He flashed her a smile before disappearing into his day.
After this auspicious ultrasound Costanza floated out of the building. Thirteen? She was growing a village’s worth of eggs in her body, her formerly barren body. If only half of them were viable—half of half—she’d be ahead of the game. Even half of half of half: after all, it only took one.
* * *
Jasmine phoned that night and instructed her to add to her cocktail 250 micrograms of ganirelix, the drug that would prevent her from surging and ovulating before the eggs were retrieved. Starting with the next morning and continuing until retrieval, there would be daily appointments, with daily ultrasounds. “It’s looking good going into the big week,” she said.
Henry was working late that evening, but Costanza felt confident enough by now to draw up the medicines and give herself the injections, all three of them. She had grown accustomed to the burning and the puffiness of her abdomen, and she knew to try to find a fresh patch amid the constellation of irritated red dots and bruises that was beginning to populate her skin. After a week, what had at first been daunting was now almost (almost) routine.
Afterward she treated herself to a small glass of a good Chianti that she had bought for Henry’s dinner. She ate a bowl of pasta followed by an orange and was asleep before nine.
At midnight she was up with a restless mind. Across the bed Henry was sleeping on his side, snoring. She had not heard him come in. She had not heard him climb into bed. Now she was awake, vividly awake, taking an unbidden tour of some of the most disturbing moments in her life. She zigzagged from that awful day during her separation from Morton when Annelie had to pull her out of bed, to the morning her mother came up the stairs in Recco, holding the suicide notes her father had mailed from the hotel where he had gone to end his life. She swooped over to Stefano’s office at the university, where a month short of three years into their relationship she had opened the door that afternoon to find Anna Carini licking his penis; then came the hospital bed she woke up in the next morning, after having fallen (she still believed … or hoped) off that terrace.
Costanza knew all about the middle of the night. You woke up and believed you could see through things, to their very essence. No time felt clearer. Also nothing, usually, was darker—or gave rise to darker interpretations. She knew these middle-of-the-night reflections were unreliable, but she was powerless to stop herself from having them.
The alarm broke into her thick, sticky, dreamless sleep. She opened her eyes to dread. Dread at the day; dread at having to haul herself out of bed and into the shower. Dread at having to fly out of the apartment by seven thirty, so that she would arrive at the clinic before eight o’clock for her blood work and ultrasound. Dread at having to turn in a draft of the translation by the end of the next month. Dread, beyond that, that she could not account for, but could feel deep within herself, in her very flesh.
Costanza was not normally a morning person. She liked to read or work in bed, and to make her way into her day slowly and with a generous amount of coffee clarifying her mind. She could do nothing about the hour these days, but the coffee, at least, was usually there waiting for her on the breakfast tray that Henry continued to prepare for her most every morning. Often its aroma woke her before the alarm and started her day on a pleasing note.
This morning it wasn’t the coffee, though. It was the high squeal of the alarm, followed by the dread, followed by a glance out the window, where she saw a flat, leaden, wintry sky.
She reached for the mug. It was lukewarm. The toast was more wood than bread. Even the orange slices were mushy and full of pits.
Henry was just wrapping up his own morning routine. He emerged from the bathroom groomed and suited up for his day.
“Really, I don’t know why you bother to make me breakfast if you’re going to do such an abysmal job of it,” she said sourly.
He looked at her. “I’m sorry. I have an early meeting.”
“On days like this I’d rather make my own coffee.”
“All right then. We can phase out this little tradition of ours.”
“Oh, so I offer one criticism, and you pack up your toys and run away.”
“I’m just responding to what you’re saying, Costanza.”
“No, you’re exaggerating what I’m saying. You’re escalating it. You’re taking it to a different level.”
“Actually I’m not taking it anywhere.” He sighed. “Would you like me to make you another cup?” He glanced at his wristwatch.
“I don’t want you to do me any favors, Doctor. And I don’t have that much time. I have to be at your clinic in half an hour. As you well know.”
In a soft tone Henry merely said, “Costanza.”
“What?” she barked.
He picked up the mug of coffee. “Why don’t you let me at least heat this up?”
“Coffee? Reheated bad coffee? Which I probably shouldn’t be drinking in the first place? Are you trying to poison me?”
She started to push the coffee away, but the gesture was a little too vigorous, and the liquid splashed onto Henry’s immaculate suit and beyond, onto her new paint job.
Costanza gaped at the dripping fabric, the brown liquid spattering the cream walls. Henry said nothing but stepped into the bathroom and returned with a damp hand towel. He wiped the wall as clean as he could. Then he disappeared into his closet to change his clothes. When he returned, Costanza was in the shower, sobbing.
* * *
In the examining room Henry again slipped in at the last minute to observe the ultrasound, which was being done by Dr. Sommers. There were still thirteen follicles, but only eight or maybe nine of them were maturing in tandem; the others were lagging behind. Henry said that this often happened, that she still had a good number of eggs, and that they were at an appropriate size. He told Costanza he anticipated she would be taking the HCG shot either that evening or the next; definitive word would come at the end of the day, after the team had reviewed all her data.
