Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Jason
Me
Any news?
Doc
You’ll be the fourth to know. After me, Bunsen, and Beaker.
Training camp started the last week of September, which I was glad of because I needed my mind to be on hockey instead of whether I was a father to be.
It had been almost two weeks since I last delivered my genetic material to the doc and I hadn’t heard a peep from her, except for her smart-ass comment about the cats having more rights than me.
I was feeling pretty good about the previous ten days of camp.
I was gelling with Nyquist, who had taken over as captain from Theo, and even had some decent practice shifts with MacFarlane.
Coach had options for the defensive line, which was basically why I was here.
While I highly doubted I could fully fill my brother’s skates, I had youth (sort of) and stamina (definitely) on my side.
I picked up my phone from my cubby in the locker room. Still nothing from the doc. I was going to have to go over to her place and suss out the situation.
Twenty minutes later, I hit the intercom button for Franky’s building and waited. Waited some more. Just as I was about to leave, a fuzzy voice emerged from the speaker.
“Hello?”
“It’s Jason.”
The entrance buzzer sounded, and the main door opened. Up the stairs I bounded, and when I reached it, her door was ajar. I pushed it in.
“Doc?”
Sniffles. She was sitting on the sofa with a box of tissues and reddened eyes. Something in me reared up, an urge to hurt what had hurt mine.
“Who did this to you?”
“You did! Or more to the point, you didn’t. I’m not pregnant!”
Shit. “You’re sure?”
“I got my period today.”
I took a seat beside her, the rage in my chest at seeing her so upset barely subsiding to a simmer. If we’d been friends, I would have put an arm around her, given her physical comfort, but we weren’t. We were in a weird liminal space where the rules were slippery and unknowable.
“We can try again.”
“I-I know.” She pushed her glasses back up her nose. “I just thought that now it was happening that it would be—”
“Happening?”
“Yes. I assumed the hardest part was finding the candidate. That wasn’t hard at all. You just rocked up and offered!”
“You make me sound easy.”
She raised an eyebrow. I had amused her.
“You did offer your services rather quickly. Have you ever impregnated someone before?”
I averted her headlight-bright gaze. “No. But there’s nothing wrong with my boys.”
“So it’s my fault?”
“Didn’t say that. Doc, you’re a scientist. Think it through. Did you really think we were going to succeed the first time out?”
She blew out a breath that ruffled her bangs and set her chin stubbornly. “I wanted it to.”
“You know something? I’ve wanted to win the Cup for my whole career. Fifteen seasons and no joy. Didn’t mean I didn’t try or that my team was no good. It just didn’t happen. But I still think I can do it this year because if I was to give up on that dream, I’d be giving up on life!”
She peered at me. “I can’t believe you’ve never won the whole thing. Though you came close three years ago. McCluskey should have been ejected for that hit he made on you.”
That hit ended my playoffs a round early. Who was to say how far we would have gone if I’d stayed in?
“You’ve been keeping track of my career?”
“Purely from interest in the gruesome details. So much blood.” She reached for my eyebrow, her fingertips soft against the scar left by McCluskey’s stick.
In an all-out melee, I’d lost my helmet, and that wily prick went for the kill.
Anyone with eyes could have seen he did it deliberately, but the zebras were skating blind that night.
I was glad my old misfortune had given her something to think about other than her own misery. Our misery, because we were a team here, and I wanted this, too. Maybe I liked her warm fingertips on my face as well.
“I think I can win this year.”
“The Cup?”
“Among other things.”
She dropped her hand. “A baby’s not some trophy you can parade around.”
I chuckled. “If there’s a baby in the picture, you can bet I’ll be holding that little warrior aloft before getting him baptized in the hardware!”
That made her laugh and winning that seemed like a huge victory. If I could do that, I could make a baby and smash the Finals.
“Banking on a boy?”
I shrugged. “I don’t mind. As long as they’re healthy. Now how about some tea?”
Another scoot of the St. James eyebrow.
“I can make tea, Doc. No need to look so skeptical.”
“I’m not. Tea would be lovely.”
Franky
Disappointment still gnawed at me. Jason was the last person I had wanted to see and now the only person I could imagine being here with me right now.
There were plenty of people I could call to be my shoulder—Rosie, Cat, Vi, Dad—but somehow it felt right that I share this mini-heartbreak with the man who could potentially fix it.
Jason was right: there was no reason why we couldn’t try again, yet every day that passed was a day I was less likely to conceive.
I was old in fertility terms. Jason was in his prime. Only two years younger than me, and he was considered the perfect specimen. It didn’t seem fair, but life often failed to measure up to equity standards, especially when it came to men and women.
