Authors: Kerry Reichs
“Wyatt,” Eva’s voice was patient, affectionate. “Why do you need a waffle maker?”
“Kids like waffles. A homey home has a waffle maker and a Crock-Pot.” Wyatt recalled Peach’s warning: do it twice as well and in high heels without porn.
“An average room contains 1,246 objects Chuck Norris could use to kill you with, including the room itself. Don’t put more weapons in his hands.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. A waffle maker does not signify a homey home. Married people end up with a bunch of stuff they never take out of the box until they move, when they donate it to Goodwill. Waffle makers are chief among those items. If your kid wants waffles you take him to IHOP, like everybody else. You’re going to be a great dad and your kid will love you, even if he doesn’t taste a waffle until he’s drunk at a Denny’s at three
AM
after a freshman-year keg party and can’t believe what he’s been missing all these years. And then it’ll be the pot talking.”
Wyatt smiled, but Eva’s support made the absence of a partner more keen. “Maybe I should’ve gotten married.”
“You haven’t lacked opportunity.”
“Is it opportunity if they aren’t the right person? Being female isn’t the only requirement.”
“It’s a start.”
“It certainly would be easier. People wouldn’t think I was a pedophile.” A shopper gave him the side-eye and hurried away. He hoped she wasn’t a parent from his school. “I’d have a Crock-Pot and public assurance that I was a psychologically healthy human being who only enjoyed sex with consenting adult females.”
“No one thinks you’re a pedophile.”
“And babies. All the free babies we could possibly make and no one would think we were weird.” He felt the weight of all the Crock-Pots and waffle makers stacked before him. “No one would think
I
was weird, or a bad person for permanently scarring my child for life with the haunting absence of the perfect mother he never had.”
“I was raised by a single mom and I turned out fine,” Eva reminded him. “No one should get married just to have kids, like no one should have kids just because they’re married.” Eva’s voice was serious, and Wyatt thought of Cyn. “Any kid of yours is going to be the luckiest little parasite in the world.”
“You don’t think I need the fancy Crock-Pot? I don’t want to have to buy one with more functions later when I realize the cheap one doesn’t do what I want. Maybe I should get the digital model. It has LCD.”
“Get the cheap one, five quarts, trust me. You can make your famous chili.”
Wyatt perked up. “You can make chili in a Crock-Pot?”
“It’s a slow cooker. You can make lots of things in it. You don’t ever have to roast a chicken if you don’t want to.”
Wyatt loaded the $24.99 Crock-Pot into his cart, feeling lighter. “Want to come over Sunday for chili?”
“Absolutely. I’ll dig through my for-your-consideration DVDs. We can watch family sitcoms and make a satisfying self-indulgent list of all the ways that you’re more suitable to parent.” As an agent, Eva got copies of television shows and movies before they were released in stores. It was a definite perk.
“You’re on. Say, do you have a rice cooker? What brand do you like?”
“I’m hanging up now,” said Eva, and did, leaving Wyatt alone to pile a waffle maker, rice cooker, Cuisinart, juicer, panini grill, Egg Genie, ice cream maker, meat thermometer, humidifier, and document shredder next to the Crock-Pot in his cart and head for checkout.
M
aryn stared at the clock as she perched, uncomfortable in her paper gown, on the examining table for her fertility follow-up. She was still wearing her socks, more in hopes of keeping her feet warm than any claim to dignity. She’d given up on patient dignity years ago during her treatment for breast cancer and had seen no reason to reclaim it.
It was 1:35
PM
.
Of course it was, Maryn thought. Thirty-five was the magic number. At thirty-five your fertility became a puny thing, assaulted by degrading eggs, lack of ovulation, and increased difficulty for whatever decrepit follicle managed to get out its walker and shuffle down the fallopian tubes. Your chances of miscarriage, chromosomal abnormalities, gestational diabetes, and labor problems increased. At thirty-five your body could turn into your own worst enemy, with your odds of breast cancer leaping overnight from one in fifty to one in nine, the almost middle-aged breasts that had proudly remained high and tight suddenly harboring your mortal enemy. At thirty-five the mind and body separated camps as the mind selected which parts to lop off to ensure survival of the whole. At thirty-five higher doses of chemotherapy were required to treat breast cancer. At thirty-five those higher doses of chemotherapy led to sterility.
The minute hand jumped to 1:36 and Maryn forced herself to exhale and inhale. She’d made it to thirty-six. And thirty-seven. And thirty-eight. Her thirty-ninth birthday was around the corner, and that was saying a lot.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.” A plump, pleasant-looking Indian woman entered the examination room. “I’m Dr. Parmalee Singh.”
“Maryn Windsor.” Maryn introduced herself, though the doctor had all the details of Maryn’s existence in her hands.
“A pleasure to meet you.” Dr. Singh sat, crossing her legs and folding her hands over Maryn’s file, as if she was settling in for an intimate chat. “What brings you to Hope Women’s Health and Fertility Clinic?”
“I’d like to determine my ability to have a baby following chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer.”
“Tell me about your treatment.”
“I was diagnosed with stage IIb, IDC three centimeters, one node . . .
