham, doesn’t she?” I whispered.
Ted made a choking noise, his eyes going a bit wide. “She does, doesn’t she?”
“Maybe they’re related.”
“I don’t think so, Mrs. Haversham was a harpy. She hated me.”
“Aww, she loved me.” I batted my eyelashes at him innocently.
Ted had to cough to cover up his laugh.
“Now, a lot of clinics will just take anyone,” Dr. Johnson said. “But we have a very selective screening process. People will try and pad their resumes, so to speak, in order to become a donor, especially at a clinic like ours because we pay so well. But we run extensive background checks to ensure that everything our donors tell us about their education and employment history is accurate.”
I nodded, putting on my best I’m a good student face. Ted rolled his eyes at me and mouthed teacher’s pet. I winked at him.
“So,” I asked, trying to show that I was paying attention, “how do you find your donors? You don’t just rely on people googling for sperm banks in the area to donate to, do you?”
“We actually do recruit from universities nearby,” Dr. Johnson confirmed. “The maximum age that a donor can be is 39, so we set ours at 38, and men in university are in the prime of their health and their lives. We can also more easily check out their credentials if they’re at university—it’s easy to look up and see if they really are on the football team or the Dean’s List.”
“Fascinating,” I said.
Ted leaned into me once Dr. Johnson wasn’t looking - she was showing us a room where they conducted interviews with the potential donors. “They also recruit from the local Renaissance Faire volunteers for people who want their kid to be a pirate or a Shakespeare enthusiast. You have no idea how popular those people are.”
I almost choked on my own spit struggling to hold in my laugh. I hadn’t… forgotten, exactly, how much fun Ted could be, but I was now remembering why I had forbidden us from sitting next to each other in public events etc. All right, part of it had been that I had been a snob who hadn’t wanted to be too obvious about hanging out with him all the time, and I was ashamed of that. But the other part of it was that he’d just kept making me laugh all through and I hadn’t been able to keep it together.
“All of our donors have to go through a three to six months screening process to make sure that they meet our basic requirements. They have to be able to provide genetic and medical information on themselves and their family members - siblings, parents, grandparents - and submit to a physical examination here at our clinic from one of our doctors.”
“They’re also questioned on which Hogwarts house they belong to,” I added in a whisper. “All Hufflepuffs are immediately banned from donation.”
Ted quickly turned his laugh into a cough, and I grinned triumphantly. I had always been able to make him laugh, back in the day, and it appeared I still had that magic touch.
“Only one percent of all the donors who apply make it through our selective screening process,” Dr. Johnson went on, apparently oblivious. “So you can’t really go wrong with whatever donor you choose to go with. But if you’re feeling overwhelmed, we do have a consultation where you provide us with a list of characteristics that you want in a donor, not just the physical, although if there’s a particular celebrity you have in mind you’re welcome to send a picture of them, and we look through our donors to find someone who would best match that.
“Or, if you’re struggling between a few different donors, we can look at your list and pick one for you that we think would be best. We want this to be a fun and easy process for you and not something that stresses you out. Oh!” Dr. Johnson paused. “And this is our therapy room, we have our psychiatric evaluations here for the donors.”
“They try to weed out the serial killers,” Ted whispered. “If you’ve killed more than two people you’re disqualified.”
I nearly choked laughing.
Dr. Johnson turned back to give us a suspicious look. Ted and I gave her equally innocent stares, although Ted’s nearly sent me into another fit of giggles. “You seem prepared to help clients with multiple children,” I noted, struggling to think of something to say that would show I’d been listening and definitely hadn’t been goofing off.
“It’s important, we feel, that our clients choose more than just what they’ll need for the one child. Having extra sperm stored means that if the process doesn’t take and you’ve used up all of your sperm, you have more that you can work with, or if later down the line you’d like a sibling for your child, you can give them the same father.”
“Completely understandable,” Ted said, sounding every inch the serious doctor. Then he whispered to me, “Y’know in case the first one doesn’t work out and they don’t get the concert violinist they were hoping for.”
I cleared my throat to hide my chuckle. “And how private are the identities of the donors kept?” I asked. This was a serious question that I had actually prepared.
