Childless: A Novel

by James Dobson

  “Hi, Julia. I’ve attached results of the full range of tests we ran today. As expected, you look healthy.”

  Julia smiled at the surprising feeling of relief.

  “But I wanted to explain the results on page six of the attached summary so you will understand your options,” Lynette continued. “Don’t worry. I’ve helped plenty of couples in the same situation. Call my office when you can and we’ll set up a consultation. OK? We’ll talk then.”

  Options for what? Julia wondered. I thought she said I looked healthy.

  Even though Troy could walk through the door at any second, Julia had to know what was on page six. She tapped the attachment icon to open the document. She tried her best to decipher the medical jargon, including two “possible causes” with labels that meant nothing to her; epididymitis and something called Young syndrome. She looked at the top of the page for any clues that might inform what she was reading. That’s when she realized this was a summary of Troy’s sperm sample. But what did it mean? Was it something bad? Lynette mentioned she had helped other couples in the same situation. What situation?

  She moved toward the door to peek outside. No sign of Troy’s car. She went back to her tablet and quickly entered the unfamiliar words into a medical terminology search engine. All five of the top results carried the same disturbing label.

  Causes of male infertility.

  She began scanning the first article. Apparently epididymitis was some sort of blockage preventing sperm from releasing to its fruitful destiny. But that included a list of symptoms Troy had never experienced such as fever and pain. The only other potential culprit, Young syndrome, was described as having “no known effective treatment or cure.”

  Did this mean she and Troy couldn’t conceive naturally? Could they conceive at all?

  Julia heard the familiar sound of the opening garage door announcing Troy’s arrival. She quickly swiped out of the screen and tossed her tablet beneath a throw pillow. She had never decided whether to stay on the sofa or move to the dining room. She chose the latter, buying a few extra seconds to absorb the news and decide whether and how to tell her husband.

  The thought of telling Troy prompted unwelcome grief. “Not now!” she said aloud, grabbing one of the perfectly placed napkins to dab her moistening eyes.

  The last thing she wanted was for Troy to see her in tears. This was supposed to be a romantic evening of thrilling intimacy, not a cry-fest over possible bad news.

  But she knew in her soul that it was more than possible bad news. Why would the doctor call unless the results suggested her husband could never be a daddy?

  Another wave of sorrow invaded, this one too strong for Julia to swallow back. She heard the doorknob turning. What to do? She darted from the dining room back into the master bedroom. Better for Troy to enjoy the surprise and anticipation of a candlelit room than wonder what had triggered his wife’s uncontrollable tears.

  She rushed to the bathroom and closed the door before splashing cold water onto her puffing cheeks. She would let Troy assume she was still getting ready to greet him with an alluring smile. A smile she commanded her disobedient face to produce.

  Julia reached deep to summon the strong, controlling woman she had been before falling in love with Troy. The girl who had maintained a cool demeanor during a year of nightmarish dreams. The journalist who had confronted Washington power brokers with prudent diplomacy. The woman who could use the same iron will to finish what she had started a few hours earlier. She had planned a night of bliss with her husband. So a night of bliss is what she intended to give.

  “Hi, babe,” she heard Troy saying from the dining room. “What’s all this?”

  She took a deep, restorative breath before replying. “A little surprise. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  She used the time to reapply a bit of makeup. Troy would never guess she had been crying, even if his eyes managed to peel themselves away from her gown. Then she opened the bedroom door to find her husband nibbling on a crescent roll at the dining table, his shoulders slumped as if he was contemplating his own brand of dispiriting news.

  She moved toward Troy, glad the music covered the sound of her approach. She slid her arms around his chest to offer an embrace both needed.

  She whispered into his ear, “Welcome home, Mr. Simmons.”

  Her touch and voice prompted a smile. He pulled her hand to his lips and gently kissed her soft skin. Julia sensed he was trying to push past exhausted discouragement to receive her wonderful but poorly timed gift.