Maryn reverted to the language of cancer. It was mysterious and impenetrable to outsiders, but to those versed in the rhythms of the cancer universe it was self-identification, as recognizable as a classified ad. Maryn went from
38/YO DWF ISO SWPM GSOH for LTR
to
Dx 2008, IDC, 3cm, Stage IIb, Grade 2, ER-/PR-, HER2+, NED.
“Congratulations,” said Dr. Singh. NED stood for “no evidence of disease.”
“Thank you.” Maryn gave the expected response though she’d had little to do with the outcome.
“Tell me about your treatment.”
“I had a unilateral modified radical mastectomy of my right breast with immediate reconstruction, followed by adjuvant AC-T chemotherapy and localized radiation treatments.”
“You took doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide, followed by paclitaxel?”
“If that’s the same as Adriamycin, Cytoxan, and Taxol.”
“It’s bewildering when all the drugs have three names each, isn’t it?” Dr. Singh smiled. “I keep a chart in my office and I still can’t keep up. You took Herceptin throughout?”
Maryn was impressed that Dr. Singh hadn’t yet consulted her notes. She nodded. “Yes, for fifty-two weeks. I was HER2 positive.” Maryn’s form of cancer had a mutation of growth factor receptors, stimulating cell reproduction.
“That makes for an aggressive cancer.”
Her tone was respectful.
“We followed an aggressive treatment.”
“You’re a tough woman.” Talking with Dr. Singh was a cross between a consult and therapy. Maryn was illogically soothed.
“I don’t like to lose.”
“Did you experience amenhorrea?” This was the heart of the matter, this odd word that was a hybrid of “amen” and “diarrhea.”
“I had chemo-induced ovarian failure. My period didn’t begin again until eight months after treatment.”
“And you’ve had menstrual cycles since then?”
“Intermittently.” Maryn’s answer was terse. Her periods had been more sporadic than she’d hoped.
Dr. Singh finally consulted the folder in her lap. “Maryn, I’ll be frank with you. At your request, the lab conducted three different tests, all of which support a conclusion of ovarian failure. First, your follicle stimulating hormone, or FSH, levels were high which means your body is struggling with the ovulation process. Second, your luteinizing hormone levels were low, indicating a problem releasing an egg from a mature follicle. Third the serum estradiol test recorded unusually low blood levels of that type of estrogen.” She met Maryn’s eyes. “Your age and medical history, coupled with these test results, indicate almost certain ovarian failure. It’s medically unlikely, if not impossible, for you to naturally conceive or harvest viable eggs. It would be disingenuous of me to give you false hope.”
Though she’d expected it, the diagnosis punched Maryn’s gut. The office swam, and she fought for oxygen discreetly. She concentrated on a wall poster indicating embryonic stages. No. The emergency-exit chart. She stared hard at it, as if a terrorist plane would be upon the building in an instant. Though she couldn’t help thinking,
Obliteration would be a relief.
She banished the thought. No one else was going to take care of this for her, so she had to keep it together.
During what felt like an interminable interval, but was probably moments, Dr. Singh sat quietly.
“How . . .” Her voice cracked, so Maryn stopped and cleared her throat. “How capable am I of bearing a child to term, if an egg was implanted?”
Dr. Singh looked down, and Maryn couldn’t shake the feeling she was hiding a look of pity. “We’d want to run standard tests relating to iron deficiency and gestational diabetes, but assuming everything else is in order, ovarian failure doesn’t indicate an inability to gestate to term.” She paused. “I feel I should reiterate that I don’t believe it would be possible to harvest eggs at this point. Your only option would be an egg donor.”
“I have frozen eggs.” Maryn experienced a twin surge of rage and hope, like a fiery yin and yang. She suppressed it. It was a precautionary measure, before the chemo.”
“Fertilized?”
Maryn nodded. It wasn’t necessary to share the complications with Dr. Singh at this point.
“That’s a game changer.” Dr. Singh smiled. “Success rates for IVF from frozen embryos is up to forty percent.”
Maryn nodded, unseeing. There was a 100 percent chance of no pregnancy with no eggs.
“We can proceed once we receive the specimens. If one takes, there’s no reason you shouldn’t have a normal pregnancy with no return of your breast cancer.”
Dr. Singh’s words brought Maryn back with a thud.
“What?” Maryn was caught between two
Fantasy Island
monsters. On one side, Andy was a grotesque clown, with an evil smile and demented laugh, bobbing insanely, like a giant inflatable balloon character. On the other was cancer, a dark, evasive, scuttling creature, with sharp, pointy teeth and claws tinged in blood. Between them lay a helpless infant, tender skin exposed and vulnerable.
“Maryn,” Dr. Singh recalled her attention. “There’s no increased risk of recurrence due to pregnancy. I’m sorry if I presented it in a manner that seemed alarming.”
“That part of my life is over,” Maryn said firmly. Marriage, fertility, cancer. They were all over as irrevocably as death. It was only fair that the bad had to stay dead with the good.
“And that will almost certainly be the case. We would just want to be careful and monitor.” Dr. Singh smiled at her. “You’re valuable property.”
