Tonight he didn’t just raise his voice, but got in her face and yelled until his voice cracked. “You try to get pregnant without telling me and now you go looking for my father without telling me. When did I become irrelevant to this marriage, Mel? When did I get thrown out of the decision making process? And when the fuck did you decide you know what’s best for me?”
He crumpled the paper in a shaking fist and threw it at her. “Don’t you ever go looking for my father again, do you understand? He is dead to me. If he ever calls here, I don’t want to know. If he ever shows up here, I don’t want to know. If you go have coffee with him, I don’t fucking want to know.”
He stormed out, the sound of her sobs dwindling away behind him as he swiftly clipped a leash on Harry and left. He walked for hours, muttering under his breath. He cooled off, and then he felt terrible. He still felt justified, but he felt terrible.
“I’m sorry,” he said later, carefully taking Melanie in his arms. “I’m sorry. The damn shots make me crazy but it’s no excuse. I should have walked out or…”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m like a lunatic lately. I miss my mother.” Her face crumpled and she wept in his chest. Erik slid his hand along the back of her neck, rested his cheek on her head.
“I know,” he whispered.
“I miss my mother and I hate that she’s missing everything.”
“She sees you,” he said, swaying side to side. “She sees you. She knows.”
“But I don’t see her seeing me,” she said, her voice hitching. “And I’m thinking about my dad. I’m dreaming about him and…” Melanie picked up her head, touching her fingers under her eyes. “It just bothers me our child won’t know its grandfather.”
“I know,” he said again, helping with his own fingertips to stay the tears. “Sometimes that’s just how it is with people. My mom will be the only grandparent. It’s not ideal but it’s what we have, Mel.”
She nodded, and touched her fingertips to his necklace. “They say infertility can really bring the crazy out in people,” she said. “I guess I have more crazy than I knew.”
“I love your crazy,” he said. “And you put up with mine.”
“I’m sorry, baby.”
He shushed her and pulled her close. “I know how important this is to you,” he whispered. “But please. Mel. My balls are under a microscope. Sometimes I need you to just take me to bed for…”
She picked up her head and managed a wobbly smile. “Just for your cock.”
“Well,” he said, looking up the ceiling. “Yeah. Kind of.”
She laughed then and put her hand on his face. “Come on. Upstairs. Leave your balls. Take the cannoli.”
“You’re adorable,” Erik said, pulling her by the hand.
“You can even pull out,” she said, following. “That’s how uninterested I am in your sperm tonight.”
“Oh, now you’re teasing.”
“Try me…”
Below the Belt
Mel tried hard to separate making love from making babies. But the gonadotropin injections were not helping Erik’s counts, and the doctors concluded he and Melanie would need high-tech assistance. Conventional insemination was ruled out. “Even with the artificial head start, your sperm will never make it to the fallopian tubes,” the doctor said.
“Thanks,” Erik muttered.
Overnight their life turned into acronyms. They jumped right over IVF—in vitro fertilization—to a procedure known as ICSI.
“Intracytoplasmic sperm injection,” Erik said on his daily run with Miles. “You don’t just flood the egg with sperm and hope for the best. You pick up one single sperm and inject it straight in.”
“Sounds foolproof.”
“Ah, but I like to make things difficult. They have to get my boys direct from the source.”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“Percutaneous epididymal sperm aspiration.”
“Showoff.”
“PESA for short. I mean, who can handle a mouthful like that?”
“Your mother?”
The procedure failed.
“Testicular sperm extraction,” Erik said to Miles. “That’s TESA to those in the inner circle.”
“I can’t compete with this,” Miles said.