by R. R. Banks
“I told you that I went to see my doctor this morning,” she said.
“Yes,” I said, nodding, the realization of the message that she had already told me starting to settle in again. “I remember you said that.”
“And do you remember what the doctor told me?” she asked, her voice going back to the fragile, weak sound.
“Something about your eggs?” I asked.
I sounded unsure and I knew that it would only make her angrier, but part of me didn’t want to hear what she had said. She nodded, her eyes widening and glazing over with tears until she looked like a baby doll.
“The doctor told me that my eggs aren’t viable,” she said.
“What does that mean?” I asked, even though I already knew and just needed for her to say it, just to make sure that I really did know what she was telling me.
“It means that it’s not just that I can’t carry a pregnancy,” she said. “I can’t even conceive a baby. What few eggs I do produce aren’t healthy enough to actually support a baby.”
“What does that mean for the surrogacy?” I asked.
Flora’s mouth fell open slightly as if she was horrified that I would even think to ask such a question.
“Is that really all you care about?” she asked. “I’m telling you that I’ve heard this terrible news about my health, and all you can think about is whether this woman you’ve chosen is going to be able to get pregnant?”
I looked at her quizzically.
“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t that why you’re upset, too? You aren’t sick. You aren’t suffering from a serious medical condition that’s going to threaten your life. If your eggs aren’t viable, wouldn’t the only reason for you to be upset be that the surrogacy can’t go forward like we planned?”
Flora looked at me for a few seconds and I could see the thoughts churning through her mind as she tried to process what I had said and put it into the context of what she was feeling. Finally, she gave a slow nod.
“You want a baby so badly,” she said.
“I thought that we wanted a baby so badly,” I said.
“Of course,” Flora said. “That’s what I meant. We want our child. And now the doctors have told me that I can’t possibly have one. What are we going to do?”
I checked the time on my phone.
“Rue has an appointment to meet with the doctor in twenty minutes,” I said. “We’ll go to the meeting and talk about it. Maybe the doctor has a suggestion.”
“Don’t you think that if there was any option at all, that my doctor would be able to tell me?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “You insisted on going to your regular doctor rather than a fertility and surrogacy specialist. Maybe there’s something that she doesn’t know that we could consider.”
Before she could argue with me anymore, I grabbed up my coat and headed out of the house. Unlike the other appointments that were held in the medical center of one of my office buildings, this appointment was at the hospital where the specialist I had chosen currently worked. If all went according to plan, however, he wouldn’t be working there exclusively for much longer.
When we arrived at the hospital, I took a few seconds to look over the outside of the building and the parking lot area, taking notes of what I would change. My car pulled up in front of the entrance and I got out, turning to help Flora out behind me. Rue was already waiting in the doctor’s office when we walked in, her eyes locked on Ellery, glaring at him angrily.
“Is everything alright?” I asked.
“I wasn’t even late,” she muttered, more under her breath than to me.
“What?” I asked.
Rue looked up at me and I noticed a hint of color splash across her cheeks.
“Oh, hi,” she said.
My mind traveled back to the thoughts that I had had when Flora first revealed her news to me and I had to pull my eyes away from Rue to end them. I crossed the office to the desk and reached out a hand to shake the doctor’s. He smiled at me with the warm, jovial smile that had put me at ease the first time I met him and gestured toward the chairs set up beside Rue. I intended to take the outer chair, allowing Flora to sit between us, but she dropped down into that chair without looking toward Rue or me. I sat down in the chair in the middle and smiled at Dr. Morgan, hoping that the awkwardness I was feeling wasn’t obvious to everyone else in the room.
“Good morning, everyone,” he said. “I’m excited to be getting started on this journey with you.”
“Before we get started,” Flora interjected, holding up a hand to stop the doctor from continuing. “I think that I need to tell you something. I’m not sure why we are even here. This cannot proceed.”
I heard Rue let out a little gasp beside me and I looked back at her. She was looking down at her lap, seemingly embarrassed by her reaction. I looked at Dr. Morgan, who had his head cocked and was looking at Flora through narrowed eyes.
“Why is that?” he asked.
“I came from my doctor earlier this morning,” Flora said, and I felt my chest constrict. I was hoping that she was going to give me the opportunity to do a little bit of a lead-in before she just blurted out what the doctors had told her, but she obviously wasn’t going to give me that opportunity. “They told me that my eggs aren’t viable, so I will not be able to conceive a child, even through laboratory means.”
“Well,” I said, reaching out to touch her leg comfortingly. “They didn’t say that specifically. They said that her eggs aren’t viable, but her doctor isn’t a fertility specialist. We were hoping that maybe you would know of an alternative that would still allow the plan to move forward.”
Dr. Morgan nodded.
“I do,” he said.
Relief rushed through me and I let out a sigh, my smile widening.
