Page 38 of The Facilitator: Part 3
“Fine. No sickness now, I’m famished, though.”
“I’ll make you a nice lunch,” she said.
I raised my eyebrows at her. “I’ll makealunch,” she said, chuckling and omitting thenice.
She did make lunch, and it was a nice one. There wasn’t much she could fuck up with a chicken salad. Idid, however, have to remind her she had chicken grilling when smoke started to rise from the pan.
Sam called to inform us that a handful of sperm had been extracted and werebobsleighing their way down a test tube to be put on ice.I was disappointed at thehandfuluntil Lauren reminded me that we only needed one.
Lauren had her list, but I had mine. A list I’d made just a few weeks ago.
Lauren and I sat with her fertility expert. We were already ahead of the game on information, having devoured as much as we could, and she’d been taking her injections to suppress her normal cycle. Stage two was more medication to increase egg production.
“There are a lot of side effects with this one,” we were told, and a list was reeled off. I shook my head in shock and concern. Lauren just nodded.
“Mackenzie, if we worried about the side effects of every drug we took, we’d never take one,” she said, as we left the appointment with yet another prescription. We picked up her medication from the little booth and headed home.
I knew Lauren had been experiencing some of the side effects of suppressing her cycle, even though she’dkept quiet about it. She had regular headaches, to the point she mentioned she might get her eyes tested. However, they were nothing like the ones she experienced in stage two.
The drug she took gave her hot flashes. She was regularly sick and her headaches got worse.
I held her hair one evening as she puked in the toilet. She had tears streaming down her cheeks as she dry heaved.
“No more, Lauren,” I whispered.
I’d watched my wife lose weight, lose sleep, have outbursts of anger, and then tears. Her mood swings were enormous. She reached for my hand.
When she finally sat back on her heels, I handed her a facecloth that I’d soaked in cold water.
“No more, Lauren. I can’t bear to see you like this,” I said. It was only been a week.
She closed her eyes slowly and smiled. “Mister, if you can’t bear seeing me like this for just one week, you are truly fucked if I get morning, lunchtime, or afternoon, or all, sickness.” She chuckled and reached her arms out for me to help her to her feet.
“I didn’t realize it was going to be like this,” I said, as she lay on top of the sheets.
She was way thinner that she should be. She had bruising along her stomach from the injections, she was pale, and had dark circles around her eyes. She coveredit well, but I knew she was suffering. I’d called the clinic, they’d offered anti-sickness medication but Lauren didn’t want yet another chemical in her body.
“One more week,” she whispered.
The desire to have a child paled against the desire to not have my wife throwing up constantly.
Chapter Eleven
It was Lauren’s turn to spend some time in the hospital room, not the same one I’d been in, of course. Not even the same hospital, but a rather lovely private clinic in London. She was to be sedated and her eggs collected. She smiled, laughed, joked with the fertility team, but all the while I could see how anxious she was. When Lauren was worried or scared, she was over friendly. She was the perfect example of an extroverted introvert. She’d go over the top in situations that she was uncomfortable in. I held her hand and I did my best to comfort her.
I was there when she returned. She was sleepy and dozed and I wondered if that, like me, had been a combination of her sedation and the nights she’d been hanging over the toilet instead of sleeping. She’d joked that shewas looking forward to the sedation so she could get a good few hours of sleep.
Then came the first of many anxious waits.
Each egg would be injected with a single sperm, we were told and then, a little over a week later we were back. She was in and out in fifteen minutes having two fertilized egg implanted.
I wanted to wrap Lauren up in cotton. I wouldn’t let her do anything, carry any objects over the weight of her handbag, and we did all this without telling anyone. We had made a decision that this journey would be made in private until we had something exciting to tell…or had decided it wasn’t a route for us.
“For fuck’s sake, Mackenzie!” Lauren snatched her workbag from my hands. She stomped through the house to the living room and threw it on the sofa.
“Mmm, okay,” I said, following her. I’d picked the bag up from the seat of the car. Yes, I didn’t want her straining herself, but I’d carry that bag for her simply because I was a gentleman.
She had her back to me and her arms were folded tight across her chest. From the way her shoulders were moving, I knew she was crying. I walked up and wrapped my arms around her. She gripped my arms with her hands.