Maryn’s return smile was wan. She felt damaged and unnatural. Her body couldn’t create life, instead breeding mutant harbingers of death.
“Let’s run a basic pre-IVF panel, check your white blood cell count, do a glucose test, assess your general state of fitness, and proceed from there.”
Maryn wordlessly accepted the sheet Dr. Singh handed her. Her colleagues would have been dumbstruck at her acquiescence. She slid off the exam table, hoping that donning her Manolo Blahniks and grasping her Tod handbag would help recapture her sense of self. She put one foot in front of the other out the door and down the hall, too flattened even to strategize her next approach to Andy.
She dug blindly for her keys. Her hand encountered the pointed corner of something stiff. She pulled out the card Adina had given her for Selena Hernandez. It was worn from several weeks of living in the bottom of her purse. She stood by the car, not sure where she was going, and looking at the lawyer’s card for a long time.
H
ey, Knoxy, isn’t that a little formal for softball?” one of the lawyers in his office called out as Andy passed.
“Have to miss tonight, unfortunately.” Andy paused in the doorway, still in his suit. “Little woman demands.” His regret was genuine. He’d rather be playing softball than going to another political dinner.
“Dude. That’s the third time this month! We’re going to lose our number one ranking if our ringer keeps missing games.”
“Next week,” Andy called over his shoulder as he moved on.
“See ya, Andy!”
“Night, Knoxy!”
“Better see you on the field next week, slugger!”
Andy called out good nights to the secretaries and colleagues he passed. He was popular in the office.
“Andy!” A young man in jeans stopped him in the office lobby.
“How’s it goin’?” He tried to remember his name.
“These are for you.” The man handed him some papers.
“Thanks.” Andy took them. “What case are they—”
“Andrew Knox, you’ve been served.” The man smiled and walked away.
Andy looked around, but no one was watching. He opened the bundled papers. Not a litigator, Andy couldn’t think why he’d be served.
As he scanned the first page, his blood turned to ice. It was a complaint in the matter of
Maryn A. Windsor v. Andrew B. Knox.
Maryn was suing him for custody of the frozen embryos.
“He what?” Andy heard Summer demand into the phone as he walked into the kitchen. He would have breezed past to get ready for another Herb Green fund-raiser, unready to discuss the lawsuit until he could get his thoughts organized, but Summer’s voice stopped him.
“Oh god,” Summer said, and thumped down into a chair. Andy froze. Did she know?
“Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. Valsalva . . . ?” Summer listened, brow furrowed. Eventually she hung up.
“What was that about?” Andy tried to mask his nervousness.
Summer met his eyes, her face a curious blend of horror and excitement. “That was Tom Sizec.”
“What did Charming Tommy want?” Andy turned away, sorting through the mail stack as his pulse subsided. He did not share Summer and Tommy’s hyperenthusiasm for the upcoming Herb Green event at their home but was glad it distracted Summer from his own agitation.
“Herb Green is dead.”
The shock of her words drove all thoughts of Maryn from his head. “Dead?”
Summer nodded, eyes intense. “A Valsalva maneuver triggered massive cardiac arrest this afternoon. Apparently vagus nerve stimulation caused a fatal bradycardia arrhythmia.”
“A . . . vassa what?” Andy wasn’t taking it in. They were having dinner with Herb tonight.
Her lips quirked. “He had a heart attack trying to take a shit. No one found him until too late because he ducked home to use his own toilet before dinner.”
“He died taking a poop?”
“Overstimulated by the vagus nerve.”
“I never . . .” Andy felt a little faint. Scatological wasn’t his thing.
“Apparently it happens all the time with older people and heart patients.”
“Oh.” Andy would never crap again without worrying.
“Incredible.” Summer’s face had an intensity that Andy didn’t understand.
“Such a loss,” he murmured. Andy wouldn’t actually mourn Herb. He didn’t know him well. But solemn observation of his passing was necessary. “I guess dinner’s off. And the party.”
“Andy, don’t you see? It’s a sign. This is a perfect opportunity for you to step in.”
“Step in?” Andy was terrified Summer would suggest he volunteer to be a pallbearer or help with the funeral. He could think of a million reasons why that would be awful, ranging from a sitcomlike toppling of the casket to his personal horror of coming into contact with bodily excretions or embalming fluids.
“City Council. There’s an opening no one was expecting. It’s the perfect opportunity. No other candidate will be ready.”
“Am I ready?”
Summer nodded, thoughts faraway. “We won’t cancel the party. We’ll have it anyway and announce your candidacy for the vacant City Council seat.” She turned to him, radiant. “It’s perfect.”
“Is that what Tommy said?” Andy was uncertain.
“He will when I’m done with him.” Summer was determined. “Come on.” She grabbed her keys. “We’re going down to headquarters now. That’s where everyone is gathered and we can begin your campaign.” She smiled at Andy as if he’d already won. “I’m so proud of you!”
Andy warmed in the glow, and happily followed her to the car. He completely forgot to mention the fact that he’d become a defendant in a lawsuit by his ex-wife.