Still, it was exciting to be part of the process, no matter how
strongly her brain protested that she faced a long, uncomfortable road ahead.
And that giving the baby up might be heart-wrenching.
Stacy’s mom had told her once that she had a gift for reaching
out to others. During high school, when her sister, Ellie, had gone through a
rebellious phase, it was Stacy who’d brought her and their parents together to
clear the air. When her mother went through menopause and became so grouchy she
and Dad suffered a rough patch, Stacy had waged a campaign to remind them of how
much they loved and needed each other. Now they were happier than ever.
She could endure a few tough months. The payoff would come when
she saw how much this baby meant to an infertile couple.
Stacy emerged to find Cole leaning against the wall, his
wistful expression brightening when he saw her. Suddenly, the next few months
didn’t look so bleak, after all.
From the waiting room came the murmur and rustle of patients.
After making the necessary arrangements with Eva, she and Cole used a staff
exit. Sneaking around like kids, Stacy thought.
Outside, the mild air reminded her that it was almost June.
“I’m due in February,” she blurted as they walked. “It’s funny—I have to
consider everything from a new perspective. Like Christmas...I’ll be too big to
fly to Utah.”
Cole accompanied her into the parking structure. “Why would you
fly to Utah?”
They knew so little about each other. “That’s where my parents
live now. They moved there to be with my sister and her family.”
“Aha.”
“Any more questions?” Stacy pressed the button for the garage
elevator.
Cole cleared his throat. “Who’s Harper?”
“My roommate.”
When the elevator arrived, he got in with her.
“No bike today?” Stacy asked.
“Yes, but I’ll see you to your car.” The elevator gave a small
lurch as it started. He put his arm around her waist and gripped the side bar
with his free hand to steady them. “Did that hurt?”
She buried her face in his shoulder to smother a giggle. “I’m
not that fragile.”
“This roommate of yours, is she the helpful type?” Cole asked.
“If you suffered a complication, would she know what to do?”
“She’s an obstetrical nurse,” Stacy assured him.
“Good choice,” he said, as if she’d chosen her roommate
specifically for that reason.
On the second floor, the elevator shuddered to a halt. Cole
kept hold of her until they were safely on solid concrete.
They stopped by her car. As she dug in her purse for her keys,
he said, “You don’t have to deal with this situation alone. We should get
married.”
Stacy dropped her purse. Keys, Life Savers, tissues, a wallet
and a phone spilled out. Thank goodness for the distraction, because it gave her
time to gather her thoughts.
What on earth was she supposed to say to that?
Chapter Six
By the time Stacy had stuffed most of her possessions
back into her purse, several facts had sorted themselves out in her brain.
She didn’t want a marriage that was doomed from the start. She
and Andrew had walked down the aisle madly in love, and look how that had turned
out. How much less of a shot would a marriage have with a man motivated
primarily by obligation?
She didn’t harbor any illusions about a baby cementing the
bond. Adorable as little ones might be, sleepless nights and crying jags took a
toll. She’d seen how Harper and her late husband, Sean, had struggled to adjust
after Mia’s birth. Fortunately, a deep love for each other and a solid
commitment had brought them close again before he died in an off-roading
accident.
A baby deserved devoted parents, not a couple united by a
drunken mistake. A real home, like the one Stacy had grown up in.
“I didn’t put that very well.” Cole handed her a lipstick tube
he’d plucked from behind a tire. “If you’d like a more romantic proposal, I
could arrange that.”
As Stacy took the lipstick, her fingertips brushed his and the
scent of his soap and aftershave teased her senses. She was tempted to smooth
back his thick, brown hair, but that might give him the wrong impression.
“You’re a good, kind man and a great surgeon.” Despite feeling
breathless, she pressed on. “But, don’t think of this as our baby, Cole. In
fact, it would be better if no one other than Adrienne and Eva knew you were the
father.”
“And let them believe...?” He stopped.
“That I had a one-night stand? So I did,” she said. “Okay, if
anyone—I’m not naming any names, but possibly Rod—makes any rude remarks, you
have my permission to put them in their place. As my friend and colleague. Not
as anything else.”
He was watching her closely. “That’s a no, then?”
“It is,” she confirmed. “It’s best for both our sakes. I have
friends who’ll be there for me.”
“I’d like to be there for you, too,” Cole said.
A temptation to give in to him nearly overrode Stacy’s common
sense, at the earnestness shining in his eyes. Then she remembered seeing that
same resolve when a surgery turned difficult and Cole had to do everything in
his power to save the patient.
This wasn’t an operation he could wrap up in a few hours. This
was their future they were talking about, theirs and the baby’s.
“It’s for the best.”
She tried to ignore the disappointment in his face. The urge to
please others might run strong in her blood, but she had to keep her priorities
straight.
To forestall further discussion, she got behind the wheel of
her car. Cole waited as she started the motor and backed out. In the rearview
mirror, Stacy saw him still standing there as she drove off.
