The Child Who Changed Them (Parent Portal 5)

Hurt feelings on her part were not necessary and not welcome, either. As a doctor, she certainly didn’t fault him for believing the results. He’d done everything right. Tested multiple times, multiple places. She’d believe them, too, if she wasn’t carrying the evidence of his false results inside her.

She knew it was much more likely that he’d had failed test results than that she’d been injected with sperm when she’d been in for a completely different procedure.

Firmly resolved, she knocked on his door, tablet in hand, ready to talk about charting issues. Nurse Martha. And Brooklyn George.

The door opened and the first thing she saw was Greg holding something: a piece of white plastic, a home sperm test, with a C underlined—the control line indicating that he’d done the test correctly. Greg’s fingers, ones that had moved artistically over her body for months, were shaking. Reaching into his pocket with his free hand, he took out another test, also marked very clearly with a C result. Putting both in one hand, he then pulled several sheets of paper, each folded in half lengthwise, out of his back pocket, and handed them to her.

She took them because they were there; it was an instinctive move. She read them because she wanted to see what kind of testing he’d had, by whom, and compile the results. As another doctor would.

Her thoughts, though, were not on test results. There was a chart, showing all of the efforts he’d made, followed by test results that showed no change at all. She looked up from the paper and saw a man who’d not only been tested, but done everything he could to change his results.

Over a period of six years.

She saw a man with resolution in his gaze.

Greg was a doctor. He knew what those results meant, and yet he’d kept trying. And trying. He’d wanted a child that badly. And continued to be told he wasn’t capable of fathering one.

She could only imagine the level of pain that had to have brought him. Tears pricked at her eyes and she bent her head until her own emotions were under control.

Could he allow himself to be happy that he’d finally succeeded?

If he’d succeeded.

The magnitude of that if weighed heavily on her with his results in hand.

“These two—” he held up the testing devices with which he’d greeted her “—were last night and this morning,” he told her. “I didn’t bring the third one I did in between.”

He’d ejaculated three times in twelve hours. That knowledge didn’t surprise her. The man was as virile as they came. The sudden heat between her legs, accompanied by a wave of disappointment for not having been there, were completely unexpected.

And brought a new wave of shame in herself. The man was dealing with what he believed to be incredibly difficult news and she stood there getting turned on by him?

Because it was all about her, in her world, apparently. Her husband’s death, Wood’s sacrifices, all pointed to it.

How could she have slid so far into herself? Yeah, the car accident had been rough. She’d lost her husband, nearly lost her own life. She’d been paralyzed for a time, believing she’d never walk again. But she was good as new. And living like some kind of victim, as though she had to have a man in her life having her back at all times. Even when it hurt his own.

His test results weren’t good. The home sperm count test confirmed what the others had told him.

“I understand that you have low sperm count,” she finally spoke, trying to choose her words carefully. “But it only takes one good one out of thousands...” And as often as he’d emptied himself in her, those odds weren’t as impossible as they might seem. “And I must have a particularly hospitable environment.”

Shaking his head, Greg turned his back, leaving his testing apparatuses on his desk before grabbing his tablet and heading to their work space—the round table they’d occupied the day before.

“I don’t just have extremely low sperm count, Elaina. I have antibodies that kill off my sperm. Probably due to a prostate injury I had during an impromptu high school football game. My sperm are sparse and they don’t make it out of my body.”

Antisperm antibodies. She was familiar with the condition, even before she’d just read his test results.

He wasn’t talking in medical terms, she could tell. He wasn’t a doctor in the moment. He was a man with a condition that hurt him deeply. And the chances of overcoming it were slim to rare.

She hadn’t meant to touch him. Forethought would have prevented her from doing so. But her hand was covering his before she’d had a chance to form a thought. “One did, Greg,” she said softly. Tentatively.

Could he be glad that he was finally going to be a father? Could they share this child and maybe manage to be friends in the process?

Real friends?

Not lovers. She adamantly couldn’t go back there—she was too emotionally dependent to allow that. But with a child between them...they’d...

Pulling his hand from beneath hers, he shook his head. “You’re a doctor, Elaina. You read the test results. You know as well as I do that I’m not capable of fathering a child.”

She did know that, medically speaking, he was right. But somehow it had happened.