Chapter 47
Forty-Seven
The same adrenaline rush I get before a big pitch hits me as I sit in Dr. Cantor’s office.
With my hand not holding my phone, I pull a ball back on the Newton’s cradle and count the number of thwacks, giving up after twenty.
I can’t believe how much has changed since I first sat here two months ago.
That Reese didn’t know she was about to fall in love—both with a man and his niece—to the point of near delirium—and want him to father her child. As many as he can manage.
Whatever Dr. Cantor’s about to tell me is irrelevant, but I’ll hear her out.
And after she goes over my bloodwork and explains the IUI process, the meeting will end with me telling her I’m never coming back here.
That truth has been building for days, but any last threads of doubts were stripped away last night.
Addie painted my fingers and fingernails then we performed a dance we made up—both of us wearing a pair of my pumps and completely offbeat—and Gavin applauded like we were the Rockettes.
We ate frozen pizza with canned pineapple that Addie made—it was disgusting—and sat on the couch and watched Overboard. When Goldie Hawn told Kurt Russell he could give her a little girl, Gavin leaned over and whispered in my ear, “You’re going to be a great mom.”
That’s when I knew everything. Fully. I loved him, I never wanted to be where he wasn’t, and I wanted to have as many kids with him as I could whenever he wanted to start making them.
I knew it the way I know a good deal from bad and Gavin knows how to turn molten glass into art. This is where I belong.
Of course, I didn’t tell him that. I want to surprise him. All of them. After all, my first go at surprising them went so well at the farm—Addie hasn’t stopped talking about it—this soirée would be even better. Perfect even. Excellent.
Which is why this morning I texted my sisters—and Gavin—and invited them over for dinner. Where I’m going to tell them—and Gavin—that I own the vineyard and I want to spend my life running it with them instead of chasing the next deal in Chicago.
I don’t know what the logistics look like—I’ll talk timing with Gavin after tonight—but my smile is permanent, and my body feels like a cage of hummingbirds has been set free inside of it.
After so many years of my only relationship being with work, I, Reese Conway, am going to have so many people in my life I’ll be one of those women who seek quiet refuge by going grocery shopping.
My veins are fizzy—my blood might have been replaced by champagne.
Two months ago, I wouldn’t have believed I was capable of feeling like this, but here I am, drunk on life without drinking a drop of alcohol.
I’m getting what I want, but more than that, I’m happy in a way I didn’t believe was possible.
I’m going to make Addie a big sister and Gavin the dad he wants to be.
“I’m having a baby,” I whisper to the room, palm flat against my belly.
At the photo of Dr. Cantor on the wall with her family in Switzerland I once stared at to hide the fact I stole medical information, I imagine it’s me. My kids in puffy coats, Gavin and Addie, all of us smiling.
The door opens.
“Reese,” Dr. Cantor says with a warm smile as she steps in the office. “Thank you for waiting.”
She slips into the chair behind her desk and clicks the computer to life.
“No problem.”
Now that I’m here and she’s here and this is real, I can’t believe I ever imagined myself doing this with anyone but Gavin. Every difference between us ceases to exist. I don’t care where I live or where I work or he works or if he eats from a community bowl and drinks beer from a can.
I can’t stop smiling. I feel so . . . silly.
Maybe I am besotted.
Dr. Cantor folds her perfectly manicured hands on a file and looks at me. “How’ve you been feeling?”
“Good.” I temper my enthusiasm. “I’ve been following the fertility diet you recommended.
Meditating.” Banyan’s perverse face comes to mind.
“Exercising. I feel good.” I smile wide—I can’t help it.
This overwhelming feeling within me could manifest into a whole damn parade.
I laugh. “Excited, if I’m honest.” Excited doesn’t hold a candle to what I’m feeling.
Dr. Cantor’s quiet. Her position doesn’t change, and her smile stays, but it’s as if her eyes dim, just slightly.
My gaze bounces from the computer back to her and my phone dings in my hands.
Gavin: Good luck today. Can’t wait to see you tonight.
Dr. Cantor slides a single paper across the desk and turns her computer monitor so I can see the screen. It’s filled with numbers I can’t decode.
“We’re going to go through each of these together,” she says. “And I want you to stay with me, or tell me if you need a break, okay?”
A break?
“Um.” My gaze drops to the paper. “Okay . . .”
Then she points to a number and starts talking, and my joy and the world start to crumble.
My AMH—some protein hormone that indicates ovarian reserve—is low. Very low. Point one, to be exact.
Healthy and thriving is one.
A slow-to-grow pit forms within me, but still I ask, “What does it mean?”
“Well.” She sighs. “Combined with these other markers”—she points to said markers—“it means you have a less-than-ideal number of viable eggs left. And this number—she points to a 3 mm—“shows your endometrial thickness is low, which severely reduces implantation chances.”
Severely?
“So we just need more sperm?” I ask, summoning relief. “Because I was waiting to tell you this, but I know a donor—who’s not a donor—” I grin. “And happy to oblige.”
Her smile is here then gone. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work like that.
One of these markers being off wouldn’t be problematic, but the AMH combined with the elevated FSH and the endometrial thinning .
. . it changes things.” She pauses. “An IUI like we discussed would likely be unsuccessful and is no longer recommended.”
“I don’t understand.” Because I don’t. She can’t tell me I can’t have an IUI—that’s my job. To tell her that not only do I not want stranger sperm or a procedure, but I’m having my own baby. “What do you mean no longer recommended?”
