Chapter 5 #3
His face became a mask, but Zoe could see the reproach in his eyes.
It was a difficult subject, and she had spent much of her time since her consultant appointment pretending there wasn’t a decision to be made.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘That was uncalled for. It’s not about you, but it does affect you, I realise that.
I haven’t made a decision exactly, but I still feel the same as I did when we talked about it before.
I can’t say one way or another what’s for the best, but I know what my instinct is telling me. ’
‘I’m not getting any younger.’
‘Neither am I.’
‘And maybe I’m being greedy wanting to think about another kid. I’d never considered it, but then I met you and… I don’t know, I just feel it would complete us.’
‘You don’t feel we’re complete?’
He shook his head, gaze on the ground as they walked. ‘No, that’s not what I mean. Forget I said that. It feels like a natural step, though. We’re good together, happy; we’d get married and then we’d have a baby. That’s the way.’
‘What year is this? Have I time-travelled because last time I checked, those weren’t the rules.’
‘Don’t be offended. I knew you’d take it the wrong way. I only mean I love you, and is it so bad to want a child with you?’
‘No, but I think Mother Nature has other ideas. You already know all this – you were in the meeting with the consultant.’
‘But it can’t hurt to store some of your eggs. They said that was an option, so what have you got to lose?’
‘Nothing on a practical level, but that’s not the end of the story, is it?
I have to go through the procedure to get them, and while they exist in some freezer somewhere, I’m never quite free of the decision whether to use them or not.
If I don’t store any, the decision is already made.
If I don’t have them, I can’t use them.’
He paused, and then just as Zoe wondered if he was going to abandon the discussion, he spoke again. ‘I don’t understand why you’d leave yourself with no options. It makes no sense.’
‘I don’t suppose it does to you. It does to me. I can come to terms with a future when I know exactly what it is.’
‘Nobody knows that.’
‘True… I’ll know what it isn’t though. I’ll know that it doesn’t involve trying and failing to get pregnant, over and over. It won’t involve losing another baby.’
‘That’s your final decision?’ He shot a hurried glance at her and then shook his head. ‘Actually, forget I said that. Forget I even brought it up. You’re right – you should take as much time as you need until you come to a decision that you know is the right one.’
Zoe let out a sigh. Grizzle was digging at the base of a tree, but she was too distracted to worry about it, and as Alex didn’t move to stop him, she supposed he was too.
‘I know I said I’d think it over for longer, but I can’t see how leaving it any longer will change my mind.
I don’t want to store my eggs. And even if you say to me there’s nothing to lose and we ought to just in case and I did, I can’t see a day where I’d want to get them out of storage to try for a baby.
This relationship is not ready for a baby yet, even if we could do it naturally.
And like you said, I’m not getting any younger.
Maybe I’ll never have one… probably I’ll never have one of my own, and I’m starting to feel OK with that. ’
Alex stared beyond her. She could see him thinking about her words, that he disagreed with her and he wanted to say so, but he couldn’t figure out how without turning this into an argument.
‘I did say this to you in the beginning, and you agreed to respect my wishes.’
‘That’s not exactly what you said.’
‘OK, I said I needed time. Maybe I shouldn’t have led you on like that.
I should have said exactly how I was feeling right then, not what I thought you wanted to hear.
I suppose I wondered if things would change and I’d start to feel differently after some time to reflect.
But nothing changed, and I don’t feel differently.
I wanted a baby for the longest time, before I lost one and before I discovered how difficult it would be for me to conceive again.
In my heart, I still want one, but I don’t think I’m strong enough to go through what I’d need to, only to keep failing. ’
‘So you weren’t being honest with me?’
‘I was confused, and I was processing a whole load of stuff, and it’s unfair of you to hold me to things I might have said as soon as I came out of the appointment.’
‘You said those things when we talked about it afterwards too.’
‘About a week after!’
He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I thought you might change your mind. You seemed as if you would. My mistake, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to feel pressured.’
‘I’m not feeling pressured – that’s not what I’m saying!’ She let out a sharp sigh. ‘I knew this would happen.’