  “This looks terrific,” he said while rubbing her arm.

  She moved to the chair beside him. His eyes turned to saucers. She blushed, then giggled.

  “You look terrific!” He gasped to recover his stolen breath.

  They kissed. Then they kissed again.

  “I hope you’re hungry,” Julia said.

  His eyes sank as if the comment reminded him of a lost appetite. Then he looked back at the candlelit arrangement. At the enormous effort his wife had gone to for him. “Starved,” he said with forced enthusiasm.

  She placed a single finger on his chin to move his eyes back in her direction. “Troy Simmons. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  His eyes sank again. “Is it that obvious?”

  “I’m afraid so. But thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For trying to enjoy my surprise.”

  He leaned toward her for another kiss, which she refused to accept.

  “No food or dessert until you tell me what’s wrong.”

  “There’s dessert?”

  She stood and then turned to give him a full view of her sheer outfit. “Yes, there is.” Both smiled as she sat again. “Now, what happened?”

  Troy released a lengthy sigh. “I got a call from Brent Anderson today.”

  “Franklin’s right-hand man?”

  “He called to warn me. No, to scold me.”

  “For what?”

  “That’s just it. I have no idea what he was talking about. He accused me of seriously undermining Kevin’s opportunity for broader influence in the Franklin coalition. I asked what I had done, but he accused me of playing dumb as if I knew what I’d done. Then he told me to back off with Dimitri.”

  “Evan Dimitri?”

  “I suppose. But I haven’t had any contact at all with Evan Dimitri.”

  A prickly thought entered Julia’s mind. She pushed it aside and said, “That’s odd.”

  “Very odd. I can only assume he’s upset about the refused donation check. But that was Kevin. I was a thousand miles away minding the shop.”

  “Maybe he thinks you put Kevin up to it.”

  “Unlikely. I’m nothing to Dimitri and Anderson: an invisible gofer who runs reports and accepts assignments.”

  “You’re a lot more than that!” Julia protested. “Kevin relies on you for, well, for everything.”

  He touched her cheek in appreciative acceptance of the reassurance. “I know that.”

  “And Kevin knows it!”

  He smiled at her resolve. “And Kevin knows it. But I can’t imagine why Anderson would call me.”

  “Maybe he called Kevin too.”

  “He didn’t. I checked.”

  “What did Kevin say?”

  “Not much.” Troy’s shoulders slumped again. “Just that he would follow up with Anderson.”

  A prickly thought Julia couldn’t dismiss. Had Tyler Cain contacted Evan Dimitri in response to her call?

  “What if someone else used your name?” she asked.

  “Used my name for what?”

  “To gain access to Dimitri.”

  “Who would do that? And why?”

  Julia dismissed the possibility again. “Never mind,” she said. “I’m just thinking out loud.”

  A brief silence as both tried to imagine what would suddenly turn Anderson against Troy. Against Kevin.

  “It must be the donation thing,” Troy finally said. “Nothing else makes
sense. Kevin refused Dimitri’s check, meaning he rejected the attached strings. That must have upset Franklin.”

  “I guess,” Julia agreed. “Which means you did nothing wrong.”

  He looked up as if relieved by the verdict.

  “It also means there’s no reason I shouldn’t reheat our dinner.” Julia stood and reached for the serving dish.

  Troy’s hand caressed the thin fabric that barely concealed her thigh. “And dessert?”

  “The dessert is still warm,” she said, sitting on Troy’s lap. Her lips moved toward his ear, the breath of each whispered word seeming to deepen his desire. “Would you rather skip dinner?”

  She sensed the tension releasing from both husband and wife with each escalating touch.

  Thirty minutes later Troy was sitting at the table, a new man.

  “I made it to the clinic today,” he said casually while spreading a slab of butter onto a freshly heated roll.

  Julia’s body stiffened. “Did you?”

  “Talk about awkward. I had to go into a bathroom and…” He stopped short, then fast-forwarded. “I had to hand my sample to an office aide who looked young enough to be my daughter. Embarrassing.”