I knew that there was still going to be a way.
“That’s wonderful news,” I said.
“But,” Dr. Morgan said, some of the brightness gone from his face as he seemed to caution me with the tone of his voice. “It might not be what the two of you had planned.”
“What do you mean?” Flora asked.
“If your eggs aren’t viable, there’s really nothing that I can do to make them viable. It just means that they can’t be used. That doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t use another egg.”
“Another egg?” I asked.
“An egg donor is used in a large percentage of surrogacies.”
“You want me to just choose a stranger and use their egg?” Flora asked.
“Not necessarily a stranger,” Dr. Morgan said.
He looked to Rue.
“Rue,” he said.
“Me?” she asked.
“Traditional surrogacy involves the woman who is acting as gestational carrier to also contribute her egg. The process is largely the same except for the insemination procedure, and the legalities will remain that once the baby is born, it is the child of the couple and not the surrogate.”
Silence fell over the room for only a beat before it filled with voices.
“How could you even suggest that?” Flora demanded.
“You can’t be serious,” Ellery said.
“This will make things much more complicated,” Mr. Lawrence said from where he was standing on the other side of Ellery.
“I’ll do it.”
Everyone turned and looked at Rue. She was staring directly at Dr. Morgan, her face still and seemingly unfazed by the announcement.
“You will?” I asked.
The relief that had drained away rushed back now, heightened with hope. Rue looked at me and nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “I will. I told you that I would do anything that I could to help you and that I was in this for the long haul. I meant that. Just because things aren’t working out exactly the way that you had them planned doesn’t mean that you should give up or that you can’t ever have a child. If the doctor won’t be able to harvest any of Flora’s eggs to use and the doctor and the la
wyer both think that it is a realistic plan to use mine, then I am willing to do it.”
****
Rue
What in the living-fucking-flipping-hell did I just agree to?
I had told them that they were more than welcome to use my eggs before I even had a chance to think it all the way through. It was like my mind was still in the process of going through it all and the words just jumped out without authorization. Richard had looked so sad, though, that I hadn’t given myself time to really contemplate what I was agreeing to and just how much that single agreement was going to change everything about the journey that I had in front of me.
One gorgeous man looks sad and suddenly I’m like an all-night grocery store near Easter. Eggs up for grabs all over the place.
I could feel everyone in the room staring at me and I was wishing that this had been a slightly more private meeting, or at least that I had given a token ‘I’ll think about it’ and then discussed my willingness with Richard when it could be just the two of us.
My willingness?
When it came to Richard it seemed to me that my willingness was bordering much closer to wanting to conceive this baby the good old-fashioned way than it was to offering him my egg because his girlfriend wasn’t able to conceive or carry a child. Something struck me as strange about that. This woman was young and healthy. At least she looked it. I knew that things like this happened, but I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that someone like her was never going to be able to have her own child. If she wanted any more than the one we were discussing now, she would have to go through all of this again.
Suddenly I was struck with the strange thought that if that happened, I hoped they would call me again. Not that I had the particular urge to go through another pregnancy that wouldn’t be mine, but that so the child that they would have from this pregnancy would be the full sibling of any future children that they had. I didn’t know why that mattered to me, but somehow it did.
“Thank you so much, Rue,” Richard said. “You have no idea what this means to me.”
“Yes,” Flora said, her voice somewhat flatter now. “No idea.”
I don’t see too many hugs in my future.
“Of course, all care after today will be performed at the new facility,” Richard said. “I want Rue to have the best attention throughout the entire process, including leading up to the insemination.”
“New facility?” I asked.
Richard looked at me as if I had somehow missed something that I should already know. I wondered briefly if there had been an orientation packet that I hadn’t read through. Ellery stepped up beside me and thrust a sheaf of papers into my hand.
Well, shit, there’s an orientation packet that I haven’t read through.
The first page of the packet was a crisp cover sheet with our names and the year printed on it. I suddenly felt like I was in some sort of corporate conference. I was just waiting for them to call a break and start bringing in boxed lunches. They didn’t, though, and I opened up the packet to find a sketch of a small, but impressive, building.
“What is this?” I asked.
“I’ve designed a medical facility to handle your needs throughout the pregnancy and during the delivery,” Richard said.
“You have?” I asked, shocked by the casualness of the statement.
“I did extensive research before starting the search for the right woman to carry our child and I realized that the medical facilities in this area are woefully lacking when it comes to their maternity departments.” He glanced at the doctor. “I apologize.”
“It’s alright,” Dr. Morgan said. “I know that you have discerning tastes.”
Were we talking about restaurants or hospitals here?
