Authors: Kerry Reichs
D
r. Parmalee Singh’s expression remained neutral as she listened.
“I’d like to know my options.” I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear for the fourteenth time. It was hard to maintain dignity in a paper gown while talking to a stranger about your fertility. “Once I know the system works, I’ll consider next steps.”
A void had opened after I’d blown my chance with Julian Wales. I was craving . . . something. Progressing in baby steps on the motherhood thing felt good, like taking
some
action in my life.
“There are tests that can determine your fertility,” Dr. Singh explained. “But it’s merely a snapshot of this moment. It carries no predictors.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice if we knew exactly how long we had?” I was wistful. “You want to hold out as long as you can, to meet someone, but if you gamble wrong, you lose everything.”
Dr. Singh didn’t conjecture. “Fertility declines significantly after forty.”
“You keep thinking it’ll happen for you, you know, the right guy, settle down, have a family. Then suddenly you’re ‘after forty’ wondering what happened.” I was rambling. What could Dr. Singh say? She was my physician, not my shrink.
“It’s a sad fact that no one is happy to see me, married or single,” Dr. Singh said. “They’re glad I’m here, but they never wanted to be on that table.”
I agreed but didn’t want to be unkind. “I’m not even sure what I’m here for.”
“By the time they come to me, most single women have made up their minds, whether they know it or not,” the physician offered.
That was something to consider.
“Every woman’s situation is different,” Dr. Singh continued. “It would be easier if we could measure fertile life with certainty, but we can’t. All we can do is check your hormone levels to make sure your body isn’t struggling to ovulate, and make sure your fallopian tubes and uterus look healthy.”
“It’s like Easter candy in September,” I mused. “Most of the chocolate eggs have turned that nasty grey color. But if you unwrap enough of them, you can find one or two that are still perfect.”
“You just need one,” Dr. Singh reassured.
I sighed. “Isn’t it funny how you spend most of your life trying not to get pregnant? One time, in college, I took so much vitamin C that my pee was neon yellow. I’d read that too much vitamin C made your uterus acidic and inhospitable. I just got dizzy and sick. All because a condom broke. Now I want to get pregnant and have no idea if I can. You wonder if all those years of the pill were even necessary. Maybe we should reeducate girls about fertility, teach them to take it less for granted.”
“Technology has come a long way to enable women to become pregnant when they are best equipped to handle it and understand the consequences,” Dr. Singh said.
I sighed again. “I feel like I was made to do this, but I may have to face the consequences of not having children because I waited too long.”
“Let’s see what we’re dealing with before we jump to any conclusions.” Dr. Singh snapped on rubber gloves. “Scooch down and put your legs in the stirrups.”
I slipped into my seat for the new-episode read through, wondering if Roxy was in rehab yet. My head was swirling after my appointment with Dr. Singh. She’d made no bones about the difficulties of getting pregnant over forty. The kernel I clung to was, “
You just need one
.” How many millions of eggs did I have, decayed or otherwise? How many millions of sperm were out there? The average guy produced a thousand sperm per second, meaning millions were swimming around the table right now. The show’s male lead dispensed a billion weekly, if tabloid reports were correct. I only needed one.
I accepted a script from one of the PAs. Her name was either Laura or Lola, but I always got it wrong, so I never used it. I was flipping through it when a wave of Diorissimo perfume rolled over me. Nikki Hill slid into the adjacent seat.
I was surprised. There wasn’t a lot of unscripted drama with our cast, but there was social stratification. Nikki was the Female Lead. She sat with other Leads. I was Secondary Regular. I sat with my kind—Cute Nurse, Surgeon’s Wife, and Infectious Disease Specialist. We appeared in almost every show, though sometimes briefly, and rarely in an “A” story. I’d been with the cast longer than Nikki, but we didn’t socialize. I sort of preferred it that way.
“Hi!” she bubbled, blond ringlets boinging.
“Hi.” I was cautious. Nikki was volatile. I trod her vicissitudes carefully.
