Quadruple Duty: All or Nothing

No egg…

I wanted to die. To just shrivel up and crawl my way into a corner of the room, and be left alone by everyone.

“So… what do we do?” asked Dakota. “How do we fix it?”

He was always the optimist, always looking for the most positive solution. It was just as his father said.

Only in some cases there was no solution.

“Not much we can do,” sighed Doctor Hill. “The tubes are the tubes. They’re very delicate, and scar easily. Any sort of repair on already-narrow tubes could increase the possibility of—

“There has to be something,” Ryan demanded loudly. I cringed at the outburst. He’d come dangerously close to pounding a fist on the doctor’s desk.

The little old man only shook his head. “I’m afraid not,” he said sympathetically. His sympathy was genuine too, and that was the worst part. I almost wanted him to be condescending, or placating, or pitying. That I could understand. That would make me angry, and anger was something I could work with.

“However…” the doctor said carefully, “there’s also good news.”

The knot in my throat stopped constricting in the span of a microsecond. But it still didn’t loosen.

“The rest of your HSG results are perfect,” the doctor continued. “Your uterus, the shape of your womb — that’s all normal. Better than normal, actually.” The man smiled warmly. “You have the perfect incubator to carry babies.”

I sat in stunned silence, unable to speak. Completely without the ability to comprehend what any of his words meant.

“I don’t get it,” said Kyle. “You just said she can’t have children.”

“Oh no,” Doctor Hill amended quickly. “I never said anything like that! I only said the tubes are blocked. The eggs can’t—”

“If the eggs can’t reach the sperm,” Jason interjected, “then how—”

“I was getting to that.”

I felt warm now, almost like I had a fever. It was the extreme opposite of what I was feeling before.

I didn’t know which was worse.

“You’re the absolute perfect candidate for In Vitro Fertilization,” the doctor said, staring back at me across the mahogany desk.

My heart skipped the next two beats. “I—IVF?”

“Yes,” he smiled. “Ms. Madsen, you’re the healthiest patient I’ve seen all year. You eat right, you exercise, your blood tests are immaculate. And you have, excuse me for saying it this way, one of the most perfect wombs I’ve ever seen.”

“IVF?” I repeated. I was still processing.

The doctor nodded. “You give yourself a series of hormone injections for a few months,” he said. “Then we harvest your eggs through a simple procedure, and pair them with—”

“And she can get pregnant this way?” Ryan asked, his voice hopeful.

“Oh yes,” the doctor smiled. “I’m certain of it.”

Jason squinted. “How certain?”

The doctor took off his glasses and cleaned them. “Hmmm.. I’d say… eighty to eighty-five percent chance per try?”

“Per try?” asked Kyle. “And how often can she… try?”

“Every other cycle. Sixty day intervals.”

The words struck me an almost physical blow. Eighty five percent? Every other cycle?