“Because. What if they parked next to us? I don’t want to walk to our cars together after the meeting. That would be awkward. Park a few blocks away.”
Sean rolled his eyes at me and turned the car back out into traffic so that he could find a parking spot a few blocks away.
When we signed in at the reception desk, I carefully studied the registration sheet.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to see their signatures.”
“Okay.”
“Looks like only Paul signed in. And it only says ‘Paul.’ I wanted to see their last name.”
We got in the elevator, and I realized I was shaking. I remembered Kevin telling us that animals shake uncontrollably when threatened because the shaking allows them to release stress, and that it usually lasts a few hours after the danger passes. I held up my hand to watch it quiver and wondered how many hours it would take for this to stop.
We entered the law firm through the large glass doors, and the receptionist escorted us to a different conference room from where we’d met a few weeks before. We took our places at a large wooden table facing the door that Shannon and Paul would enter.
“Are you okay?” Sean asked as we sat down.
“No. But what does it matter?”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Tie me down because I am repressing an urge to run from the room, out of the building, and into the street. I don’t think I can talk.”
“Remember, you don’t have to. They are going first. I asked for that.”
I looked at Sean, grateful that he had the forethought to ask for that so I could collect myself after they entered. Marty Holmes Sr. and Mary Smith came in to ask us if we had any last questions.
“Have you met them?” I asked Mary.
“Yes. They are very nice. I’m going to go and get them.”
I nodded and sat back down, clenched Sean’s hand, and prayed.
Please, God, help me. Please, God, help me.
It was a simple prayer, but it was all I could manage.
Breathe. Just breathe. Inhale, exhale. Slowly. It’s going to be okay.
When the door opened, Sean and I stood as Mary entered with Paul, Shannon, and their attorney, Ellen. I could hardly feel my legs beneath me. I fixated on Shannon, who was dressed casually in a black sweater with a scoop neck, not at all the woman I had pictured. She was shorter than me, and she had a friendly and very casual demeanor about her. As we all took our seats, I struggled to find a place to look.
Not in her eyes, Carolyn. Not at the floor. Ah…a necklace.
Lo and behold, she wore a silver necklace.
Perfect. I’ll stare at that.
Shannon spoke first, as planned. She talked rapidly, and her hands gestured enthusiastically as she spoke. I confess I wasn’t hanging on her every word. I listened for just a few things. I wanted her to say thank you for saving our baby. I heard her say she was grateful we’d agreed to continue the pregnancy. I wanted her to tell me that she understood how awful our predicament was and that she appreciated the choice we made. I heard her say that it was one thing to say you are pro-life, but another to walk your talk and the fact that we were doing so spoke to our character. I wanted her to say that she couldn’t imagine how grief-stricken we were, and if there was anything she could do to help to please let her know. I heard her say how grief-stricken they were to learn that another woman would be pregnant with their baby.
She believed that the mistake must have happened because her maiden name, which she hadn’t legally changed at the time of the last transfer, was Savage and her embryos had been labeled “Savage-Morell.”
“Do you think you and I are related?” she asked Sean, smiling brightly.
I think the last quarter-ounce of blood in Sean’s face drained out then.
“No, I don’t have any relatives in Michigan,” Sean said adamantly, which surprised me. Sean has more than fifty cousins on the Savage side of his family.
“You never know,” I suggested. “You could be distant relatives.”
“Nope,” he insisted vigorously. “We have no family in Michigan. None.”
Shannon explained that she and Paul had tried to start a family immediately after they wed seven years ago. After two miscarriages, they tried IVF in 2006 and got their twins on the first try. One of the other embryos frozen then was the baby I was carrying.
I was overcome with sympathy for the Morells, just as I had feared I would be. I could hear in her voice how difficult infertility was for them, as it is for everyone. Miscarriages are brutal, and they’d had two. Then I tried to communicate our experience, describing our family and our history of infertility.
“My family lived in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, until I was nine,” I said.
“Oh, we lived there just after we were married,” she said.
We recounted our ten-year struggle to conceive, our complicated history of premature delivery. Shannon was silent through that part of the chronology. I may have frightened her. I think I saw a flash of surprise pass through her eyes when I explained that we had three children, two of whom were nearly teenagers. She was more vocal when we detailed our excellent prenatal care and how we were taking every precaution with this pregnancy. She was an eager and active listener, chiming in when she identified something we had in common. When I named the hospital we would deliver at, Shannon interrupted.
“Do you want your kids to meet the baby?”
That simple question flooded me with emotions. Of course I wanted my kids to meet the baby, but I wanted so much more than that. I wanted my kids to know the baby. I wanted to know the baby. Suddenly I was frightened again. Was she saying that once they had the baby we’d never see them again?
They wouldn’t do that to us. That would be cruel. No, they’ll like us and want to keep us in their lives.