Somewhere, she reminded herself, there was a couple suffering
for lack of a child. A couple whose empty arms she was going to fill.
That had to be enough.
* * *
S
ATURDAY
MORNING
, after surgery, Cole put
together notes on the topic “What’s Killing Your Sperm?” Although he disliked
sensationalizing, perhaps the title would draw fifty or sixty people.
How fortunate that his listeners would never know the irony. In
reality, Cole was annoyed with his sperm. Two and a quarter drinks ought to have
sent the little swimmers to sleep for the night. Yet in defiance of all decorum,
they’d had the nerve to impregnate Stacy. Yesterday, she’d practically collapsed
at Una’s party, and sitting on the examining table, she’d looked heartbreakingly
vulnerable.
Why wouldn’t she let him help? He almost resented those friends
of hers. Without them, she might turn to him, which she should do anyway. This
was his child, too.
Would it be a boy or girl? he wondered. Would it have his
mother’s nose or his father’s eyes? Maybe it would be a little girl with Stacy’s
curly hair and elfin chin. If he saw her on the street someday, would he
recognize her? And all this had started with one overachieving cell shaped like
a tadpole and only a fraction the size of the period he’d just made in his
notes.
Cole had two offices, one in the medical building, where he saw
private patients, and the other designated for the head of the men’s fertility
program, in a ground-floor suite at the hospital. In his hospital office, he
found a sports jacket on a peg and carried it to the doctors’ lounge, which had
a full-length mirror. Putting it on, Cole examined his reflection. Too casual?
He replaced it with a white coat. Too pretentious? He felt ridiculous spending
so much time deciding what to wear, yet he rarely appeared before the general
public and wanted to make a good impression.
“I’d stick with the white coat.” From across the lounge, Owen
Tartikoff regarded Cole with amusement. Where had he come from? Whatever. On
this occasion, Cole could use a second opinion.
“You think?” He frowned at his image. “I don’t want to come
across like some TV doctor.”
“Image counts,” the fertility chief observed. “But only if you
get moving.”
Cole checked the clock. Ten minutes to two. “Damn. I’m running
late.”
“Never thought I’d see you flustered about giving a little
speech,” Owen said.
Instead of dignifying that remark with a response, Cole asked,
“Are you introducing me?”
“Got to babysit the twins.” The surgeon rolled his shoulders.
He’d been operating this morning, too. “Bailey has a rehearsal with the church
choir. Don’t worry. Jennifer Martin will warm them up for you.”
“Does she know any male fertility jokes?” Cole asked.
“Those might play better at a urology conference.”
“Good point.” Cole returned to his office, rehung his sports
jacket on its peg and hurried toward the auditorium. There were a lot of men
milling around in the corridor, and a couple scowled at him when he angled
between them. One large fellow made a move to block his path until he noticed
the white coat.
“Are you the speaker?” the man asked.
“That’s right.” Cole indicated the congestion. “What’s the
holdup?”
“No seats.”
No seats? The steeply tiered auditorium had permanently
installed, well-upholstered chairs. He didn’t see how anyone could have removed
them.
A pretty, dark-haired woman peered anxiously from inside the
double doors. “Cole!” It was Jennifer.
“Is something wrong with the chairs?” he asked as the man got
out of his way.
“They’re filled.” She gestured for him to enter, and raised her
voice to the men waiting in the hall. “If you don’t mind sitting on the carpet,
you can use the side aisles. For safety reasons, you have to leave space for at
least one person to pass. Also, please avoid the area around the TV
cameras.”
The what?
“This way.” The public relations director guided Cole down a
side aisle, ahead of the sea of latecomers. How many people did this auditorium
hold? he wondered, as heads turned to follow their progress.
Most of the crowd was male, with a sprinkling of women among
them, Cole observed as he took a seat on the stage. As Jennifer had indicated, a
camera crew occupied a post at the rear, which, given the steep slope of the
room, put them at his eye level. A man with a couple of cameras dangling from
his neck stood near the front, presumably also from the press. Who’d have
thought the subject would attract so much attention?
When Jennifer reached the lectern, a profound stillness gripped
the audience. No papers rustled. These weren’t academics. They were people who
cared.
“We are fortunate to have one of the nation’s foremost
urologists with us today,” Jennifer began. “Dr. Cole Rattigan is the innovator
of surgical techniques that have become standard...”
His mind drifted as she summarized his education: University of
Minnesota Medical School, Residency at Yale... The audience members leaned
forward, listening intently. A few gripped tablet computers. Others held up
cameras, presumably recording video. Everything he said was likely to be tweeted
and blogged and posted online within seconds. How strange. That never happened
at urology conferences.
“Without further ado, I give you Dr. Cole Rattigan,” Jennifer
finished.
Applause accompanied Cole to the microphone. Several
microphones, in fact.