I could hear him puttering about in my kitchen.
He didn’t know where anything was and not even how to make tea the way I liked it.
I could have gone in there and taken over, but I liked the sound of him in the next room.
It was similar to when I heard Beaker crashing into something in the bathroom.
There was comfort in knowing I wasn’t completely alone.
As my cats had yet to learn how to make tea, Jason would have to do.
I thought back to my plan to get pregnant, assessing each step in the process to see where I might have gone wrong.
Jason was right—not that I’d ever tell him—that a first-time attempt wasn’t guaranteed to work.
Sure, if I was a teen fooling around with her boyfriend who insisted on “just the tip,” I would probably be knocked up by now because that was the way the universe worked.
But, even in making all these preparations, taking the fertility drugs, and ensuring the best possible conditions for conception, it still hadn’t worked.
Was I missing something? Home insemination was a proven method but had a roughly eighteen percent success rate. That was probably less for someone who was older than thirty-five, geriatric in pregnancy terms. So we were looking at a one-in-six or seven chance of getting pregnant.
Not great odds.
I could improve them with additional insertions of sperm, but it might take another six months, or longer. Would Jason be willing to participate for that long? And how would he feel about being little more than a delivery mechanism for his valuable genetic content?
“Milk? Sugar?” he called out.
“Milk, please. No sugar.”
A minute later, he arrived with two cups of tea. I had already put a coaster out for one and now I added another. He placed the cups carefully.
“Thank you.”
“No problem.”
He took a sip of his own and grimaced slightly, which made me smile. What a trouper. But would he be such a good sport if I tied him up for six months or more?
“I might go the anonymous sperm donor route.”
He stared at me over his cup, then placed it back down on the table.
“You’re already giving up? Why?”
“Because this might take a long time. And in the meantime, you would be beholden—well, obligated—”
“I know what beholden means.”
Of course he did. “To be on call for monthly donations. It’s a lot to ask of you, and it’ll just get weirder.”
He snorted. “Weirder than it already is? Don’t think that’s possible. Look, I understand if you’re having second thoughts about me as your baby’s daddy. Maybe now you’ve gotten to know me a little, I’m not what you had in mind.”
“You were never what I had in mind! That’s not it.
I think you’d be a fine donor and father, but the burden it places on you is more than I considered.
I had hoped it would be one and done, but what if it’s five, six, seven months, and still no baby in sight?
Are you prepared to roll up here monthly on an indefinite basis, dick in hand, reporting for duty? ”
My outburst had clearly shocked him into silence. Then a small smile curved his lips, a smile that turned wider as the seconds passed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Dick in hand, reporting for duty. You sure do have a way with words, Doc.”
I placed my head in my hands. “I don’t want you to worry about being a prop in all of this. Because you want to be involved as a father, it might be psychologically ruinous for your role to be seen as merely biological at this point.” I peeked at him through the cage of my fingers.
He narrowed his eyes at me. “I think you’re trying to bamboozle me with your vocab there, but I’ll try my best to generate a plain language summary. You’re worried that this process will take a toll on my mental health.”
How rare to meet someone who could take my often torturous way with words and translate it into language the average person could understand.
Most men I knew were either so smart that they saw my speech patterns as a challenge or too stupid to even try to parse my meaning.
I had to admit I spoke this way sometimes to test someone—and here was Jason Isner blowing away all my preconceptions.
“I am.”
He placed a hand on my back, gently moving it around in circles meant to soothe, but which did nothing of the sort. His touch was fire. Damn those fertility drugs for making everything so … lusty!
“Franky, I never thought this was going to happen the first time out. Sure, it might be tough for us both if we’re six months in with nothing to show for it, but I think it’ll be tougher for you.
Now anything worth doing is worth doing well.
And by well, I mean sticking at it until we’re both damn sick of each other, or there’s a baby in your belly. ”
I loved when he got riled up, and I’d clearly annoyed him with the notion of letting him off the hook. He hated the idea that I wasn’t giving him a chance to make it right. The warrior athlete in him saw success as the only option.
Was it possible I’d chosen the best possible father for my child?
“You make some good points.”
“Fuck yeah, I do.” He dropped his hand and returned to his tea. “Hey, this stuff isn’t half bad. Now how about we coordinate calendars for next month?”
He had talked me off the ledge and thankfully, removed his strong, warm hand from my body. All was right again. Sort of.
I sipped my Earl Grey tea, surprisingly well made and steeped to perfection. “Let’s.”