by Jackie Hance
“Don’t think I’m back to cooking,” I said grudgingly.
Jeannine just shrugged, not ready to point out to me that I was making hopeful choices every day, from taking a Thanksgiving run to making a Christmas breakfast. I thought I wanted to die, but the evidence showed that I hadn’t completely given up on life.
Before long, the house was buzzing with friends in holiday sweaters, and I was secretly pleased when everyone piled food onto their plates. My homemade version of Egg McMuffins got raves, and the buffet of baked goods that I’d arranged prettily on platters inspired enough Martha Stewart jokes that even I had to smile.
Suddenly we heard voices raised in song outside. I looked anxiously at Isabelle, but she and Melissa marched me to the door and we flung it open.
A convivial group of men and women, probably forty or fifty strong, stood on our snowy lawn singing a cheerful Christmas carol. As they raised their voices, their warm breath turned to steam in the cold air, and some stomped their boots against the chill. I recognized some of the carolers, though not all. Seeing them gathered in bulky winter coats and colorful hats and scarves, I felt like I’d been transported into some Hollywood version of a hometown Christmas, with kindly neighbors gathered to offer “tidings of comfort and joy.”
To my great surprise, the carolers’ good tidings did bring comfort. Joy wasn’t yet an option, but comfort was certainly a start.
Most of them left after finishing their songs, but a few whom we knew well came in for hot chocolate or a muffin. Our friends left to get on with their own Christmas plans, but for much of the day, people drifted in and out, and we got through the day surprisingly easily.
“We’re coming back for Christmas breakfast next year,” Melissa said as she put on her coat to leave. “This was fun.”
Christmas breakfast for twenty. A new tradition at my house.
Fifteen
People started telling me almost immediately that I should have more children. I hadn’t yet hit forty, and the theory seemed to be that if my life had been brutally taken from me, I should just start another one.
Honestly, I thought they were nuts.
Children are not interchangeable. I loved Emma, Alyson, and Katie as individuals, and one could not replace another. I had three children and always would. I wanted to be their mother, not any mother.
Into the winter, I continued to wake up every morning furious that I was still in my house and not reunited with the girls in heaven. How could I survive a hurt this deep and an emptiness so vast? I realized that the same accident that took my children also destroyed my identity and my reason for being on this earth. For nearly a decade, I had devoted every bit of energy and emotion I possessed to being a mom, and now—like anyone else who loses a job she loves—I felt unmoored.
Emotionally, I couldn’t begin to think about having more children. And practically, I didn’t see how it could happen. The pregnancies had been difficult for me, and after Katie was born, I had my tubes tied. I had lobbied for the procedure after Alyson, but the obstetrician pointed out that at just thirty years old, I might not be done. And she was right.
The moment Alyson arrived in the world—with a smile on her face that never went away—I forgot about the miseries of the pregnancy and started talking about having another baby.
“No,” Warren had said.
“No?” I asked. “You can’t just say no. We’re a couple. We have to talk about it.”
“Nothing to talk about,” he said, sounding like a stereotypical man. “Two is easy and three will be too much. I don’t want more.”
Not knowing how to countermand his unilateral decision, I took the stereotypical female route.
“Then I don’t want to have sex anymore,” I said.
We both wavered from our positions and in fact had plenty of sex. I hadn’t gone back on the pill, which Warren knew, so maybe he had changed his mind. But we didn’t discuss it, and when my period was late one month, I panicked and refused to think about it. Finally, Jeannine left an at-home pregnancy test in my mailbox.
“It turned pink,” I said, calling her almost immediately.
“That’s great!” she said. “What did Warren say?”
“I haven’t told him.”
Anxious about how he’d respond, I waited a few days, and then finally broke the news.
“We’re going to have another baby,” I told him one night after Emma and Alyson were asleep.
“I know,” he said, kissing me.
“How do you know?”
“I could just tell.”
The pregnancy with Katie turned out to be even tougher than the others, filled with anxiety and emotional swings, and Warren and I agreed that after this, we would count our blessings and not ask for more. Emma and Alyson had been born by Cesarean section and we anticipated Katie would be, too. The obstetrician said that three surgeries were usually the limit, and that having more could be a problem because of the amount of scar tissue. So, just before the delivery, the nurse gave me the papers to sign saying that I authorized “sterilization.”
“Sterilization?” I asked her, slightly alarmed.
“That’s what it is,” she said. “Deciding to have your tubes tied sounds innocuous, but realize how dramatic it is. You don’t have to do it.”
“That’s okay,” I said, signing the paper. “Three’s the charm.”
I thought our family was perfect now—and complete.
• • •
A couple of months after the accident, I got a call from the obstetrician’s office where I had gone with all three pregnancies.
“I hope you don’t mind my calling,” said the nurse. “But I want to pass along some advice.” She had become something of a friend through all my visits, and now she gave me the name of a clinic where she thought I should go to get my eggs frozen.
“Why would I do that?” I asked.
“In case you ever want another baby,” she said.