“I wanted to make sure that whoever I chose to carry my child would be in the very best hands from the beginning of the process. The facility that I have designed will be ready within a matter of days and will feature cutting edge technology, a dedicated staff of doctors, midwives, doulas, and nurses, as well as chefs, massage therapists, yoga instructors, nutritionists, therapists, and other professionals, and accommodations designed to be more comfortable than clinical. Throughout your pregnancy and until the baby is born and has reached six weeks old, you will be the only patient at the facility. After that it will be endowed as an exclusive private maternity center.”
I blinked a few times, trying to give my brain the chance to absorb what he had just told me.
“You built a new medical center just for this baby?” I asked.
“Yes,” Richard said. “It is very important to me that my child get only the best and I intend for that to apply from the moment that it exists.”
How wealthy was this man?
The rest of my time with the doctors went by in a bit of a blur of intense conversations, whispering between Flora and Richard, cold instruments, unflattering hospital robes, and endless reminders of everything that my body would go through during this process. When I felt like my brain had stopped spinning I was sitting back on the couch at my apartment with Christopher and Tessie on either side of me.
“You did what?” Christopher asked.
“I told them that they could use my egg,” I said, still somewhat surprised myself to hear the words coming out of my mouth.
“So, it will be your baby?” Tessie asked.
I shook my head.
“No,” I said. “It will still be their baby. The lawyer was there throughout the whole thing to make sure that I understood what was happening, and we signed the contracts. Essentially whatever egg they use won’t belong to me. The baby is theirs. They get to dictate how I take care of myself during the pregnancy so that they know that I’m taking care of the baby properly. As soon as the baby is born, I hand it over to them. They’ll provide for post-natal care up until my six-week checkup and then we go our separate ways.”
“And you don’t have anything to do with the baby?” Christopher asked.
“Nope,” I said. “It isn’t an adoption. This is their baby.”
I told them about the medical facility that Richard had designed.
“This man has some serious money,” Tessie said. “No wonder the fee he’s offering is higher than average.”
“It is?” I asked.
Christopher nodded.
“We’ve been doing some research,” he said. “We wanted to make sure that we were up on the news.”
I felt tears coming into my eyes and I reached out to grab both of their hands.
“Are you alright?” Christopher asked. “Is this baby hormones?”
I laughed as the first few tears slipped out of my eyes.
“I’m not even pregnant yet,” I said.
“Then what’s wrong?” Tessie asked.
I shook my head.
“I’m not sure.”
It was the complete truth. I wasn’t sure what emotions were rushing through me. The reality of it all had settled in and I was starting to feel overwhelmed. In the back of my mind, though, my dream was still bright and vibrant, the tender, grateful smile on Richard’s lips superimposed on it making my heart shiver in my chest.
Chapter Ten
Richard
“How could you do that?”
I had barely gotten the door to our house closed when Flora whipped around to glare at me and took an angry step in my direction.
“Do what?” I asked, unbuttoning my jacket and handing it to the butler to hang it for me.
He walked past Flora without pausing to ask for her coat. To say that they didn’t get along would be a tremendous understatement and I tended to look the other way when he avoided interacting with her if she seemed to be in a particularly bad mood, which it was obvious in that moment that she was. Her face was reddened with anger and her mouth was pursed so hard her lips were barely visible anymore. Like usual in situations like this, I would take Flora’s jacket and put it aside somewhere. It would be gone the next time that I walked through t
he room, only to reappear the next time that we were leaving the house.
“I can’t believe that you asked Rue to let us use her egg.”
“I didn’t ask,” I said. “She offered.”
“And you accepted.”
“Of course, I did. You heard what Dr. Morgan said. If your doctor said that your eggs aren’t viable, then that’s it. They can’t be used for the surrogacy.”
“And you were just so willing to jump on using her egg.”
I crossed the foyer toward her and she promptly turned and stalked away from me. I followed her into the living room where she tossed herself into one of the plush sofas. If I wasn’t mistaken, in less than five minutes one of the housekeepers would arrive with a tray of tea and the tasteless, boring diet cookies that Flora insisted were delicious but I knew from personal experience tasted like cardboard dipped in old advent calendar chocolate. I couldn’t remember which of Flora’s meltdowns had started that tradition, but it was now common practice of the staff to try to release some of her tension and soothe her back from the brink. I would show my appreciation with an extra little tip at the end of the week. It was one of those things that defined the pattern of our lives and while it was one of the less pleasant of the habits that we had built, I was so accustomed to it by now that it barely fazed me when it happened. I just needed to figure out what it was that she was furious about, let her steam for a little bit, then figure out a way to fix it or just ride it out until she was over it or had moved on to something else that would hold her attention for a while.
I knew that things were going to be different when the baby came. Being a mother would calm her down. It would give her something to focus on and to fulfill her. When she had our baby to take care of, she wouldn’t be so frustrated and put out by the little things that happened in life because we would be too busy taking care of our little one. The three of us would settle into life together and Flora and I would finally be the family that I always envisioned having.