Mixed Blessings (25 page)

"Thanks, Mark . . . for everything."

"No problem."

And as Mark went back to work, he hoped that everything would come out all right for Charlie. He was a great kid, and Mark thought he deserved to get whatever he wanted.

"Okay, what does it say?" Brad asked anxiously as she did the test.

It was just like the test she did to check her hormone surge every month at the time of ovulation.

"I don't know yet. It hasn't been long enough." She was timing it with her watch, and Brad was standing just outside the bathroom. "Go away. You're making me nervous."

"I'm not going anywhere." He smiled at her. "I want to know if the turkey baster worked."

"You're disgusting." But she was dying to know too. She could hardly stand it . . . another sixty seconds . . . fifty-five forty . . .

the test was almost over and nothing had changed, and then she saw it

.

. . the bright blue that meant her hopes had come true . . . the miracle had happened to her. . . . She looked up at him with tears in her eyes, and he had seen it too. She was pregnant. "Oh, my God," she said quietly, looking at him, and then suddenly worried. "What if it's a false positive? I think that happens sometimes."

"It's not." He was still smiling as he moved closer to her and took her in his arms. He had never thought their life would change to this extent. And he had never expected to be so muchinlovewithawoman . .

.

and a baby. "I love you, Pilar so very much," he said as he closed his eyes and held her, and there were tears on her cheeks when she looked up at him.

"I just can't believe it. I never really thought it would work. All those pills, and the ultrasounds . . . and that ridiculous room with the videotapes and dirty magazines. . . . Wow!" "I don't think you need to tell the baby all that when he or she grows up. I think maybe we can skip that part, and just tell him it was a moonlit night and we were very much in love. I think you can drop the part about the turkey baster."

"Yeah, maybe you're right." She grinned as they walked back to their bedroom. And suddenly he had an overwhelming desire for her, as though to make this baby even more his than it was now.

He pulled her slowly down on the bed next to him, and kissed her long and hard, feeling her breasts, which were just the least bit fuller. He had wondered about that a few days before, and suspected that she might be pregnant.

They lay together for a long time, and Pilar wanted him desperately.

And then afterward, she was remorseful. "You well sated." 

"No, I don't." His voice was deep and sensuous, as she ran a hand over his chest, and then down to the part of him that gave her such pleasure. "Being pregnant is perfectly normal."

"Ha!" She laughed at him. "If it's so normal, how come it's not so easy?"

"Sometimes good things aren't. It wasn't easy catching you either."

He kissed her again, and they got up and went to make breakfast. They sat on their terrace afterward in shorts and T-shirts. It was a beautiful December day, and their baby was due in August.

"Wait till Nancy hears." Pilar grinned as she helped herself to another helping of scrambled eggs. Suddenly, she was starving. "Do you think she'll be stunned?" Pilar laughed happily as she thought of it, and her husband grinned. They had never been happier in their lives.

"I think it's safe to say so. You're the one who's told everyone over the years that you'd never want to have children. You're going to have a lot of explaining to do, my dear." Not to mention what her mother was going to say. But Pilar was used to that. The one she really wanted to tell was Marina. She knew how happy she'd be for her and how supportive. "Let's tell the kids on Christmas," Pilar said with a luminous smile.

He smiled at her, wondering if they should wait, just to make sure everything was all right, but he didn't want to scare her.

And when she saw the doctor the next day, she said everything was fine.

She could work, she could play tennis, she could make love, nothing to excess, and lots of rest and a healthy diet. But she led a healthy life anyway, and she talked about working right up until the last minute. And then she was going to take a few months off, and eventually go back to the office. She couldn't imagine giving up work, or staying home for more than a short time in the beginning.