  “Thanks for doing that,” Julia said. “It will help my next story.”

  “How about you?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Weren’t you supposed to go today as well?”

  “Oh, that.” A slight hesitation. “I had a consultation appointment. Learned quite a bit.” Keep it short. Don’t elaborate. Change the subject.

  “And?” he said, preempting her strategy.

  “And I found out there are a bunch of businesses that buy unused embryos, just like Austin Tozer said. They try to get you to donate as the preferred disposal method for what they call excess embryotic material. But I asked one question about financial incentives and the doctor showed me several options for selling instead.”

  Troy huffed angrily in her direction. “Are you serious?”

  Julia nodded.

  “No wonder I got a bad feeling the second I walked into the place,” he continued. “Their process gave me the willies. A father should be more than a nameless, faceless cog in the wheel. They handed me a dirty magazine and said, ‘Have at it’!”

  “Troy!” Julia blushed while slapping his shoulder playfully.

  “Well, it’s true,” he said. “And dehumanizing.”

  She had to agree. “Having a child should be beautiful, not mechanical.”

  As she placed another roll on his plate Troy put his hand lovingly on her waist. “You’re beautiful,” he said. “Thank you, Julia.”

  She smiled, knowing he meant more than the roll.

  “That’s how babies are supposed to be made.” He winked while placing his hand on her abdomen. “And you never know.”

  A wave of guilt. Should I tell him? she wondered. No. Not now. Why spoil a beautiful moment? Tell him in the morning.

  Troy buried his head in Julia’s bosom. “You’re a gift,” he said. “I love you.”

  She placed her hands on his head and began caressing his hair. “I love you too,” she said, swallowing back a returning sorrow, an emotion that she would try to hide but that she knew would keep her awake late into the night. “I love you too.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “Hello, Mr. Matthew,” little Pete said, extending his hand forcefully.

  Reverend Grandpa beamed as he smiled at Matthew, who accepted the gesture with delighted shock.

  “Hello, Mr. Peter,” Matthew said, shaking the boy’s hand. “Great to see you again.”

  It must have been the longest conversation Peter Gale had had with anyone besides Reverend Grandpa since his father’s death. For sure the only words Matthew had actually seen coming out of the kid’s mouth. And the happiest he’d ever seen the old man appear.

  Little Pete looked toward his grandpa like a private waiting for the sergeant to say, “Dismissed.” A congratulatory wink released the boy to flee the room in embarrassed gratification.

  “I’m impressed,” Matthew said.

  “I told you he’s a smart kid,” the old man bragged.

  Matthew didn’t recall being told any such thing. He nodded in agreement anyway.

  The reverend continued. “All he needed was a little time. Next stop, the pulpit.”

  “The what?”

  “The pulpit. You know, a preacher’s podium.”

  “You call it a pulpit? Why?”

  Reverend Grandpa rolled his eyes and waved a hand to bat away Matthew’s ignorance. “Never mind.”

  “So you want Peter to be a preacher when he grows up?”

  “Not really.”

  The answer surprised Matthew. “But I thought—”

  “Little Pete is the one who wants to be a preacher like his granddad. I figured I could use his goal to help him start talking again.”

  Matthew remembered overhearing his client’s earlier conversation with Peter. “He’s been secretly talking to you for a while, hasn’t he?”

  Reverend Grandpa nodded. “Welcome to a very exclusive club, my boy.”

  “I’m honored.”

  “You should be,” he said matter-of-factly. “It took an hour of coaching to get him to say those three words to you today.”

  Matthew smiled at the accomplishment. He tried to imagine how the death of a father might traumatize a little boy. What kind of pain had forced the child into such a self-imposed cone of silence? Having never known his own father, Matthew couldn’t relate to the loss. But he had occasionally sensed himself grieving the absence.