“Wonder what we’ll get today!” Exactly. The day the Mauna Loa erupted started out sunny.
After pretending to read a page, Nikki paused as if struck by a thought. She actually put her Mango Passion manicured fingernail to her chin. “Oh, Dimple . . .” Maybe
Pulse
performances weren’t as solid as I thought. A real surgeon wouldn’t wear Mango Passion nail polish.
“I heard this crazy thing,” Nikki continued.
“If you haven’t heard three impossible things before lunch, it isn’t Hollywood.” I shrugged.
“My trainer, she trains the stylist for Daisy Carmichael, and said Daisy is in contention for the role of Cora Aldridge in Julian Wales’s new movie.”
The hope I denied I was harboring congealed in my stomach. I’d blown it.
“Here’s the weird part.” Nikki opened her eyes really wide. “My trainer said the stylist said Daisy said her main competition is . . . you.” If Nikki’s brow hadn’t been frozen by injected parasites, it would have wrinkled..
The hope fluttered. Maybe I was still in the running despite my tantrum. It
had
only been three weeks.
“So?” She looked at me as if to share a guffaw.
I considered my replies. Nikki was desperate to trade up. It would not please her to think I was going to pass her. “My agent gave me a script,” I hedged. “It’s good.”
Exasperation. “I know it’s
good
.
Everyone
knows it’s good. Are you reading for Cora Aldridge?”
Everyone knew it was good? I’d assumed the script was traveling a small circle. “Yes.”
“But. But.” Nikki was dumbfounded. “Cora Aldridge is bold and strong and doesn’t give a shit what anyone thinks. And, you, well, you’re just so . . .
likable
.” Her lip curled as if the word was foul.
Irritation flared. “
Roxy
is likable,” I corrected. “I’ve played a variety of characters.” I’d never talked someone out of thinking I was likable before.
“
Ages
ago.” She was perplexed.
I was about to retort when the producer rapped on the table.
“Quiet!” He started running through notes, and the room settled. I heard sniffling, and looked over to see tears on Miho’s face. I flicked through my script, and sure enough, Dr. Nori Yuzuki suffered a pulmonary embolism. Miho was dead.
I was sorry. We’d worked together for six years. Only one or two faces around the table were old guards like me. The rest had “bridged up” to film or been written out, younger faces filling their seats. The interns were now the doctors.
I was relieved to find standard fare: Roxy sympathetically listened to Lead Surgeon Female bemoan star-crossed love with Lead Surgeon Male, and helped a teen boy accept a prosthetic leg with compassion and sage advice. My thoughts slid to Roxy’s more exciting past. I wouldn’t mind a
little
more action. We hadn’t had a hostage in a while. Or . . .
“Dimple?” The producer snapped his fingers at me.
“What? I’m sorry.” I blushed. “What?”
“Breast cancer awareness week.” He looked at me expectantly.
Pause. I had no idea.
“I could be pregnant.” I said the first thing that came to mind. All rustling in the room stopped, thumbs suspended over BlackBerrys, and eyes swung to me. I was horrified.
“I mean Roxy!
Roxy
could get pregnant.”
Nikki emitted a high-pitched giggle. “Dimple, Roxy is thirty-six!” She made it sound like Roxy had a prepaid plot at Forest Lawn Memorial Park and one orthopedic shoe in it.
“I was thinking more along the lines of wearing a pink shirt.” The producer’s tone was dry. “How does getting pregnant support breast cancer?”
I scrambled. “Roxy could find a lump. She’d go to the clinic to get it checked and interact with patients and survivors. Maybe she could counsel someone getting a mastectomy. Then, she’d discover she was benign but pregnant, sort of a ‘life-after-cancer’ moment.” I could see myself—
Roxy
—tenderly cradling her belly.
What was I doing?
Advocating for a kid was character suicide. But a fake pregnancy sure as hell seemed like the sign I was looking for.
“Didn’t we do that in season four?” one of the newer writers piped up.
“Different. She had radiation exposure,” I said.