“Dr. Weissman,” she said when he had finished. “May I speak to you for a moment alone?”
Henry nodded at Sommers and the nurse, who left the room. As soon as the door closed, Costanza said, “I want to apologize … about this morning … I was—”
“You were upset.”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly. I wasn’t myself.”
He put his hand on her. “It’s the drugs. I told you. Some women can become not themselves or more—”
“More?”
He hesitated. “More emotional than normal.”
Her tone sharpened abruptly. “Do you know how much a woman hates being told that? How invalidating that is?”
“Costanza, I don’t really have time for—”
“You don’t really have time for me? You’re putting my body through hell, you’re telling me that these drugs are making me crazy…”
“You have a sensitive system. Everything will become better with time.”
* * *
She was to receive her HCG injection at eleven thirty on Saturday evening. That meant she would be among the first women to have her retrieval on Monday morning. More would be known after the retrieval, and a lot more by the following day, when the eggs would have been fertilized and, ideally, begun to divide.
She and Henry went out to a late dinner. Their conversation was stilted and quickly petered out into silence.
“This is hard for me too, Costanza. Not like for you. But I too—I too want the treatment to succeed. I too want—” He started again. “Last night I dreamt I was holding a baby. A newborn. Our newborn. It was thrilling.”
What Henry said made her shiver. “Was it a boy or a girl or couldn’t you tell?”
“The baby was wearing pink.”
Costanza shivered again. “I’ve lost sight of you. Of you in all this. I’m sorry.” She thought for a moment. “You know, Henry, I used to be—I am—about so much more than this … quest. Sometimes I forget that. It feels l
ike the IVF has obliterated the rest of me. It’s a body snatcher, a mind snatcher. It’s taken over my waking life, my dreaming life, your dreaming life…”
“I see this kind of thing often. Difficult though it is, it’s finite. You have to remember that. You’re in it now, but you won’t be for much longer.”
* * *
HCG was given by intramuscular injection. On Saturday night at eleven twenty Henry drew up the medicine, tapped it to dissolve air bubbles, and changed the needle. They came to the moment when Costanza had to lower her skirt and underwear to expose the upper outside quadrant of her buttocks, where the injection had to be administered. It wasn’t as though Henry hadn’t seen her naked. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t touched, caressed, even kissed her backside; but still—still Costanza hesitated for a moment before undressing. Then she closed her eyes. She felt the mild sting of the alcohol wipe being drawn over her skin. Henry told her he was going to count to three, and she should remain still. At three he would insert the needle.
He counted. At three she felt a searing stab deep in her flesh.
“Shit!” This wasn’t a word Costanza often used.
“I’m sorry. It’s been a while since I’ve done this. I may have hit a nerve. But you’ve got to stay still. I have to pull back to check for blood.”
There was no blood. He completed the injection, then withdrew the needle. Now there was a little blood. A ruby drop formed on her white skin. Henry reached for a tissue. “There’s a little blood at the site. It’s normal. I’m applying pressure. It’ll stop in a minute.”
* * *
In the papers she was given and from the doctor who performed her preoperative ultrasound, Costanza was reminded that retrieval was surgery, and that, as it took place in a hospital and anesthetic was administered, she would not be discharged if she was alone. It was striking how a line on a medical form could make her feel such a pang of longing for Annelie, who had moved back to Sweden six months after Morton died. There was simply no one else in New York she felt comfortable inviting into this most private moment in her life.
A solution occurred to her as soon as she unlocked the door to Henry’s apartment and heard the gentle pleasing hum of a vacuum being drawn across the living room rug. She would ask Hilda to accompany her. She genuinely liked Hilda. Hilda would sit with her patiently and quietly. Hilda would have no agenda of her own.
Yes, of course, Hilda said when Costanza asked her, and it didn’t feel like an obligatory yes either. Hilda did not seem surprised when Costanza explained what was going on and asked for this favor. “I work for Dr. Weissman a long time. I understand.”
* * *
Hilda arrived at the apartment at eight o’clock the next day; by eight thirty she and Costanza were in a cab. Only then did Costanza feel the experience was happening, finally. After these long two weeks, there was nothing more to do, to hope for, worry over, or try to control. It was all in the hands of the doctors now. Or the fates. And the fates.
At the hospital Costanza and Hilda rode the elevator to the sixth floor. When they stepped into the hallway, Costanza’s eyes immediately landed on a bulletin board opposite them, which was covered with announcements seeking participants in research studies, the sorts of pages that end in a fringe of phone numbers that people were meant to tear off and slip into their pockets. One study was offering help for anorexia, another for panic attacks: “If you have physical symptoms such as pounding heart, dizziness, nausea, or trouble breathing, we will exchange 24 sessions of free therapy for…”
It was the only announcement that had all but one of its tabs missing.
Hilda watched Costanza staring at the notice. She set her hand on Costanza’s shoulder. “You’re not going to feel any of those things, Señora Costanza. You must not worry. It’s not so bad. I remember.”
Costanza turned to Hilda, confused. “You remember?”
“From before. With Señora Judith.” Hilda flushed. “Señora Judith—she needed also Dr. Weissman’s medicines. To help make the boys. You knew that?”
