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WEEKS AFTER HER VISIT to Dr. Toby, Aubrey made an appointment with a fertility specialist. She’d first read about Dr. Yavari on FertilityFriends.com, the forum where she’d been lurking for the past few months. On evenings when Luke worked late, she ate her dinner in front of her computer screen, slowly scrolling past the giant banner at the top of the lavender website that read, There is no such thing as trying too hard to get pregnant. She never told anyone about the website, not even Luke. She didn’t want him to think that she was baby crazed and desperate. But there was something comforting about reading the message boards, about knowing that other women were struggling worse than her. They were, after all, the ones with screen names like MommytoBe75 or Waiting2Xpect82, the ones reporting their last menstrual periods or charting their days past ovulation to strangers on the Internet. She pitied these women, except for the ones who were trying for a second or third child. We all just want one, she always thought, angrily clicking out the website. On the forums, a rambling thread about California fertility specialists mentioned Dr. Yavari, based out of La Jolla, whom former patients referred to as “the baby-maker.” The nickname comforted and disturbed Aubrey. She didn’t want to think of her baby as created by a doctor, like some science experiment, but she appreciated the confidence everyone seemed to have in Dr. Yavari. Maybe this was what she needed, to visit an expert. Maybe Dr. Yavari could save her from becoming one of those sad women on the message boards. She called Dr. Yavari’s office and when Luke said he couldn’t miss work, she called Nadia and asked her to come with her.
“I can’t,” Nadia said.
“Why not?”
“Because,” she stammered. “It sounds personal. Why don’t you bring Mo?”
“She’s working too. And who cares if it’s personal? You’re not exactly a stranger.”
She laughed a little, but Nadia was silent. A quiet distance had grown between them since Nadia returned. They still talked occasionally, but not as often as Aubrey had hoped they might. She tried not to take the unanswered phone calls and ignored texts personally. Nadia had her father to worry about, and the last thing she needed was Aubrey burdening her with her own hurt feelings. Still, she felt that distance widening the longer Nadia went without answering.
“Please,” Aubrey said. “I just get nervous. And it’d make me feel better if you were there.”
“I’m sorry,” Nadia finally said. “I’m being dumb. Of course I’ll come with you.”
The next afternoon, they drove to Dr. Yavari’s office, a tan building with palm trees sprouting in front. In the waiting room, framed photos of mothers cradling babies hung over the receptionist’s desk like a promise, but Aubrey felt like the images were teasing, dangling right in front of her the things that she wanted. Beside her, Nadia played with her phone and Aubrey tried to flip through a National Geographic, but ended up twisting it in her hands into a glossy tube.
“Why are you nervous?” Nadia asked.
“Because. I know something’s wrong with me.”
She tensed, waiting for Nadia to ask how she knew. Instead, she felt Nadia’s fingers stroke the back of her neck.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” she said quietly, and for a second, Aubrey believed her.
Dr. Yavari was Iranian, olive-skinned with dark eyes, and thirtysomething, much younger than Aubrey had expected her to be. She welcomed both of them into her office with a smile, sweeping her arm toward a chair in the corner. “Your sister can sit there,” she said, and neither corrected her. Strangers often mistook them for sisters or cousins or even, Aubrey assumed, girlfriends. She was amazed by their ability to resemble each other, to become family, to occupy, at once, different ways to love each other. Who were they to each other? Anything at all. While the doctor flipped through her charts, she sat on the metal table, her legs swinging off the edge. In the corner, Nadia leaned against a counter covered in tubs of purple plastic gloves while Dr. Yavari asked Aubrey a series of questions. How often does your period occur? Is it heavy, light? Any sexually transmitted infections? Have you ever been pregnant? Have you ever had an abortion?
“What?” Aubrey said.
“I have to ask,” Dr. Yavari said, drumming her pen against her clipboard. “I usually try to wait until the men are gone—you know, it happened in college, she never told her husband, et cetera.”
“No,” she said. “None.” But she appreciated Dr. Yavari’s compassion. She hoped the doctor didn’t just guess that Aubrey was the type of woman who might have hidden a secret like that from her husband. She would have, but she hated the idea of the doctor knowing this about her.
After the exam, Dr. Yavari scheduled her follow-up appointment. Next time, there would be an X-ray to determine whether her fallopian tubes were open, a pelvic ultrasound to test the thickness of her uterine lining and check for cysts in her ovaries, and blood tests to measure her hormone production. When the doctor left, Aubrey dressed, pulling on her clothes that Nadia had folded in a small pile.
“I can’t believe she asked you that,” Nadia said.
“Asked me what?”
“You know. The abortion thing. Why does it even matter?”
“I don’t know. It must, if she asked about it.”
“Still. I can’t believe it follows you around like that.”
Later, Aubrey would wonder what had exactly tipped her off. The statement itself, or the unusual softness in Nadia’s voice, or even the way her face had looked under the fluorescent light, slightly stricken with grief. In the moment between when Nadia handed her her cardigan and she accepted it, she knew that Nadia was The Girl. Since Luke had confessed to her years ago, she had often thought about this nameless, faceless girl who had gotten rid of his child. A girl he’d loved but who had vanished, like the baby, both gone forever.
On the drive home, traffic in front of them slowed. She gripped the steering wheel tighter as the car inched forward. Beside her, Nadia fiddled with the radio dials until she reached an old Kanye West song they both used to love, one they’d listened to endlessly in her room and danced to together at Cody Richardson’s party. She thought about that night, how sloppy drunk she’d been, how easily she’d forgotten everything she didn’t want to remember. She could have been anyone that night, in that skintight dress, dancing at a crowded house party with Nadia Turner. Toward the end of the night, Nadia had looped an arm around her waist and said, in her ear, “Let’s get you home,” and she had nodded, realizing that she hadn’t even thought about how she would get home. She had known, somehow, that Nadia would take care of her. In bed that night, before falling asleep, she’d felt Nadia’s hand touch her back. It was a fleeting gesture—casual, like picking lint off someone’s sweater—but in that moment, Aubrey had never felt so safe.