Another Man's Child

Lisa watched, her heart thumping. Finally. Now he had hope.

“That’s great, Willie!” she said, as the boy started on his right foot again. “How does it feel?” She. ran her hand over the boy’s leg.

Willie shrugged, his freckled face breaking into an embarrassed grin. “I guess I can feel it a little better,” he said. “It kinda hurts.”

Lisa helped him settle the covers back over his partially paralyzed limbs. “Well, don’t overdo it, buster,” she said. A week ago she’d been begging him to try to sit up.

“But I gotta work hard, Doc. Danny Johnson says that if I’m better by next summer, I can come to his Junior League training camp.”

“Danny Johnson?” Lisa asked, suddenly understanding—and falling in love with her husband all over again.

“He’s a pitcher for the Yankees, Doc, the best, and he runs a camp for promising teenage baseball players every summer.”

He’d also gone to college with Marcus. “Teenage players?” Lisa smiled at the boy. “You won’t be thirteen until the summer after next.”

Willie grinned. “I know. Ain’t it great? I’ll be the youngest guy there, but Mr. Johnson talked to my coach and he says I’m ready.”

Lisa replaced the chart at the end of Willie’s bed. “Then we’ll just have to make sure you’re better by next summer, huh?” That gave them a year. And as there was no longer any sign of permanent damage to Willie’s spine, she figured they could just about make it.

Lisa tried to wait up to thank Marcus that night, but by midnight, she knew she was going to have to go to bed without him. Again. She was on call starting at six the next morning, and her young patients deserved to have her well rested. It wasn’t their fault that her husband would rather be in meetings with strangers than at home with her. In the month since her birthday, he’d hardly been home. And he hadn’t touched her at all.

“SOMETHING TELLS ME this is more than just a friendly visit,” Beth Montague said when Lisa took a chair in Beth’s office late the next afternoon. The office was light, airy, with a white carpet and a lot of blond wood. And comfortably cool, despite the August heat.

“I’m losing him, Beth.”

Beth was silent for a moment, her gaze darting toward the framed picture on the corner of her desk. Lisa knew it was a picture of John, Beth’s late husband, and that her friend could fully understand the pain of losing the man you loved. “Have you tried talking to him?” Beth finally asked, her eyes unusually somber.

Lisa shook her head. She’d been reading a pamphlet about artificial insemination when he’d come in late one night a little over a week ago, and the frozen look on his face had been haunting her ever since. “It’s a little difficult to talk to someone who’s never around.” Her throat thickened with tears. For weeks he crawled into bed at night long after she was asleep and was up before she awoke.

“John and I couldn’t have children, either. Did I ever tell you that?”

Lisa’s head shot up. “No! I thought you’d just been waiting until the clinic was up and running.”

Beth shook her head, glancing again at the picture of her husband. “We were genetically incompatible. I miscarried a couple of times after we were first married, but neither one of us expected to hear the doctor tell us that I’d probably never carry a baby to term, and that if I did, chances were it would suffer severe defects.”

Lisa was shocked. She’d never guessed. Beth and John had always been so cheerful, so obviously happy with their life together. “How did you get over it?” she asked.

Beth shrugged. “It was hard at first, of course. But we’d both come from big families, and neither one of us had ever had a burning need to produce a child. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact. We appreciated the peace we found alone together. But still, having a family was the natural course of things, so we’d decided to do it while we were still young—that way we’d have a lot of golden years afterward. Naturally, when we were first told we couldn’t have children, we suddenly wanted them a lot. But once we got used to the idea of a whole lifetime of golden years, it wasn’t so bad. We had more time for each other than our friends did—their time was taken up with feedings and diapering and pacing the floor with crying infants. As it turned out, I’m thankful for every moment of that time.”

Lisa gaped at her friend. “You amaze me, you know that? You’ve been through so much, but you’re one of the most cheerful and optimistic people I know.”

“Well, look at my life.” Beth waved a hand at the room around her, the walls adorned with plaques, commendations and many many baby photos—Beth’s success stories. “How can I not be happy? I have a job I love, friends enough to chase away the loneliness, enough money to do what I want to do—and I have memories of a love most people are never lucky enough to find. But then, you know all about that once-in-a-lifetime love. You and Marcus are in with the lucky few.”

Lisa nodded.

“And that’s why I can’t just sit back and watch you two fall apart.”

“I can’t watch it, either, Beth. Which is why I’m here.” Lisa smoothed a wrinkle from the skirt of her pale blue suit. “I’ve got to do something. A lot of Marcus’s problem is that he knows how badly I wanted to have a child, and he thinks his inability to give me. one is cheating me out of my life’s dream. I’m sure that’s why he won’t consider adoption. He seems to think that would be shortchanging me, raising another woman’s child when I’m perfectly capable of giving birth to my own.”

“I guess that makes some sort of sense,” Beth said. She leaned her forearms against the edge of her desk and folded her hands in front of her ample chest, just as she had the day she’d told them that Marcus was sterile.

“He’s against artificial insemination, too, of course, but you know Marcus,” Lisa rushed on. “He’d make a wonderful father. And with insemination he wouldn’t have to feel guilty anymore. He wouldn’t have to feel like I’ve been cheated.”

Beth spread her hands wide. “That’s what I’ve been telling you all along, Lis. I’ve thought artificial insemination was your answer from the first, but it’s not me you have to convince.”

Lisa sat back hard in her chair. “I know. So how do I convince my husband that it’s a good thing to impregnate myself with another man’s seed?”

“You’re a doctor, Lis. You know that part of it is little more than a medical procedure, like getting someone else’s blood. We have blood banks. We have sperm banks. Legally, and every other way that really counts, the baby would belong to Marcus.”