In a flash, my thoughts turned to a scene of my boys and Mary Kate gathering around my hospital bed to marvel at our special delivery. I never imagined that my children would not know this child, but I also knew that we wouldn’t ask Paul and Shannon for visitation rights. We would never invite ourselves into their lives or the life of this child. The future of our relationship with my baby was in their hands, and I was not sure what she was saying. All of these thoughts flew through my mind in a matter of seconds, and before I knew it my eyes were filled with tears. Sean must have sensed my agony.
“That is so far off in the distance. We just aren’t ready to think about delivery scenarios yet.”
Good. Good job. I can’t talk. I don’t know how to answer that question without crying. Thank you, Sean. Thank you for saving me.
SEAN
Paul sat across the table from me and grimaced regularly. I could tell he was unbelievably uncomfortable. I wondered if he felt bad for us, or if he was so frightened of saying the wrong thing that he said nothing. Sometimes sitting quietly and listening is the right thing to do. Carolyn and I had our outlines clutched tightly in our hands.
The first moment we all bonded was in speaking about the doctor and clinic that had put all of us in this situation. I told them about the doctor’s call to me and driving home to inform Carolyn and the voice-mail messages from him. Although Paul hardly said anything during the meeting, he spoke up then to express the hope that I’d documented those calls. I guess it is up for interpretation what he meant by expressing that, but I believe he hoped that I’d saved the messages the doctor left, or that I’d written down exactly what he said in our conversations, for legal purposes.
We did agree on my number one concern: privacy. I let them know that to date we had told only a few individuals who were bound by privilege, including a priest, a counselor, and attorneys. Before I could finish my thought, Shannon swiftly said, “I agree. How are we going to keep it that way?”
“I’ve thought about this a lot since February 16,” I said, “and I know there is no way that we can keep a pregnancy private.”
“We haven’t
told anyone but our lawyer,” Shannon said.
“The day we found out about this we knew that the day would come when we would have to share with those around us what had happened,” I said. “Pregnancy is a public event, and we’re very involved in our church and the kids’ school and the business community. We are not in a position to hide a pregnancy, nor are we comfortable with that idea.”
“You could just tell everyone that Carolyn was serving as a surrogate for someone else,” Shannon suggested.
I could feel Carolyn tensing up next to me. Anytime one referred to her pregnancy as a surrogacy, it enraged her.
“We are not going to lie about this. We are going to be genuine. We have decided to not terminate the pregnancy and to not fight for custody. After making those two decisions, it would not be consistent of us to start lying about everything else. We will be telling family and friends the truth in the coming weeks once Carolyn is visibly showing the pregnancy, and I am sure it will spread from there. Rest assured that we will keep your identity private forever if that is your request.”
“We hardly told anyone about our IVF,” Shannon said. “And one of the people I did tell was very critical about our choice to use IVF. If you are Catholic, aren’t you worried what people in your church will say?”
“We think our friends and community will look at it differently,” I said. “We think we’re doing the right thing. The fact that the Church doesn’t approve of IVF was something we considered, but in the end we decided it shouldn’t prevent us from expanding our family. Plus, we can’t control our church’s reaction.”
I am not sure they liked this approach, but I described our decision as strongly and with as much conviction as I could.
As the meeting was breaking up we promised to keep them informed about the pregnancy. They asked for contact information, but we declined to give it to them. I knew we would eventually, but I explained that we wanted to discuss how the meeting went and how we would move on from here. Shannon frantically wrote down every phone number they had, and their address, and handed the information to Carolyn. We thanked them for coming and wished them a safe drive home.
When the door shut behind them, we all let out a collective sigh of relief. “They seemed nice and normal, and the meeting went as well as could be expected, don’t you think?” Mary said. We talked with the lawyers about the meeting for an hour or so before leaving for home. In the elevator, Carolyn looked exhausted.
“Well, what do you think?” I asked her.
“I think I’m glad it’s over. I’m still pregnant with a baby that I’m not going to be allowed to keep. Now at least I know who is coming to take the baby away.”
“Do you feel better about anything?”
“I’m proud of us. I got through it without crying. We probably made them feel better.”
“It went well. I wonder what will happen next?”
“I don’t know, and frankly,” she held up her hand to demonstrate the quiver that was still controlling it, “I am really wondering how long it will take me to stop shaking.”
As we made our way to our car Carolyn seemed to start relaxing and even showed a smile. Maybe being in the fresh air and out of that building gave her a sense of release.
“Shannon has beautiful blue eyes and a kind smile,” Carolyn remarked. She too was reviewing the meeting and trying to find reassurance there. “I can tell she has a lot of energy in her. Seeing as how she is a teacher of eighth graders, she’s probably a very patient person. I bet if she and I worked in the same school, we’d be friends.”
If meeting the other family gave Carolyn some peace and helped Paul and Shannon, then the encounter was a success. They were now real to us, just people in an extraordinary situation, probably hoping and praying that they wouldn’t say or do the wrong thing. The meeting had made them less of an unknown. As we got in my car, I was starting to think that maybe we could all work together to get to a better place.