“We do have open donations.” Dr. Johnson paused. “Some children want to know who their biological parent is, and want to exchange an email or have a phone interview, something like that. Some donors pick the anonymous option, which means that you can try and contact them, but they’re under no obligation to respond. We reach out for you as a mediation service.
“If, however, they
choose an open donation, this means that they have agreed ahead of time to one instance of personal contact - whether that’s in person or over a video chat, or some other way. They can agree to more but they’re only obligated to do the once.”
“I don’t think I’ll care either way,” I admitted. “They might have donated the DNA but they’re not raising the child, I am. If my child grows up and is curious then they can do whatever searching they want, I won’t hide anything from them, but I don’t see… why it would matter, really. I’ll be raising them, loving them, and that’s what really matters at the end of the day, isn’t it?”
It was a serious moment in an otherwise lighthearted time with Ted. He didn’t say anything, just nodded shortly, but I knew what he was thinking about: his mother, who ran off and abandoned him, leaving Ted to be raised with his abusive, alcoholic father.
That woman might have given birth to him, but she wasn’t his mother.
I wanted to reach out and squeeze Ted’s hand, like I used to when we were dating, but I wasn’t sure now if I could. Offering comfort was something a friend would do, I didn’t have to be a romantic partner for that, but… would he even want it, just platonically?
It was all so confusing, what we were to each other now. And my wild attraction to him certainly didn’t help.
“And that is completely understandable,” Dr. Johnson said. This seemed to be an answer that she heard a lot here, or at least enough that it didn’t faze her. She gestured to another door. “Here we are! This is the room where you’ll be able to look at all of our donor archives. There’s a water cooler but if you need anything please don’t hesitate to ring the bell. We have several patient rooms with copies of our donor profiles so you can stay as long as you’d like, no rush at all.”
I thanked her, and then stepped inside, realizing with a hot shiver down my spine that now, I’d be alone with Ted. And not alone just in one of his patient rooms, or in his office. But alone out of his office, out of his clinic, in a room where nobody would disturb us for hours.
That thought really should not have been as tempting to me as it was, shouldn’t have made me think all the naughty thoughts that I did, but… I couldn’t help it. I could so easily see myself climbing into his lap and wrapping my arms around him. I wondered if he still kissed the same way, softly at first, then putting his entire body into it - if he still tugged on my bottom lip as he pulled away.
Stop it, I told myself sternly.
But that didn’t stop the thoughts from coming.
It didn’t stop my desire.
7
Ted
I could barely keep a straight face as I thanked Melody for the tour. The poor woman had been donating her time to us and we’d been acting like teenagers.
If she noticed anything, of course, she was polite enough not to say it as she shook hands with us and left us in the parent room so we could go through the archives. Using the word ‘archives’ made it sound like some kind of massive library when really it was just a reception room that had comfortable couches and several photo albums filled with the profiles of the various anonymous donors.
“You can take all the time you need,” Melody promised Veronica. “Just look through the binders and you can mark a few that you like so that you can think about them. You can’t take pictures of the profiles but you’re free to make notes. Once you make your selection we can set the process in motion.”
Veronica smiled and politely thanked her, and Dr. Johnson nodded at me, exiting.
Once the door closed behind us I started laughing properly, and Veronica did the same. “Oh my God, that felt like high school all over again,” she laughed.
“Hey, you weren’t the one getting us into trouble in high school.”
“True, true, maybe I picked up a few things from you,” she teased.
It had been forever since I’d been that silly. I had always been causing trouble in class growing up, and it seemed Veronica had brought out that more fun and childish side of me, in a good way, though. Veronica had always been so serious, always telling me to cut it out and stop goofing off. Now she was letting herself let her hair down, so to speak. It was delightful.
It definitely didn’t help with my plan to stop thinking about kissing her. Or doing other things to her.
Veronica sat down on the couch and grabbed a binder, starting to flip through. I walked over, peering over her shoulder as she began to take a look.
There weren’t any pictures of the donors, but there was a physical description listed for each of them. Height, weight, eye color, hair color, that kind of thing. There was a list of physical activities they took like football, rock climbing, hiking, and areas where they excelled academically. Their college careers and medical history… their entire lives, distilled down to a few quick words and descriptors, clinical lists, without that personal touch that I’d want if I was the person making this decision.
