"I hope you don"t mind my calling," said the nurse. "But I want to pa.s.s along some advice." She had become something of a friend through all my visits, and now she gave me the name of a clinic where she thought I should go to get my eggs frozen.
"Why would I do that?" I asked.
"In case you ever want another baby," she said.
"I don"t," I said quickly. Even mentioning the idea seemed like an affront. I"d had my three girls, and nothing could replace them.
But I also knew that I couldn"t trust my own instincts anymore. I spent every day dazed and confused, and I didn"t see any way to make sense of my new lot in life. Maybe the recommendation of a doctor or nurse could help.
I called a friend and went to the clinic. But I immediately found out I was too old to freeze my eggs. Apparently, you do that at age twenty-five or so, not thirty-seven. But the fertility doctor who broke the news had another plan.
"We can do in vitro fertilization," she explained. "We make the embryos and freeze those, which is more effective."
The doctor quickly described the procedure. It sounded like a lot of effort, but I was mulling over the idea and thinking "Why not?" when she dropped the kicker that answered that question.
"The cost for each cycle is about twenty thousand dollars," she said.
Twenty thousand dollars? Was she joking? We had just paid for a funeral for three children at enormous expense. I didn"t have a job, and since Warren"s real-estate appraisal business was tied to the scarily plummeting housing market, who knew what would happen for us financially?
"I can"t afford that," I told her bluntly.
"Come back next week when we have the results from the exam and blood work," she said. "I"ll check with Billing to see if there"s any chance that your insurance covers the drugs." She handed me a huge stack of forms that I knew I would never fill out.
When I returned to her office for the follow-up, she looked worried and shooed away the friend who had come with me.
"I need to speak to Mrs. Hance alone," she said gravely.
It sounded like bad news, and I instantly inferred that they"d found something incurable in the blood work and I"d be dead in twenty-four hours. The thought made me unaccountably happy.
I had sunk so low that a devastating diagnosis promised to be a reprieve. Hooray! I thought idiotically. I"m going to die and see the girls!
But the physical results had been fine, and the doctor only wanted to inform me privately that my insurance would not pay anything. Well, that was that, there was nothing more to discuss. Between the cost and the paperwork, I decided I wouldn"t think about it anymore. While the problem hadn"t seemed very dramatic at the doctor"s office, it took on enormous proportions when I told Jeannine the story a few days later. Warren was willing to do anything I wanted, and told me not to worry about the money. But the costs and procedure seemed overwhelming and I refused to put any more pressure on him.
"Why does everything have to be this way?" I wailed as I sat in Jeannine"s kitchen. "Everything has been so hard since the accident. Why can"t something good happen? Something should be easy."
By merest coincidence, Jeannine had a friend named Emily visiting who heard the conversation. And, by even greater coincidence, Emily"s sister-in-law was an embryologist who worked for a fertility doctor in Manhattan. Overhearing our conversation, she offered to call her sister-in-law for advice.
The next day Jeannine called me excitedly.
"You have to call Wally," she said.
"Who"s Wally?"
"She"s Dr. Rosenwaks"s a.s.sistant."
"Who"s Dr. Rosenwaks?"
"The best fertility doctor in New York. Maybe in America or even the whole world. He got Celine Dion pregnant with twins. And a lot of other celebrities go to him, too," she said triumphantly. "Wally"s expecting your call at nine a.m. tomorrow."
So the next morning, I picked up my phone, and as soon as I reached her and said my name, Wally started crying.
"Oh, Jackie, I"m so sorry. I know what you"re going through," she said, as if we"d known each other forever. "My little nephew just died three weeks ago and my sister is inconsolable. But if you"re still here and making it through, I know she"s going to be okay."
We spent a long time on the phone, talking and crying. At the end, she told me to come in the following Wednesday.
"Tell your sister I"ll pray for her son," I said as we hung up.
The next week, I tucked a picture of the girls in my wallet to give to Wally.
"Where are we going again?" Warren asked me as we got into his car to drive to Manhattan. "And who is this man?"
"Someone important," I said vaguely, wanting to think quietly on the drive.
Wally had said to have the receptionist call her when we arrived so we didn"t have to linger out front. But, too embarra.s.sed to request special attention, I just gave my name and sat down in the huge, modern waiting room, which was bursting with activity. Couples desperate to get pregnant came in and out, whispering to each other, going back to procedure rooms, and talking to nurses about blood tests and hormone levels. I"d never had to cope with infertility, and I sensed the tension in the air.
An hour went by. Then an hour and a half ...
Finally, Wally came out and saw me.
"Jackie, what are you doing here?" she asked, having recognized the name on our chart. She beckoned us to come back through a side door. "Next time come through here and don"t wait out front. You get VIP treatment."
We went into another gla.s.s-enclosed waiting room and watched as attractive, young nurses moved efficiently through the halls and exam rooms with pleasant smiles. Too intimidated to talk, we sat quietly until we finally got called to meet the famous Dr. Zev Rosenwaks.
Considering his credentials, I understood why people would wait any length of time to see him. In person, he was polite and respectful, with no airs at all. He did a thorough exam and checked Warren"s sperm count. All good. Then we went to his office and he sat down at his desk.
"How do you want to proceed?" he asked, getting right to the point.
"I don"t know. I don"t want to get pregnant," I said, a comment that had probably never been made in that room before.
"Why are you here?" he asked.
"I just want to make embryos," I said, remembering what the doctor at the other clinic had advised.
He looked at me for a moment, as if about to ask what I wanted to do with the embryos if not get pregnant. I might have been announcing that I wanted to do a nice little project for a school biology cla.s.s. But then he seemed to brush the comment away. Of course she"ll want to have a baby, he seemed to be thinking. She just doesn"t know it yet.
"Make an appointment with Wally and we"ll get started," he said, standing up.
"Um, before that, where"s the business office?" Warren asked. "We"ll need to figure out the finances."
"It"s taken care of," he said. And he walked out and shut the door.
In the sudden quiet of the office, Warren and I stared at each other, not sure what had just happened.
Finally I got up and opened the door a crack. I saw Wally standing nearby and gestured to her to come over.
"Wally? What does he mean it"s taken care of?" I asked in a loud whisper.
"He wants to do this for you without charge."