She clears her throat. “It means that these results combined with your age are indicative of diminished ovarian reserve—DOR you might hear it called—and we won’t do the procedure at this point.”
The room tilts.
“Um.” I exhale. “What?”
“This isn’t a reflection of you, Reese,” she offers. “It’s nothing you’ve done. It—” She sighs and there’s that sympathetic smile I’d love to filet off her face. “These things happen as we get older and there’s no one set timeline for it.”
“I see.” I keep my voice level. “And what chance do I have to naturally conceive?”
“It’s not that easy to—”
“I said—” I carefully articulate my next words, so I know she hears me. “What chance do I have to naturally conceive a baby, Dr. Cantor?”
She looks from me to her computer then back to me. “If you woul—”
“Say it.”
She sighs.
Then does.
“It’s hard to give an exact number,” she says, “but I’d say based on these tests alone—” She blows out a breath. “Less than one percent.”
I know odds—I play them every day—and I know less than one percent coming from a doctor are terrible fucking odds.
At the doctor notes, I nearly collapse: severely diminished ovarian reserve, age further reduces expected egg quality, per-cycle chances of pregnancy low, endometrial thinning suboptimal for implantation.
“What about medication?”
“For an IUI?” She gives me a grim look. “Not with these numbers.”
And then I read the rest: IVF with donor eggs recommended for highest likelihood of conception if endometrial thickness improves.
“Donor eggs?” I’m going to be sick. “What about my eggs?”
“The data suggests with these numbers that the likelihood of retrieving any viable eggs is low.” She keeps talking—citing studies and statistics I don’t like and the ways IVF is my best chance even though that chance is pretty fucking slim—but I’m gone.
Out of my body and this room, homesick for a life I never got to live.
I can’t have a baby of my own. Nobody will ever look like me or have my laugh.
Nobody will ever be all mine. Or Gavin’s, if he stays with me.
“The egg donor process,” Dr. Cantor says, “is very similar to what you just did with the sperm donors, should you want to go that route.”
“I don’t want an egg donor.” This can’t be happening. “I want my eggs. Mine.”
The phone dings again. You know a baby owl in the rain is called a moist owlette?
Dr. Cantor sighs. “IVF with a donor egg is your best possible chance if endometrial thickening therapy is successful.”
“If?” I take one breath, then another. “And what if it isn’t?”
Dr. Cantor eyes the paper and sighs a sound I know means devastation. “We won’t transfer an embryo with a measurement below six millimeters.” Her gaze flicks to the computer. “But there’s always the option of using a surrogate.”
The word surrogate knocks any remaining breath out of me.
“You’re telling me the difference between me being able to have a baby or not is three millimeters?
” In my pause, she doesn’t answer. “No.” I flick the paper across the desk.
“I didn’t eat deli meat or drink coffee.
I meditated. I ate salmon. I’m on the most expensive prenatal vitamins money can buy and ordered a crib that will be delivered next week because I couldn’t wait.
” I roll my shoulders. “I vetted the donors.”
Dr. Cantor’s features soften. “Reese, this doesn’t me—”
“And I have names picked out.” That hangs over us like a thick fog, and her mouth snaps closed.
“The boy will be Greg, and the girl Amanda.” Tears form in my eyes and the world goes as blurry as it feels.
“And I have a registry. And a college fund. And drank fucking beet juice. And excellence is a choice, and I choose it, goddammit.” I smack my hand on her desk.
“Just like I’m choosing to be a mother, and you don’t get to tell me no. ”
“Just because the path forward isn’t what you expected doesn’t mean that—”
“It doesn’t mean?” I laugh maniacally. “I fell in love.” And right there my voice cracks in half.
“With a man who wants babies. Lots of them. And grandkids.” I scoff.
“Who’s thirty and thinking of grandkids?
And I’m just supposed to say—what?—I can’t give you those?
” I swipe my cheeks and sniff. “I want to do the tests again.”
“Reese. If you wou—”
My cool is long gone. “I said do the fucking tests again!”
Dr. Cantor manages to keep her voice calm. “We have a counselor we recommend, if you want me to put you in touch. Before you make any decisions. I know this is a lot to process.”
“What I’m processing is incompetence,” I snap. “What lab do you use for the bloodwork?”
“It’s not just the bloodwork.” She swallows. “The ultrasound confirmed.”
I close my eyes and try to take a deep breath, but there is no air in this room. My lungs won’t work—they’ve turned to metal—to glass on the cusp of a shatter—and I can’t make this make sense.
I have to go tell Gavin that not only can I not conceive naturally or with an IUI, but IVF is only a maybe, not likely option.
I don’t have to be a fertility specialist to know if that’s where we’re starting—me with another woman’s egg being implanted in my body after I’m treated for thinned whatever—my chances of success are low.
I can’t get pregnant.
Ever.
I waited too long, and I’ll never have it.
While I was busy working and filling my bank account, my eggs and uterus shriveled up and died. It’s there in black and white markers and notes in a margin. Every misuse of my time fills one page and highlights the difference between numbers that are both minuscule and massive.
Dr. Cantor looks at me sympathetically, her perfect family mocking me from over her shoulder. A family I’ll never have. That I’ll never be able to give to Gavin and Addie.
I reach my arm out and, with a guttural scream and in one swift motion, knock everything from her desk. The computer, the cup of pens, the framed photo, and the Newton’s cradle go scattering across the floor. It does nothing to ease the ceaseless pain in my chest.
Dr. Cantor stands, stunned, but I don’t care.
I pick up the piece of paper with my failures and walk out of the room.
The meeting ends just like I thought it would: with me never coming back.