Cut my heart out with a spoon if I didn’t learn my lesson the first time. It’ll be best to keep things between us light and airy, and not let myself get sucked in by the kind of ‘big’ feelings that led me down the garden path with her years ago.
Chapter Five
Jane
“Well, everything looks good, Jane,” Doctor Pornsak tells me as I sit across from my gynecologist in her office.
It’s a nice space. Nordic. Off white. Not overly clinical. With an adjoining room set aside for more intimate procedures than a discussion about results. There’s a potted palm in the corner. The type with large and shiny green leaves that are full of holes. And tasteful pictures of flowers in pale pink through to red—though, actually the more I stare at them the more they start to look like vaginas. She studies the information in my file from behind a pair of teal-rimmed glasses. Silver chandelier earring in the shape of uteruses hang from her lobes. I squint. And are those oval diamonds supposed to be ovaries?
I pick at the skin around my thumb nail and swing my attention back to the framed art.
“You’ve healed properly,” she says, finishing the thought on a hum.
“Oh. That’s good.” I hate that my nerves are such a jumble that I almost jump out of my skin and that my voice trembles.
Six months ago, I had emergency surgery to remove a ruptured fallopian tube, and in the process it had come to light that my other tube was partially blocked too, and one of my ovaries had excess tissue growth. I was devastated. My chances of having a family vanished before my eyes.
But the doctor I was seeing in London suggested they could go in and remove the scar tissue from my remaining tube and I would still be able to conceive. The caveat is that the condition could return over the next few years.
I’m almost thirty, single, and my chances of having a baby are no longer what I expected they would be. This isn’t an issue I thought I would be dealing with. I’m supposed to have years to start a family. Instead I feel like I’m running out of time. “Does that mean... is there a chance that I can...”
“Conceive?” Doctor Pornsak leans her elbows on the desk and folds her hands over my file. “Of course. It’s entirely possible that you’ll be able to get pregnant.”
The thing about finding out you might not be able to have a baby is that you realize how much you want one. It’s not a lot different from being told you can’t have carbs. And boy do I want some carbs right now. Preferably in the easy to devour form of a box of glazed donuts covered in sprinkles.
I wanted to have kids before I found out that it wasn’t going to be easy. Oliver and I had talked about it before we moved to the UK. But we’d decided we should get settled. Buy a house. Get married.
Instead he’d gotten a younger, skinnier, prettier girlfriend. And I’d found myself starting over and statistically at a disadvantage. Which is why I’d had a second surgery on my remaining tube to improve my chances of being able to conceive at some point. If I could find a man to have a baby with. But there’s still a chance my body won’t give me that time.
“The last time we talked you weren’t sure whether you wanted to start trying straight away.” Doctor Pornsak studies me. Her gaze is empathic, but she’s an attractive woman with a framed photo of three children in their early teens on her desk beside another photo of a handsome man with his arms around her. I doubt she understands what it feels like to fail at the things that should come naturally. Like love and motherhood. “Have you considered it any further?”
The more I’ve thought about it the less I want to wait. It feels like every cycle is one less chance I have of becoming a mother. And every chance I waste on the hopes that some guy who won’t screw me over will come along and want to start an immediate family is an opportunity too many.
So when my dad suggested to me that I could have a baby without having to deal with dating and hoping to find the right guy and all the time that would take, I listened. Getting pregnant on my own might be unconventional, but I have the support of my family. I’m as ready as I’m ever going to be, which is to say my life is a complete and utter balls up after years of working toward being in the right position to have a child. Which is what makes it so easy to go for it. Life threw me a curveball when everything was perfect, and I wasn’t ready for it. But now that everything is a shamble I’m prepared for anything.
“Yes.” I take a deep breath. Lean forward in my chair. “I want to have a baby as soon as possible.”
She purses her lips and opens a drawer in her desk before she lays out a row of brochures on hormone therapies, sperm donations, and insemination options like she’s giving me a tarot reading. “Let’s discuss the options available to you.”
***
“Yay! You’re here,” Mya grins as I enter the foyer of her two-story townhouse. “The girls are already in the kitchen.”
Her three-year-old twin boys run into the foyer and chase each other around her legs. Penn grabs her knees with his chubby little hands and pops his tongue out at his carbon copy, Alex.
Alex giggles, his bright green eyes sparkling. The boys have their daddy’s eyes and their momma’s red hair. They’re totally adorable.
“Say hello to Jane, you two.”
“Hello Jane,” Penn and Alex singsong at the same time.
“Now, off you go,” Mya says softly. “Momma needs some quiet time with her friends.”
Alex growls like a lion and Penn shrieks as both boy’s little legs carry them out of the foyer.
Mya puts her hand to her temple. “I don’t know about you, but I need a margarita. Those two are a handful. And Ellie’s teething.”
Ellie arrived a couple of months before I moved home. The baby is completely adorable and breaks my heart and makes me clucky in equally evil measures. The first time I held her, she cried and I bawled. I ended up breaking down and telling Mya about Oliver’s unfaithfulness and my fertility issues.
I’d fallen out of touch with everyone while I was in London. I told myself I was busy being happy with my great job and my perfect house and Mr. Right. But the truth is it didn’t feel right. There was this constant niggling space in my heart that I filled with lattes and caramel shortbread. I knew if I reconnected with Mya and Cassie and Taylor they would have been able to tell that I was desperately unhappy. It’s the same reason I didn’t return Hudson’s calls and why our texts whittled down to barely anything. He would have been able to tell from a handful of words that I was miserable. And I felt so guilty about that. What could I possibly have to be unhappy about?
That day it all came tumbling out, and despite the fact that Mya was functioning on three hours of sleep and had not had a shower in far too long she’d called Cassie and Taylor for a college style vent session. Twenty minutes later Cassie showed up with a bottle of wine and Taylor arrived with an assortment of donuts and we spent the afternoon catching up.
And now it’s a weekly tradition. Only with margaritas and Mexican food. But a white box with a cellophane window in the lid, filled with an assortment of pink and chocolate iced donuts sits on the counter waiting for us to crack it open. So pretty with their rainbow sprinkles, and sweet enough to make a dint in the bitterness that hits me when I think about Oliver and the years I wasted.