She had everything worked out. She was going to take care of the baby herself until she went back to work, and then she was gomgto findanice all pair girl who would be loving to the baby. She was going to have an amniocentesis in late March or early April to determine if the child was genetically healthy. It was a test that checked for problems like spina bifida and Down syndrome. And it would also tell her the sex of the child, if she wished to know it, which she did. And whenever she did her Christmas shopping, she kept buying little odds and ends for the baby. She even ordered an English pram she liked when she went to Saks. It had a navy-blue hood, and a white enamel basket.

"You're certainly getting ready, aren't you?" Brad teased.

She was so excited, she couldn't imagine how she was going to wait until August. She told her secretary and her partuers at their Christmas lunch, and they almost fell out of their seats. And she laughed happily at the look on their faces.

"Surprised ya, didn't I?"

"You're kidding, right?" Her partners couldn't believe it.

She had always been the champion of the feminist cause, one of the early supporters of legalized abortion in California. What had happened to her? Was it change of life? Middle age? Mid-life crisis?

"No, I think it's marriage," she confessed. "I don't know . .

I just started thinking how sad it would be if we never had a baby."

"You're lucky it wasn't too late," her secretary said quietly.

Her husband had died when she was forty-one, and when she married "the man of her life" two years later, they had been desperate to have a baby. Neither of them had ever had children before, and they had tried everything to conceive and nothing had worked. And her husband was dead set against adoption.

Alice and Bruce were particularly pleased for her, and Marina had been jubilant when Pilar told her.

"I feel so lucky," Pilar said softly. "I really didn't think it would happen, even once we made up our minds. It's such a miracle when it happens. When you're young, you think it's no big deal, you screw, you get knocked up. And if you're fifteen in the back of a pickup truck, you can count on it. After that, nothing is quite so certain. You take every test, you do it on the right date, and at best you have an eight-ten-percent chance of getting pregnant. It's a wonder anyone ever does." She grinned. But she had. And she was thrilled. She told everyone her plans to work right up until the end, and everyone was excited for her when they heard. Pilar Coleman had everything she wanted.

Unlike Charlie Winwood, who sat in Dr. Pattengill's office, staring at him in disbelief. He had just told him that his sperm count was just under four million. Charlie thought that was great news for about five seconds, until the doctor explained it.

"Forty million is miminal for the normal range, Charlie." He looked at him seriously, anxious to be supportive. "Four million is way too far below that." And the concentration of sperm had been less than one million per milIditer, which was five percent of what it should be.

And less than two percent had been moving, again shockingly low, when fifty percent would have been normal.

"Is there anything we can do to bring it up, so to speak." He smiled, and the doctor did too.

"Possibly hormones. But you may just be too far below the normal range. I'm not sure we can bring your sperm levels up far enough, but I'd like to check you again before we do anything." He had brought the other vial in. "We'll do another check now, and one more next week. And while we're waiting for those results, I'd like to do a few more tests. One of them is a sugar test to check for fiuctose. With your low volume of sperm, we could be dealing with a blocked duct and that could give us an important clue."

"And if it is blocked?" Charlie asked, his face white beneath the freckles. He hadn't expected this . . . but Barb had been right. There was a reason why she wasn't getting pregnant. He had a low sperm count.

"If there's a blockage, there are several possibilities; we can do a testicular biopsy, or a vasogram. But that's a long way off, and I doubt that you'll need that. I'd like to do an orange dye test on you, to see why the sperm don't move well. And the hamster test." He smiled. "You've probably heard of that. Everyone who's ever had a friend with a fertility problem seems to know about that one."

"No, I'm afraid I don't." What were they going to do to him now?

"We use a hamster egg and impregnate it with your sperm. It's actually a sperm penetration assay. But if the hamster egg is impregnated, the fertilizing capability of your sperm may be sound, and if not, it can be indicative of a serious problem."

"I never even had one as a kid," Charlie said unhappily, and the doctor smiled gently.

"We'll know a lot more next week."