‘Don’t be like that. You can’t blame me for hoping.’
‘Why do we have to complicate things? It’s stressful enough to go through all this without trying to make it harder.
I’m only just getting my head around my infertility, and I’m making my peace with a future that doesn’t include a baby, and it would make it so much easier to know you could do the same.
In fact, you have Billie, which is more than I have. ’
‘That makes me sound so selfish and unreasonable for wanting more. I love Billie and Louisa too, and of course I’m so happy to have them in my life, but I wanted… Well, I thought you did too. I thought it would be the missing piece for us. To have a child together.’
‘It would have been if things hadn’t gone the way they have. I’m sorry if you don’t feel the same, but I’d rather move on and enjoy what we have than spend my life hoping for something and being destroyed every month it doesn’t happen.’
Zoe reached for his hand and felt him tense.
He wanted to pull away, but she knew she couldn’t let him.
She needed him to feel what she felt, that even though she wasn’t going to back down, it didn’t mean she loved him any less.
And she firmly believed that her decision would be good for him in the end, and that eventually he’d see it her way too.
She’d often had a ringside seat when it came to couples struggling to conceive; she’d seen how hard it had made life for them, how it often affected their relationships.
People persevered when it was right for them, when it mattered above all else, and that was only fair and proper, but there were others where she’d been able to see that one half of the couple didn’t have the faith or the need that the other had, who felt their life was being put on hold for a thing that might never happen.
It made them miserable and it unbalanced their relationship. She didn’t want that for her and Alex.
‘It doesn’t mean that we can’t go on as we are, or that I’d be upset if we did conceive naturally—’
‘You said that wouldn’t happen.’
‘I said it was unlikely. I have premature ovarian insufficiency, and sometimes – not often but sometimes – it resolves for a time. I never said never.’
‘Then if you’re happy to see if it pans out, what’s the difference? If you don’t mind getting pregnant naturally, then how can you mind if you do it with help?’
‘That’s the point – the help. I don’t know if you have any idea about the process, but it can be invasive and it can take over your life. Why would we want that? We’ve got so much else going on. And there’s the possibility… what if…?’
‘What if you lost it?’
‘I lost one baby. Who knows if it was something to do with my condition, that I might be faulty… no, not faulty, that’s the wrong word, but I’m struggling to find the right one.
I might not be able to carry a baby to term; maybe that’s just how I’m made, and I don’t know if I could go through that again. It ended my marriage.’
‘That would never happen to us.’
‘I don’t think it would either, but the risk is too much, however tiny it might be.
I can’t explain what it feels like to go through a loss like that, even if it didn’t split us up.
Please understand that it’s hard, harder than anything I’ve ever been through, and that was when I wasn’t worried about conceiving, when it seemed like something that was natural and easy.
So try to imagine how hard that would be when it had taken such an effort to get pregnant in the first place. ’
He gave a short nod, and as they walked, she clung tighter to his hand, trying to make him understand through touch what she was failing to convince him of with words.
The wind whipped around them, blowing her hair into her face and chilling goosebumps into her neck.
He didn’t understand, and he couldn’t imagine what she’d described – how could he?
He’d never been through it, though she never wanted to be too hard on him for that because he’d experienced his own tragedies, just as tough, even if they were very different.
And she knew he wanted to understand, even if he was struggling.
He’d told her when her fertility problems had come to light that he would always want to be with her regardless of what that meant for their future, and she’d believed that he’d meant it.
She supposed, now that they were faced with the reality of his promise, that saying it and living it were two very different things.
‘Anything else you want, we can talk about,’ she said into the silence. ‘You want to get married? Let’s get married.’
‘Not like this. Not when it’s a consolation prize. Not when you’re saying it because you feel you need to offer me something because you think I’m disappointed in you.’
‘Are you?’
‘Disappointed? God no, how can I be? I love you!’
‘But you’re disappointed in the decision.’
‘I don’t know what I am. Like you said, time to process would be good. Now I know it’s what you want and it’s final, I suppose I’ll get used to the idea. And like you said, I have Billie and Louisa.’