“I don’t,” I said quickly. Even mentioning the idea seemed like an affront. I’d had my three girls, and nothing could replace them.
But I also knew that I couldn’t trust my own instincts anymore. I spent every day dazed and confused, and I didn’t see any way to make sense of my new lot in life. Maybe the recommendation of a doctor or nurse could help.
I called a friend and went to the clinic. But I immediately found out I was too old to freeze my eggs. Apparently, you do that at age twenty-five or so, not thirty-seven. But the fertility doctor who broke the news had another plan.
“We can do in vitro fertilization,” she explained. “We make the embryos and freeze those, which is more effective.”
The doctor quickly described the procedure. It sounded like a lot of effort, but I was mulling over the idea and thinking “Why not?” when she dropped the kicker that answered that question.
“The cost for each cycle is about twenty thousand dollars,” she said.
Twenty thousand dollars? Was she joking? We had just paid for a funeral for three children at enormous expense. I didn’t have a job, and since Warren’s real-estate appraisal business was tied to the scarily plummeting housing market, who knew what would happen for us financially?
“I can’t afford that,” I told her bluntly.
“Come back next week when we have the results from the exam and blood work,” she said. “I’ll check with Billing to see if there’s any chance that your insurance covers the drugs.” She handed me a huge stack of forms that I knew I would never fill out.
When I returned to her office for the follow-up, she looked worried and shooed away the friend who had come with me.
“I need to speak to Mrs. Hance alone,” she said gravely.
It sounded like bad news, and I instantly inferred that they’d found something incurable in the blood work and I’d be dead in twenty-four hours. The thought made me unaccountably happy.
I had sunk so low that a devastating diagnosis promised to be a reprieve. Hooray! I thought i
diotically. I’m going to die and see the girls!
But the physical results had been fine, and the doctor only wanted to inform me privately that my insurance would not pay anything. Well, that was that, there was nothing more to discuss. Between the cost and the paperwork, I decided I wouldn’t think about it anymore. While the problem hadn’t seemed very dramatic at the doctor’s office, it took on enormous proportions when I told Jeannine the story a few days later. Warren was willing to do anything I wanted, and told me not to worry about the money. But the costs and procedure seemed overwhelming and I refused to put any more pressure on him.
“Why does everything have to be this way?” I wailed as I sat in Jeannine’s kitchen. “Everything has been so hard since the accident. Why can’t something good happen? Something should be easy.”
By merest coincidence, Jeannine had a friend named Emily visiting who heard the conversation. And, by even greater coincidence, Emily’s sister-in-law was an embryologist who worked for a fertility doctor in Manhattan. Overhearing our conversation, she offered to call her sister-in-law for advice.
The next day Jeannine called me excitedly.
“You have to call Wally,” she said.
“Who’s Wally?”
“She’s Dr. Rosenwaks’s assistant.”
“Who’s Dr. Rosenwaks?”
“The best fertility doctor in New York. Maybe in America or even the whole world. He got Celine Dion pregnant with twins. And a lot of other celebrities go to him, too,” she said triumphantly. “Wally’s expecting your call at nine a.m. tomorrow.”
So the next morning, I picked up my phone, and as soon as I reached her and said my name, Wally started crying.
“Oh, Jackie, I’m so sorry. I know what you’re going through,” she said, as if we’d known each other forever. “My little nephew just died three weeks ago and my sister is inconsolable. But if you’re still here and making it through, I know she’s going to be okay.”
We spent a long time on the phone, talking and crying. At the end, she told me to come in the following Wednesday.
“Tell your sister I’ll pray for her son,” I said as we hung up.
The next week, I tucked a picture of the girls in my wallet to give to Wally.
“Where are we going again?” Warren asked me as we got into his car to drive to Manhattan. “And who is this man?”
“Someone important,” I said vaguely, wanting to think quietly on the drive.
Wally had said to have the receptionist call her when we arrived so we didn’t have to linger out front. But, too embarrassed to request special attention, I just gave my name and sat down in the huge, modern waiting room, which was bursting with activity. Couples desperate to get pregnant came in and out, whispering to each other, going back to procedure rooms, and talking to nurses about blood tests and hormone levels. I’d never had to cope with infertility, and I sensed the tension in the air.
An hour went by. Then an hour and a half . . .
Finally, Wally came out and saw me.
“Jackie, what are you doing here?” she asked, having recognized the name on our chart. She beckoned us to come back through a side door. “Next time come through here and don’t wait out front. You get VIP treatment.”
We went into another glass-enclosed waiting room and watched as attractive, young nurses moved efficiently through the halls and exam rooms with pleasant smiles. Too intimidated to talk, we sat quietly until we finally got called to meet the famous Dr. Zev Rosenwaks.
Considering his credentials, I understood why people would wait any length of time to see him. In person, he was polite and respectful, with no airs at all. He did a thorough exam and checked Warren’s sperm count. All good. Then we went to his office and he sat down at his desk.