CHAPTER 11
Sharing the Hurt, Feeling the Love
CAROLYN
THE FEELING OF RELIEF we got from our initial meeting with the Morells was short-lived, eaten up by the pressure around revealing our predicament to those we loved. The ordeal would take two days, starting with our parents, moving from there to Sean’s siblings and their spouses, followed by phone calls to my brothers. The next day we planned to tell the boys, shortly before we called our friends together in a meeting room at our church. The schedule was exhausting, but once these two days came to a close, I wouldn’t have to hide our secret anymore. Best of all, I could finally stop dressing like we lived at the Arctic Circle.
For Sean, the most intimidating meeting of the four was going to be the one where we told our parents, particularly my dad. Sean remembered clearly the day in the hospital corridor when my father looked him sternly in the eye and said, “No more babies.” We also remembered the look on his face when he found out I was pregnant with Mary Kate. He loves MK with all his heart and is a wonderful grandpa to her. But when he found out we were taking on another pregnancy, I could see that he was surprised and not jubilant.
My dad was a university attorney and did a little bit of every kind of law. The cases that really rattled him were those in which he defended the university hospital against malpractice suits. He’d seen the catastrophic consequences of medical sloppiness and carelessness. There was no predicting how he would act when he found out about this situation. I just hoped he could contain his temper when he found out that his daughter was the victim of such a careless error. So did Sean. When he rehearsed this meeting with Marty Holmes Sr., Sean sweated through his shirt. We hoped that if we had my dad in the room with my mom and Sean’s mom Kate, Dad wouldn’t completely blow his stack.
We came up with a great reason to get my parents to come from Michigan to visit us. Drew was competing in an important 5K race at school that he was likely to win. We invited them to be there when he crossed the finish line. The race was a yearly tradition at the kids’ school, the culmination of a week of inspirational talks about not using drugs and taking a “Positive Direction” in everything in life. Drew had been training hard and was running well. Sean thought he might even break the unofficial race record, and my parents were glad to be asked to witness this event. I asked them to arrive at 1:00 P.M. the day before to baby-sit MK so I could attend “a parent event” at Drew’s school. I lured Kate to the house at the same time under the same pretext. I felt bad lying to them, but there was no easy way to get them together at that time.
That afternoon my mom and dad arrived right on schedule. We chatted for a few minutes, then broke off when Sean came in.
“Taking long leisurely lunches these days, Sean? Uh…I thought you would be back at the office guarding my money!” My dad joked with Sean because he knew Sean never took lunches.
“Well, Byron, that is the beauty of having ‘people,’” Sean said with a wry smile. “I guard your money most of the day, but when I’m gone, I assign my employees to guard it in two-hour shifts. We are on watch twenty-four hours a day.”
We were all laughing when the door opened again, and Kate walked in.
“Byron? Linda? What a surprise. What are you all doing here?”
And there we stood. Our parents looked confused as to why all of them were there, while I looked like the cat that ate the canary.
“Well, we have something to tell you. There is no event at Drew’s school today,” I said. “We just wanted to talk to you together, and we couldn’t think of another way to get you here without tricking you. So, sorry. Please, sit down.”
I could see how frightening this sounded. The proof was all over my mother’s wide-eyed face. Obediently they walked into the family room. My mom sat on the couch next to me. Dad pulled a wooden rocking chair from the corner, and Kate sat in a chair. Sean sat down next to her.
“No one is sick, we’re not getting a divorce, and no one is going to jail,” Sean started off.
“Well, that
’s good, I guess,” my dad said, still looking scared.
“Look, this is not easy to say, so I’m going to say it. You all know that MK was conceived through IVF?” Sean said.
They nodded.
“Well, we had leftover embryos from that IVF that were frozen. This past February, Carolyn and I did a frozen embryo transfer, and she is now sixteen weeks pregnant.”
My mom squealed with joy.
“Hold on, Linda. This is not good news. Apparently, when they thawed the embryos, they pulled the wrong ones. They transferred another couple’s embryos into Carolyn. She is pregnant with another couple’s baby.”
I had been staring at the floor the entire time, feeling my cheeks burn with nervousness. When Sean finished, I looked up at my dad, whose jaw was hanging wide open. His face was beet red, as if he was struggling to contain his temper. Kate had her hand over her mouth in shock.
“Oh, Carolyn!” my mom said softly, her voice cracking as her eyes filled with tears. She shook her head back and forth, refusing to accept this was so. “Is this true?”
I shook my head up and down indicating yes.
“And the other couple wants this baby,” I continued, trying to erase any erroneous thought they might be having that we were going to get a baby out of this. “They are going to take this baby upon delivery, and we have agreed to allow that to happen without a fight.”
Sean described how we found out about the error, told them the doctor had asked us to abort but we refused, and added that we had met Paul and Shannon and they were nice and truly wanted this baby.
“Where are your embryos?” my dad blurted out.
“We have been told they are still in cryopreservation. We are working on moving them to a different facility,” I said.
“Your health comes first, Carolyn. You know that, right? Your health comes before this baby’s.” My dad wanted reassurance that I wasn’t going to martyr myself. “You have three other children to raise, and you are very important to those children.”
“Of course, Dad. Just like my other pregnancies. My health comes first.”
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