July #4
The temperature dropped as I followed Doctor Day into his office, and I heard the fly-like whir of the air-conditioning unit before I caught sight of the clunky white contraption on the ceiling.
My attention moved towards his desk, where I noticed for the first time a couple of framed family photos.
He had a wife, who was quite beautiful, with a dark bob and winged eyebrows, and two small girls who looked close in age and were wearing matching marigold-yellow dungarees.
My mind strayed first to thoughts of his marriage and whether it was a happy one, then to the girls and the possibility that they’d been ice babies.
‘Right,’ he said, sitting down and straightening his tie, ‘let’s get this paperwork out of the way.’
Along with my treatment plan there was a breakdown of the fixed-price package, which was less fixed than the name would suggest, thanks to additional costs for everything from sedation to storage.
I tried to keep a neutral look on my face as I totted up the numbers and worked out that, if I were to store my eggs for a year alone, I’d be looking at paying around six thousand pounds.
‘And these are the consent forms for you to sign,’ said Doctor Day, pushing the numbers to one side.
I took my time reading the part about me giving approval for the procedure, then skimmed the section about what would happen to my eggs if I died or became somehow incapacitated, scribbling my signature on the dotted lines.
‘Any questions?’ he asked, shuffling the paperwork into a neat pile.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said, feeling like I was in an interview and should have prepared at least one insightful enquiry for the end.
‘Well, if any arise, just give me a call.’ He slid the papers into my file, then slid that file into the top drawer of a metal filing cabinet with squeaky hinges.
‘OK, that’s that, and these are for you.
’ He handed me my own breakdown of the costs, as well as a brochure on counselling.
‘We offer a free session with all our treatments – optional, of course, though we would recommend it.’
My roaming gaze landed on the words ‘individuals or couples’.
‘I have another appointment, so I’m going to ask one of my colleagues to talk you through what will happen next.’
I nodded, still scanning the leaflet, which was now lying open on my lap. Seeing a counsellor can help you to ‘understand your partner’s responses to treatment’.
Doctor Day cleared his throat and picked up his phone. He asked for someone called Amina, and a few seconds later there was a sharp knock at the door. He made some introductions : ‘Cathy, this is Amina, one of our senior nurses. Amina, this is Cathy, who’s going to be freezing her eggs with us.’
‘Nice to meet you,’ I mumbled, aware that this was all becoming very real.
‘So,’ said Doctor Day, with a smile that contained an air of finality, ‘I’ll see you in a few days.’
Amina was already walking away, and he gestured for me to follow.
She was about my age, I would guess, with a freckly face and scarlet hair so bright it had to be dyed.
I followed her down the corridor and into another consultation room, which may or may not have been her office.
I glanced at the desk but saw no family photos.
Just some neon-rainbow Post-it Notes and a half-eaten Snickers bar.
In her hands she had a bin liner-like bag filled with colour-coded drugs, which she announced quite brusquely was my injection pack. She fished out a sheet of paper. ‘See this flow chart?’ she asked.
I nodded ; I saw it.
‘This is a breakdown of everything you need to do over the next fortnight,’ she said. ‘So, you’ll see that you need to inject every night for two weeks and come into the clinic every three days for a scan.’ She jabbed at various points in the chart with a long acrylic nail.
‘How?’
‘How what?’
I wondered if it was a stupid question to ask and was thankful not to have thought of it when I was with Doctor Day. ‘How do I inject?’
When she didn’t sigh or raise her neatly shaped eyebrows, I relaxed in the knowledge that perhaps it was a question she’d been expecting.
She reached back into the bag and retrieved two smaller bags, one filled with a dozen thick needles with pink plastic tops, the other a dozen slightly thinner needles with yellow lids.
‘You take a pink needle, suck up some saline solution from one vial and inject it into another vial containing the powder.’ She paused to look at me, and when I didn’t respond she must have taken my silence as tacit compliance, because she continued : ‘Next, you remove the pink needle and shake the vial containing the mixture.’ Another pause.
‘Then you inject the yellow needle into the vial, suck up the mixture, about a teaspoon’s worth, tap the syringe to make sure there are no air bubbles, and inject. ’
‘Inject?’
‘Inject.’
‘Into?’
‘Your stomach or your upper thighs, whichever you prefer.’
I nodded, again, mute, wondering if this was a preference of which I should have already been aware.
‘You got it?’
‘I’ve got it.’ But did I? I was about to ask if she could repeat the instructions, more slowly this time, so I could write them down, when she told me there was a leaflet in the bag, plus a sharps bin to dispose of the used needles.
She was already bundling the bits back in and reiterating Doctor Day’s parting line about calling if I had any questions. Satisfied, she passed it to me and told me, not exactly insincerely, to have a good day.
‘You too,’ I said, folding the bag up into as small a parcel as possible and clutching it to my chest.
I held it there as I walked back towards the Tube.
The sun was higher in the sky now, beating down on my forehead, and like cling film, my dress clung to my skin, which was damp with sweat.
When I saw a police officer, my heart pounded hard and fast. He turned to look at me.
I kept walking. I pictured his palm rising – Hang on a moment, Miss – and his free hand gesturing for me to hand over the bag.
Me : It’s for my ovaries, I swear! Instead, his gaze slid down my bare legs to my sandals, then back to his iced coffee.
It turned out Noah had no choice about being involved.
On day one of my hormone injections, I was sitting cross-legged on the bathroom floor in nothing but my pants and bra, the grouting of the tiles imprinting itself on the backs of my thighs.
I held one pink needle and one yellow needle in my palm and took a deep breath.
When I started to feel faint, I closed my eyes, and kept breathing – in one, two, three , out one, two, three .
When I reopened my eyes, the dizziness had mostly subsided.
I followed Amina’s instructions, mixing the powder and saline solution, filling the syringe, and getting rid of the air bubble – then wondering what would happen if I forgot that part, my mind skipping to the terrifying story an older girl at school had told my own year group about the dangers of having sex in a swimming pool.
Taking another deep breath, I tried to pinch a bit of fat and pierce my stomach.
With the tip of the needle pressing up against my skin, I tested its sharpness, then I squeezed my eyes shut and pushed.
Nothing happened. I pushed again, or at least I thought I did.
It was only when Noah walked in and slipped the syringe out of my hand that I realised I was barely holding onto it.
‘Here?’ he asked, indicating towards my stomach with his eyes.
I nodded and re-pinched the skin.
‘Look the other way,’ he said, gently, rubbing my upper back – the way he’d done once or twice in the past when I’d been crouching beside the loo for another, altogether messier reason.
‘OK, I’m going to do it,’ he said, unfazed, his fingers now moving back and forth across my stomach, which was rippling with nerves. ‘Just breathe, honey.’
I did as he said, I breathed.
A pop, then a slight sting. The dizziness returned as he slipped the needle out from inside me.
‘Well, that’s one down,’ he said, disposing of the needle in the small, yellow sharps bin.
I thanked him, and together we sat on the cold tiles, my head on his shoulder, his hand on my leg. We stayed that way for a while, as though one of us had hit pause, then he stood up and brushed his teeth and I did the same.
Back at work, I imagined the hormones swirling around inside me, stimulating my ovaries.
The whale was almost completely revealed, and it had become clear that the man balancing on its back was measuring its length with a rope.
I just had to remove the final bits of overpaint from the tail, which was half submerged beneath the waves.
As I daubed the surface with the solvent solution, I was acutely aware that I too was being primped and preened.
But while the whale in front of me was coming to life before my eyes, even in death, I felt myself disappearing.
It was like I’d slipped into a fugue state while the rest of the world continued, on mute, around me.