“How do you want to proceed?” he asked, getting right to the point.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to get pregnant,” I said, a comment that had probably never been made in that room before.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“I just want to make embryos,” I said, remembering what the doctor at the other clinic had advised.
He looked at me for a moment, as if about to ask what I wanted to do with the embryos if not get pregnant. I might have been announcing that I wanted to do a nice little project for a school biology class. But then he seemed to brush the comment away. Of course she’ll want to have a baby, he seemed to be thinking. She just doesn’t know it yet.
“Make an appointment with Wally and we’ll get started,” he said, standing up.
“Um, before that, where’s the business office?” Warren asked. “We’ll need to figure out the finances.”
“It’s taken care of,” he said. And he walked out and shut the door.
In the sudden quiet of the office, Warren and I stared at each other, not sure what had just happened.
Finally I got up and opened the door a crack. I saw Wally standing nearby and gestured to her to come over.
“Wally? What does he mean it’s taken care of?” I asked in a loud whisper.
“He wants to do this for you without charge.”
“Why?” I asked.
She gave a little shrug and a big smile. “Why not?”
• • •
We started treatments in January. Couples going through the process often complain that in vitro fertilization is complicated and emotionally draining, but I had no emotion left to drain. I didn’t mind the whole process, because it gave some structure to the otherwise oppressive expanses of empty time that had recently defined my life. There were daily injections and trips to the doctor’s office every day to measure blood levels and the size of the eggs. Different friends drove me to Manhattan, and everyone at the office was incredibly nice to me. Wally regularly greeted me, and Hunter, the beautiful nurse assigned to my case, answered all my questions and called almost every evening with instructions. The head nurse, Jo, stopped by often to check on me, and Jenny, the medical assistant who took my blood, let me cry on her shoulder. But as nice as they all were, visiting this fertility clinic where—after three children—I would never have dreamed of being brought home my strange situation.
I’d think about where I had been before and where I was now and it just didn’t add up. Could the person sitting in this cool, clean medical office having her eggs scanned really be the same one who used to romp in the backyard with three children? If that had been the real Jackie before, who was this woman now?
Even while moving forward with the in vitro, in the back of my mind I still figured that I wouldn’t live beyond the year. I had never really let go of the thoughts of suicide that plagued me when the girls were first taken from me. A small voice in my head said that if God didn’t get around to taking me soon, I could kill myself and all would be perfect: Warren could have the embryos and someone would gestate our baby. Everyone would have a piece of me, and I’d be in heaven with the girls.
Lying on the exam table one morning as the nurse scanned my belly to measure the eggs, I felt a little guilty. Nobody realizes that I’m in no frame of mind to have a baby.
After the first cycle, Dr. Rosenwaks retrieved eight eggs and five of them were successfully fertilized. He seemed pleased, and I—the perpetual people-pleaser—liked making him happy. At least I had accomplished something. Five embryos sounded like plenty to me, but he wanted to do another cycle so that we would have more than we needed.
In the next cycle, I made ten eggs, but something went wrong with the medication right before the retrieval and none of them was fertilized. Dr. Rosenwaks called me, disappointed.
“Let’s do it one more time,” he said.
“Oh no, no,” I said. “I appreciate all you’ve done, but it’s so much money. I wouldn’t feel comfortable asking for even more.”
“I insist.”
I didn’t really want to do another cycle, but I couldn’t say no to him. His unwavering generosity moved me even more than the prospect of a baby.
On th
e third cycle, I made ten eggs and all ten were fertilized. I felt like the perfect student.
“Why don’t we implant?” Dr. Rosenwaks suggested when he called me this time with the news. “Fresh is better.”
“No, no, I’m not ready,” I said, thinking, I’ll never be ready.
“Well, you’ll have fifteen embryos frozen,” he said.
“Is that good?”
“It’s very good.”
“I’m so glad,” I said. But at that moment, I didn’t really mean it.
Part Two
2010
Sixteen
Having been raised a churchgoing Catholic, I couldn’t shake the sense that I must have done something to cause the accident. God was punishing me. If my girls were gone in this senseless manner, it must be my fault.
“It has to be something we did,” I told Warren, panicked one day. “God was mad at us.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Warren said wearily. “I’m a good person.”
“Go back to your childhood,” I begged him. “Think. It has to be something.”
“I won’t, Jackie. We’re not to blame.”
“We must be,” I insisted.
I took out a pad of paper and began writing a list of all the things I had done wrong in my life.
1. I stole a lipstick when I was 16.
2. I lied to my parents to go out with my friends.
3. I lied to Warren when I bought expensive clothes.
4. I made up a story about Emma’s broken leg to get out of therapy.
5.Sometimes I’d let the girls eat a muffin in the grocery store while we shopped—and I wouldn’t pay for it.
Even in my heightened emotional state, it seemed like a meager list. I went back to Warren.
“Don’t you feel any guilt?” I asked him.
“No. I sent my kids away with my own sister, who I loved dearly, who was good to us and the children. I did everything in my power to prevent what happened from happening. I did nothing wrong.”
“I know, but they’re dead. We obviously did something wrong.”