“Of course I knew that,” Costanza said as evenly as she could. “I think it’s this way. Yes. See—over there.”
Over there, where the words IN VITRO FERTILIZATION were mounted above a corridor. Whose idea was it to put the words up there like that, and in garish brass letters, so that everyone would know exactly why a woman had come to this wing of this floor of the hospital? Was it Henry’s? It didn’t seem like Henry. But how did she know what seemed like Henry? It would have seemed like Henry to have mentioned to her that Judith had also undergone IVF, would it not? To help make the boys, both boys, plural. When she was a young woman, younger than Costanza by far.
Judith had had IVF too—and Costanza was only finding this out now? And from Hilda? Her mind—she could feel it, animal-like, rearing up, gearing up, primed to dive into a whole new dimension of worry and fear. She took a deep breath, forced herself to pause, and experimented with something she’d read about once in a book on meditation but had never implemented before. She visualized herself standing in an open doorway as Demon Worry began to approach. She wasn’t going to pretend he wasn’t there, but she wasn’t going to invite him inside, and she wasn’t going to sit down with him. Not at the moment, with the drugs in her body and Henry’s semen in her purse, a small vial of possibility tucked in among her wallet and her sunglasses, and with her hopes raised the way they had been in these past weeks. No, not now. Not yet. Instead, Costanza stepped through the glass door and checked in with the receptionist. And just like that it began.
A nurse called her into a back room. The first thing she did was take Henry’s specimen out of her bag and give it to her. Henry didn’t think it was appropriate for him to be seen sitting in that waiting room alongside his patients and their husbands, so he took an option the clinic offered and produced a semen sample that morning in the bathroom at home, using a kit (sanitizing soap, a sealed plastic container, and envelope) that he had brought back from the office for that purpose earlier in the week.
To Costanza it seemed momentous to hand over that vial of milky liquid, which determined—in part determined—what her body might or might not do in the next few hours and days; but for the nurse, Costanza was merely another patient with merely another vial of semen. Merely another woman changing into a gown and having an IV line set. Merely another woman rejoining the other women—couples—in the waiting room.
Soon the men began to be called, one at a time. A nurse would lead a man out a different door, and he would return fifteen, twenty minutes later, wearing a face that was trying hard to look like an ordinary face. There would be a glance, in one case an eyebrow raised, at the wife, or partner. The men had gone to one of the specimen rooms. She had asked Henry to describe them to her—she had wanted to know everything about this process. Tiny and furnished with a large reclining chair, these rooms were stocked with erotic magazines, a DVD player, and a drawer full of movies with titles like Seasoned Players and Fun Amanda 3. The men would look at the magazines or watch the movies until they were sufficiently aroused. Then they would masturbate and ejaculate into a cup.
Had Henry played a movie that morning (how? On his phone?) or opened a magazine? (If so, where did he keep such a thing?) Did he undress entirely or just take off his pants, or not even? Had he thought of her? Someone else? What kind of orgasm did he have after washing his genitals with antibiotic soap and masturbating while sitting on the toilet? Maybe he stood. Or sat (or stretched out?) on the floor …
The male wiring: it was just so other. On the face of it, so much simpler. Imagine being able to come at the pop of a lid on a plastic cup.
Two of the men had gone and returned when she heard her name called again. A different nurse took her now to a different, smaller waiting room.
Eighteen excruciating minutes passed before a doctor, dressed in green surgical scrubs, dropped down into a chair across from her. His mask, at least, was lowered off his face. He introduced himself a
s the anesthesiologist, Dr. Milliken. He explained that in about five minutes a nurse would bring her into the operating room, where he would give her a modest cocktail of drugs that would cause her to fall asleep completely and quickly. When she woke up, the retrieval would be over.
The nurse returned with an empty gurney and asked Costanza to climb up on top of it. Then she pushed Costanza ahead, through a pair of swinging doors and into the operating room. Costanza slid onto a large bedlike table. At its foot there were two stirrups. The nurse helped fit Costanza’s feet into them. “Dr. Rogers is doing the retrievals today,” the nurse said. “He’ll be here in a minute. Good luck to you, mi amor.”
This was one time when a minute was as described. Rogers, clean-shaven and nearly bald, came in through a different door. His mask was still over his mouth. He did not bother to lower it as he briefly described how he was going to aspirate the eggs from her ovaries. When she awoke, she would be told how many were retrieved and how they looked under the microscope. He asked her if she understood what was about to happen to her. She answered that she did. He had her sign one last form. The anesthesiologist materialized and began injecting liquid into her IV line. “It shouldn’t be very long now,” he said.
“Are you going to ask me to count backwards? I can do it in five lang—”
* * *
When she opened her eyes, Henry was sitting by her bed, holding her hand.
“I came over to check on you. It’s done. It’s over. You know that, right?”
She wasn’t certain what she knew. But she nodded all the same. “You wonderful man. You look so—marvelous. Everyone’s in white today. You match the clouds.” He was wearing his white doctor’s coat, over a shirt and tie. “I love you.”
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