He got straight to the point. “Increasingly, or perhaps I
should say decreasingly, we hear reports from around the globe that sperm counts
are dropping to historic lows,” he said. “How do we compare to our ancestors?
That’s debatable. It’s not as if anyone ran around in ancient times testing
sperm samples from the Visigoths.”
Laughter rippled through the assembly. It felt good.
“However, there is evidence that during the past few decades,
sperm counts have indeed decreased.” He cited a few statistics. “It isn’t only
the number of sperm that affect fertility. There’s also motility—the ability to
swim—along with speed, concentration and morphology, which means shape and
size.”
The only noise came from fingers tapping on laptop keys and the
scratch of pens on paper. Cole hadn’t said anything interesting yet, just
provided some basic background.
“What’s causing this?” he asked rhetorically. At the back of
the auditorium, a few more latecomers slipped in and stood against the wall.
“The easy answer is to blame the environment.” Cole didn’t
bother reading his notes. Everyone knew this stuff—well, everyone in his field.
“Toxins in our food, our air and our water. But it isn’t that simple. Our
genetic programming and our social mores have an impact, too.”
He explained that since sperm-producing genes exist only on the
Y, or male, chromosome, there was no way for the body to compensate for a
degraded gene with a healthy one from the X chromosome. In time, this situation
could cause birth rates to dwindle. Most species compensated with
promiscuity.
“It may not seem very nice,” he said, “but the result is that
the guy with the healthiest sperm sires a lot of children, while the guy with
weak sperm doesn’t reproduce. That might sound like we’d lose a lot of Einsteins
and gain a lot of action heroes, but we shouldn’t equate rough-and-ready sperm
with rough-and-ready physiques.”
A few chuckles greeted this remark. Well, Cole had never
claimed to be a stand-up comic.
“Sad to say, the use of anabolic steroids to increase muscle
mass and improve athletic ability is widespread. These steroids may be male
hormones, but ironically, they suppress a man’s ability to manufacture
testosterone. Some of the side effects can persist across one’s lifetime,” he
added.
“Our personal medical histories and lifestyles also affect
fertility.” Among the harmful factors, Cole listed infections, smoking, obesity,
poor diet, too much or too little exercise, illegal drugs, and both prescription
and over-the-counter medications.
Okay, he’d scared them enough. “On the plus side, many of the
conditions killing or impeding sperm can be fixed. Sometimes weight loss,
improved diet, vitamin supplements and a healthier lifestyle will do the trick.
Other times, surgery or advanced fertility techniques can help a man to father
children.”
He described some of the newer treatments, and concluded,
“There’s research under way that may allow even men with no sperm to become
fathers by using their stem cells. So far, it’s only been tested on mice, but
then, it’s a mere thirty-five years since the first test tube baby was born, and
more than four million infants have been born in vitro since then. Yesterday’s
miracle is today’s standard course of treatment.”
Cole expected the usual smattering of applause. Instead, a
swell swept through the auditorium as the listeners rose to their feet. What had
he said? He’d just reiterated facts known by everyone in his profession.
Finally, the ovation ebbed and people sat down. “Any
questions?” Cole asked.
Hands flew up. He pointed to a husky fellow in the center.
“This was interesting, but when a couple can’t have a baby,
isn’t that mainly the wife’s problem?”
A woman in the audience hissed. Cole figured she’d like his
response. “Quite the opposite. In about sixty percent of infertility cases, the
man’s condition is involved. Twenty percent involve both the man and the woman,
and forty percent are mostly him. Since running a sperm analysis is relatively
simple, that should be one of the first tests to consider.”
More hands went up. Before Cole could choose from among them, a
tall man with abundant wavy hair shouted from near the cameras, “So are you
saying there’s a danger of the human race fading away?”
Normally, Cole would have laughed off such a ridiculous
question, but he knew enough not to dismiss the press. “Well, if we relied on
technology to reproduce for a few millennia, and then an asteroid knocked us
back to the Stone Age without modern medicine, we could be in trouble.” He had
to smile at such an unlikely scenario. “But—”
“So you’re saying we may be evolving into a species unable to
survive without doctors?” interrupted a heavily made-up woman in a power
suit.
Cole decided to provide a bit of perspective. “In a similar
vein, one could argue that vaccines and antibiotics interfere with our
developing genetic immunities. Should we let millions of people die from
treatable or preventable diseases, and let the survivors and a few naturally
immune individuals repopulate the planet?”
Jennifer scooted to the microphone, which Cole gladly
relinquished. “I see we have a lot of questions.” Deftly, she began calling on
ordinary folks who wanted to know about testing, surgery and outcomes.
Fifteen minutes later, although there were still hands waving,
Jennifer apologetically ended the session. “I’m afraid we can’t get to everyone.
If you’ll email your questions to the public relations office, I’ll forward them
to Dr. Rattigan. Thank you all for coming.”