She has a mind for statistics, for probability, for outcomes that can be predicted by treatments. But that kind of thinking doesn’t work for reproductive biology. There aren’t straight lines. She and Ben are not in the category of no possibility, but the odds no longer seem to favor them. Recurrent miscarriage. Three years. Model sperm. Thirty-seven-year-old eggs. An inhospitable uterus with an endometrial lining that isn’t lush. “Yours is a bit flat,” is what they had said. “We prefer it to be fluffier.” Her body wasn’t responding like it should. Their language is a language of failure.
The problem isn’t the kind that can be fixed. “We don’t know” is the answer to most questions she asks, as if this vast hole of medical knowledge is acceptable. The only treatment she was offered was no treatment at all. To keep going, if they are willing, if the disappointment is something they can bear. After the doctor had left the room at their last appointment, the nurse, a young woman whose ovaries were probably teeming with good sticky eggs, whose uterus she imagined to be ripe as a tropical fruit, had said the word she least wanted to hear: “miracle.” That they see miracles every day.
But Rebecca is a scientist. She had never believed in hope being an influential power. She had never believed in miracles before.
During her first year of pediatric residency, a staff doctor told her the best thing she could do for parents in the hospital was to keep the space between their expectations and reality as close as possible. In other words, the feeling of hope, the thing everyone was searching for, was not necessarily a good thing. This had made all the sense in the world to her. She had been trained for thirteen years to believe in evidence. To make decisions rooted in her knowledge about how the body works. But about her own body, right now, she has almost none.
* * *
? ? ?
She parks on the street outside her home with four bedrooms and three bathrooms and a mudroom with bright yellow hooks at a height meant for the reach of young arms. They gave the builder their down payment three and a half months after her first positive pregnancy test. They’d had the privilege, then, of certainty.
Inside, Ben will be making her a sandwich for lunch, brewing her fresh coffee. He took a leave of absence at the school this year, a decision that had surprised everyone, including Rebecca. He’d always loved teaching. He loved the kids. He’d had a job for years at the middle school ten minutes away, one of the reasons they bought a house in this neighborhood. And they liked that it was still mixed income, mixed ethnicity, even if the school was overrun by a small, privileged group of parents who were too involved.
But he’d come to want a break from the routine of the day, from teaching the same curriculum year after year. His friend had a tech start-up, a homeschool app for parents, and he was looking for an educator to consult full time. They’re still paying down Rebecca’s medical school debt, and the job paid twice the income of a teacher. Ben was excited about the idea of trying something new, so he took the eight-month contract, mostly working from home. And he agreed to coach a softball team for the junior school a few blocks away, as a favor to a colleague. He’d seemed relieved with the change.
She wonders if he really left because being around children all day was too hard. If the reminder of what they might never have had become too much.
It was Ben who had always wanted kids.
She met him on a last-minute date set up by a friend at work, who thought she should get out more, change into nice jeans and heels for once. It had been almost a year since her last relationship, short-lived like they’d all been—he was in plastics for the money and hid a vaping habit from her. She’d been reluctant, but when her friend said Ben was a teacher, a genuinely good guy, she figured there was no harm in a late dinner. She was surprised when Ben stood from the table to reach out his hand. He was tall and fit, like her, and looked more earnest than in the photo her friend had showed her, shirt off on the dock of a lake.
She liked him immediately. She was charmed by the way he touched a knuckle to his top lip when he laughed. He talked about his seventh-grade students with the pride of a parent. But he had mostly wanted to talk about her. The things she liked and didn’t, the places she had been and wanted to go. Her running. Her work. Her research. Her childhood, growing up an only child to a struggling single mother, who did everything she could to ensure her daughter became successful.
And then when the table was cleared, when they’d already laughed so hard that the people next to them were annoyed, when they’d had a handful of moments staring at each other but saying nothing at all, he signaled to the server for one last drink. And then he’d asked her: Do you want children?
She didn’t notice until the glass was tipped at her mouth that her wine was gone. She placed it back down, conscious of the seconds that were passing.
Yes. I think so. And then, to reassure herself, she tried again: Yes. I want kids.
He’d looked down, he’d touched his knuckle to his mouth again as he smiled. He’d heard the answer he’d hoped for. Everything between them was unfolding exactly as he wanted, she could see it.
She was thirty-three. She had always felt sure of what she wanted, and what she didn’t want, but motherhood felt like a topic for other people to discuss. Not her. Nothing about the idea excited her. It had been a source of contention between her and her mother for years—her mother desperately wanted a grandchild. She wanted Rebecca to know the kind of maternal love she knew. And although Rebecca felt indebted to her mother, and couldn’t stomach the thought of disappointing her, she had never envisioned her life with a child.
But she liked the exhilaration she felt on the walk back to her apartment that night, having said those words aloud to Ben. Something had started to shift. Something was beginning to feel bigger than herself. Maybe, she wondered, the maternal urge had been there inside her, but she hadn’t wanted to listen for it. Her ambition was loud, and the science was consuming. The infinite knowledge she tried to absorb, the extraordinary hours she had to work. She couldn’t have known what lay underneath that for so long.
She thought of her mother, alone. Of the years that were going by, and of the way Ben had kissed her outside the restaurant, like it hadn’t been about the kiss at all. It had been about possibility, and sometimes that’s how love begins. She called him when she got home to say she was safe, and they talked for two more hours.
They were married a year and a half later, a small family ceremony at the farmhouse where Ben grew up with his two brothers and his sister. Rebecca’s mother walked her from the freshly painted white porch of the farmhouse to the altar of stacked hay barrels and steel buckets stuffed with hundreds of sunflowers. There was much talk, after, of the babies who would one day be joining the nine other children in the family. Rebecca had watched Ben’s nieces and nephews chase one another through the tall grass in the ginger glow of the early-evening September sun, and had turned to see her mother watching too. Her mother hadn’t been able to give her everything, but she had got her there, to that moment. Accomplished and respected and secure. A life her mother could never have had herself.
Ben had then come to the porch, had stood beside his new mother-in-law. He put his strong arm around the shoulders that had carried more weight than any of them could comprehend and whispered something that made her laugh. They looked back at the children in the grass. Ben winked to Rebecca and she smiled with cheeks that ached from the joy of the day. She would have thrown off her satin shoes and run with him into the fields if he asked her to, let the bottom of her dress be soiled with dirt, raced against the sinking sun.
* * *
? ? ?
Somewhere between those beginnings and now, Rebecca traded her disinterest in motherhood for an obsession she can’t articulate. She was wary, until she wasn’t. She didn’t want a baby, until it became the only thing she needed.
And yet most of the time, she’s angry at herself for being hostage to the longing. The desperation feels like her greatest weakness. She can’t find the discipline to escape it, despite how tightly she can focus every other part of herself. Every other thought she has.
* * *
? ? ?
When she walks in the door, she sees his laptop open on the dining-room table, his earphones dropped next to it. He calls to her from the kitchen.
He pulls her near and rubs his thumb over the red mark on her forehead where her scrub cap fits too tight. It’s the gesture of a parent, wiping ketchup off the corner of a mouth. There’s a muted energy to their marriage now. He worries about her lack of sleep, the ache in the arch of her feet, if she eats enough when she’s at work. He slides the plate and a coffee across the table and takes a seat, waits for her to sit down too. His chin is in his hand, his elbow on the table.
“How is he?”
“Well, it’s hour by hour, but he doesn’t seem to be improving yet. The longer he’s in the coma, the less chance of making a recovery. They’re going to text me with any updates.”
“Jesus.” He shakes his head. He can’t imagine.