  Reverend Grandpa inhaled deeply as if accepting well-deserved congratulations. Then he inhaled again, unnaturally. The third attempt alarmed Matthew, prompting him to bend down and check the gauge on the old man’s oxygen tank. The usually green light was bright red. He had seen yellow before, but never red. Wasn’t there supposed to be an audible tone when the tank fell below the minimum safe level? No matter now; Matthew had to move fast.

  The old man continued gasping for air as if suffering a heart attack while running a marathon in the summer heat. Matthew hurried toward the closet to retrieve a replacement tank. He panicked at the sight of one already depleted container, then darted out of the room toward the kitchen pantry, where they kept an emergency backup tank.

  By the time he returned Peter and Isabelle were on either side of their grandpa, each holding a hand while frantically patting the old man’s back in a useless effort to help.

  Thirteen seconds later Matthew turned a knob to release the life-sustaining gas into Reverend Grandpa’s lungs. A few replenishing breaths later the old man appeared to calm. The children, however, remained visibly shaken.

  “What the—” Matthew stopped short, remembering the presence of children. “What on earth happened? I never heard the caution tone. This tank shouldn’t have dropped into the red zone that fast!”

  “My fault,” Reverend Grandpa confessed after relishing a few more oxygen-rich breaths. “I hit the silence button to stop the racket while coaching Pete. We were so close to a breakthrough I didn’t want the interruption.”

  “Dropping dead would have been a whole lot more of an interruption than asking me to change tanks!” Matthew scolded.

  “Drop dead?” Isabelle shouted. “You mean he could have died?”

  Matthew hesitated as post-panic anger arrived. “Yes, he could have died. Stupid old man!”

  Peter jerked his head toward the mouth that had dared utter such an offense.

  “He’s not stupid!” the boy said. “You are!” Peter ran out of the room.

  Isabelle’s jaw dropped. “Grandpa,” she said while her eyes fixed on the spot where she’d last seen Peter. “Peter said a whole sentence. Out loud!”

  “Actually, two sentences,” the old man said with a chuckle that quickly escalated into a roar of amused relief.

  Isabelle ran after her brother.

  “You’ve been honored aga
in, my boy!” Reverend Grandpa said between guffaws.

  “Great,” Matthew replied, still irritated by the old man’s carelessness.

  He spent the next fifteen minutes rounding up every oxygen tank in the house. Four empty containers went into a box next to the front door to be put in Marissa’s car as soon as she returned from her errands to get the kids. He found one additional full tank in a corner of the garage and placed it in his client’s closet where it belonged for easy retrieval during the next stupidity-induced incident.

  An hour later Marissa drove away with the box and the kids. Isabelle remained true to her pledge not to mention the little scare to Mom who, Grandpa had insisted, would make a big fuss over nothing. Matthew had calmed himself enough to speak to the old man, determined to say things he needed to hear whether he liked them or not.

  “Did you see the look on Peter’s and Isabelle’s faces today?” Matthew began. “You nearly scared them to death when you were wheezing for air.”

  “It was a silly mistake. I’m still alive, and the kids are fine.”

  “What if I hadn’t been nearby? What if you had died?”

  The question seemed to anger the old man. And bother him.

  “It wasn’t my time to go yet.”

  “Thanks to me,” Matthew said.

  “Thanks to God,” the old man countered. “You were just his instrument. If he wanted me home, I’d be there.”

  Matthew didn’t follow. “What are you talking about? You are home.”

  Another look of exasperation. “I mean my home beyond the clouds.”

  A continued blank stare.

  “Heaven!”

  “Oh,” Matthew said, finally understanding. The comment prompted an idea. “Speaking of heaven, I need to talk to you about something.”

  The reverend motioned Matthew in his direction. “Well, if we’re going to chat about something important, let’s do it in the living room. Help me up, will you, son?”

  Matthew loaned the old man his arm as he stood to position himself in front of his walker. Then Reverend Grandpa firmly squeezed Matthew’s shoulder as if acknowledging a debt of gratitude.