The producer was nodding. “I like it.”
“It could happen to Erika.” Nikki never missed a shot at more pages.
The producer waved her off. “It’s more believable with Roxy. She’s older.” Ouch. “But not the pregnancy.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Roxy isn’t single-mother material,” the writer chimed in.
“What do you mean?”
“She’s too vanilla for a one-night stand.”
Nikki smirked, as if I should concede the role of Cora Aldridge to her on the spot. LaMimi wanted to tell them all about the time I’d screwed a stranger with a pierced dick in a pool in Thailand, but I held our tongue.
“She slept with the visiting African dictator.” I spoke for Roxy instead.
“That was in season two.” The writer banished Roxy’s wild youth to the annals of history. I wondered if Roxy was fated to follow Miho. Substance abuse could end up in a fatal car accident as easily as an affair with a rehab counselor. “It won’t work now,” the writer continued. “She’s too . . . mature. It could be sad.”
The producer clapped his hands. “Roxy gets a tumor for breast cancer awareness, and everyone remember to wear pink to their interviews. Moving on . . .”
“Dimple!” Lola (or Laura) intercepted me as I scooted out after the meeting.
“Hey . . . there.”
Her twitch suggested she was on to my amnesia. “We’re doing a collection for Liz’s baby shower. Do you want to chip in?” Liz was one of the writers who thought Roxy was too old and boring for a baby.
“Of course.” I reached for my wallet automatically.
“Great!” She was very perky. “We’re doing a nursery book theme. We have Beatrix Potter napkins, Curious George plates, Winnie the Pooh cookies, and a red velvet Velveteen Rabbit cake. Isn’t that cute?”
“Adorable.” My smile became forced. I blindly handed over a bill that was probably large from her delighted expression, then shot out the door.
“Lame, lame, lame,” I chastened myself as I escaped across the lot. It was ridiculous to be upset. I didn’t know what bothered me—Nikki’s digs about Daisy Carmichael, the writers’ comments about Roxy, or the Velveteen Rabbit cake.
In my twenties I started collecting all the bunnies children’s literature had to offer:
Velveteen Rabbit
, Beatrix Potter,
Runaway Bunny
,
Goodnight Moon
, Winnie the Pooh’s Rabbit, Alice in Wonderland’s White Rabbit. Without naming the purpose of my collection, it didn’t take a genius to see it in a future nursery. Now, Friends of Liz had appropriated “my” special thing. I’d felt the same way when my trainer named her daughter Iris. That had been
my
chosen name. People were stripping off bits of my future like scraps of wallpaper. The longer I waited the more dreams I handed off, like fifty-dollar contribution bills. My daughter’s name, my nursery, my red velvet fucking rabbit cake.
I shook my head to pull it together. I was acting like a spoiled eight-year-old. Sadness was an earthquake in Haiti. It wasn’t a pathetic woman pouting because she didn’t get a bunny cake. I was fine.
I sprinted the last few yards to my car so I’d be in private when the dam broke.
“Want another?”
I looked toward the voice. Attractive. And young. A cocky James Franco. LaMimi stirred. I tamped her down. He was
really
young.
“No thanks.”
“I hate to see a pretty lady look sad in a bar with no drink.” He slid onto the stool next to me, then paused theatrically. “Unless you’re here with someone.” He knew I was alone.
“Fine.” I shrugged. If Roxy was developing a drinking problem, let the research begin.
“What’re you drinking?” He scooted closer and I got a whiff of woodsy aftershave.
Thailand could happen again
, LaMimi purred. What the hell, I thought. I wasn’t old and boring. Julian Wales might not like me, but this guy did.
“A pickleback.”
“Jameson’s whiskey and pickle juice?” He laughed. “What are you, a Brooklyn hipster?”
“Too Lutheran.”
“Salty. Beats baking to cure a bad day.” A grin.
He knew who I was. Roxy baked when she was stressed. His reference suggested a sly joke between friends, which it wasn’t, because we weren’t.