But the week before Christmas was the worst in Charlie's life. He went back to Dr. Pattengill, and got what to him was a death sentence to his marriage. The second sperm count was far worse than the first, and the third even more depressing. In one of them he had almost a zero sperm count, the motility of his sperm was poor, and there was no blockage to account for the low semen volume. And even the hamster test had been disastrous. The hamster had not gotten pregnant, but Pattengill didn't find the results of the hamster test surprising, given the numbers. And there was absolutely nothing they could do.

If his hormone levels were higher, it might have been worthwhile trying chlomiphene, but he was too far below the normal range to try that, and with no blockage to account for it, there was no appropriate surgery either. "You have to think of alternative plans for your family," the doctor said softly. "With these sperm counts, it's just about impossible for you to impregnate anyone. I'm really sorry."

"There's absolutely no chance?" Charlie's voice was a squeak in the suddenly airless room, and for the first time in years, he felt his asthma.

"Virtually none." It was a death sentence to him, and he was sorry he had ever come. But maybe it was better knowing than hoping.

"Nothing I can do, Doc? No medicine, no treatment?"

"I wish there were, Charlie. You're very close to what we call essentially a zero sperm count. You just can't make a baby. But you can adopt. If your wife is willing, you might want to consider donor sperm, and have her artificially inseminated. Then you could go through the birth process together. That works very well for some people. Or you may even want to consider not having children. Some couples are very happy child-free,' as they call it. It allows you more time, greater closeness, less stress in some ways, than the addition of children to a marriage. Even biologically related children can add enormous pressure to a marriage. You and your wife should talk about all your options. We can provide counseling to help you find what's right for both of you," he said gently.

Great. Charlie sat staring dumbly out the window. Hi, Barb, well, found out today I'm sterile, you don't have to worry about having kids anymore. . . . What's for dinner? He knew that she would never agree to adopt, let alone to artificial insemination. The idea of even suggesting it to her almost made him laugh . . . except that he wanted to cry so badly.

"I don't know what to say," he said as he looked at the doctor.

"You don't have to say anything. It's a lot to absorb all at once.

And I know how painful it is for you. It's terrible news. It feels like a death sentence, but it isn't."

"How do you know?" Charlie said tersely, his eyes filled with tears.

"It looks a lot different from that side of the desk."

"That's true, and I don't usually tell my patients this, Charlie. But I have the same thing you have. In fact, mine is more severe, not that that makes much difference. Classic azoospermia, in my case.

Zero sperm count. My wife and I have four children, and all of them are adopted. I know how you feel. But there are other solutions. You won't get your wife pregnant this month, or any other month, but that doesn't mean you can't have a family, if you want one. But as I said, the right answer for you may even be not to have children. Whatever's right for you. You have to find those answers.

Charlie nodded, and eventually he stood up, and shook the doctor's hand and left. Peter Pattengill hadn't been quite the miracle worker Mark's brother-in-law had promised. There were no miracles for Charlie.

There was nothing. There never had been. No parents, no family when he was growing up, and now no kids of his own, and sometimes he wondered if there was even Barbie. She was so separate from him, so distant and independent. Lately he hardly saw her anymore, she was always at auditions, or out with friends, and he was always working.

And now what was he going to tell her? That he was sterile? Great . . . and how would you like to have artificial insemination with donor sperm, sweetheart? That would be a big hit with her. He could hardly believe it.

He sat in his car for half an hour before he started it, and as he drove home, the Christmas decorations he saw looked like an insult. It reminded him of when he'd been in the state home as a boy, and he used to look out and see homes across the street with Christmas trees, and lit-up reindeer on the lawn, and mothers and fathers and children. He had always wanted to be one of them, and he couldn't even have that now. It was like a cruel joke. And all his life, that was all he had ever wanted.

When he got home, Barb was out, but this time she had left him a note, and said she was going to an acting workshop and wouldn't be home till after midnight. It was just as well, he couldn't have faced her anyway and not told her. He poured himself a stiff glass of Scotch and went to bed, and by the time she got home, he was so drunk he was unconscious.