Then again, if it were me, I wouldn’t be going with a donor. I’d want to do things the old-fashioned way. I do want to do things the old-fashioned way, when I eventually have a kid.
I admit that I’ve had some hang ups about being a father, after the horrible example mine showed. My mom split when I was only a toddler. I didn’t remember anything about her. I used to think that she was forced to leave, that she was a good person and that someday she would come back for me. And maybe she was, and maybe she did, if she’d lived long enough to get clean.
My mom had been a heroin addict. My dad didn’t help, with his alcoholism and his abuse. No wonder she turned to drugs to handle the shitty situation she was in. I wasn’t sure if she had left just because she needed to get away from my dad, but couldn’t handle a kid on her own, or if she left in order to get herself into a better situation to get clean and then come back for me. I liked to pretend that it was the latter. I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, especially since I couldn’t understand how any parent could abandon their child. The sad truth was, though, that I would never know for sure.
But my dad - he sure made an impression. A fucking awful one. He had a temper and a fist that swung wide and hard.
I had wondered for ages how I could possibly be a good father when I had that dipshit for an example while I was growing up. How could I possibly be better than him? What if I fell into bad habits, knowing nothing else, and ended up hurting my kids?
I wouldn’t be responsible for the pain of another human being like that. Kids were innocent, to be protected, and I refused to continue the cycle of abuse and pain.
While I was in college, though, a close friend of mine had recommended me to one of the on-campus therapists. David, my friend, had to practically drag me there. I’d dug my heels in the whole way, stubborn as a mule to the last. But once I’d gotten in there and I’d come to trust the therapist, I had opened up about a lot, and she’d really helped me come to terms with my parents and my past.
It was thanks to her that I felt be a parent someday. Thanks to her that I felt like it was okay for me to want kids, and to look forward to having them.
Now, I did want kids, and I was excited for that day. I couldn’t wait to take them to the park, to read to them my favorite books, and to introduce them to classic movies, and play board games with them, or go on vacations and day trips to the local islands just off the coast.
But I couldn’t ever do that without a partner. I didn’t judge Veronica for doing it, in fact I felt it was very brave of her, but I personally couldn’t do that. I wanted to share my life with someone, and I wanted her to be the mother of my children.
Veronica flipped to another page, her brow furrowed in the same way it would get in history class when she was focusing on a difficult test. And hey, no decision like this should be anything like taking a test in school.
“Places like these really take all the fun out of reproduction, huh?” I teased, sitting down next to her. I pointed at the page in front of her. “And give you a real high expectation of people. How
could anyone compete with that?”
The guy she was looking at had gone to Yale and was a financial planner. Excellent genetics. He played squash, tennis, and golf and liked to go hiking in the Smoky Mountains in his spare time. He volunteered at the local youth center and started a charity for at-risk teens, and donated a hefty amount every year to the school district specifically for art classes.
In other words, he sounded perfect.
“I doubt that guy’s ever taken a sick day in his life,” I commented. “But the real question is, does he hog the blankets and snore a lot? Does he hate Mexican food?”
Veronica laughed. She’d always had a weakness for enchiladas. “If only it said stuff like that on there.”
“It’s the little things that really add up.”
“If I’m dating the guy, maybe, but…”
“Well whatever would annoy you about him just might come up in your kid and then that’ll annoy you, too. But don’t worry.” I nudged her playfully. “You’re in good hands with Prince Charming here.”
“You heard Dr. Johnson. They only accept one percent of applications.”
“Exactly. They’re all Prince Charmings. God only knows what a guy has to really be like to get in here… let’s see, look, another Ivy League, speaks ten languages, does sculpting in his spare time… and this guy wins baking competitions when he’s not training guide dogs for the blind and that’s just his weekend job, Monday to Friday he’s an award-winning journalist. Ooh his one is a historian who got his masters at Stanford.”
“I think you could fit in with these guys here,” Veronica said thoughtfully, with a smile.
I felt like I was staring at the moon - elusive, beautiful - and felt myself warming in my chest and radiating outwards, like she’d lit some kind of spark in me.