Chapter One
This is only a preliminary exam. It’s not like you’re fully committing to anything yet.
The words replayed themselves in Elaina Alexander’s head as she sat, dressed again in the dark blue scrubs she’d worn to work. The physical exam she’d just had was the last piece of the preparatory testing, counseling and paperwork she’d been through on her way to starting a family of her own that afternoon. Now she was waiting for a consultation with Dr. Cheryl Miller, the ob-gyn at The Parent Portal fertility clinic.
This is only a preliminary exam. It’s not like you’re fully committing to anything yet.
She was nervous. Apprehensive on some levels. But she was most definitely fully committed. Cassie, her sister-in-law of almost a year, had only been trying to assuage Elaina’s qualms; she’d made the statement to comfort Elaina in an early morning phone call. Cassie’s words hadn’t quieted her inner turmoil any, but they’d proved to her how very much she needed to know that she’d passed all the initial steps and could be scheduled for her insemination, should she choose to fully commit to something.
She and the team at The Parent Portal had talked about in vitro—about combining her egg and Peter’s sperm outside her womb, creating an embryo and then implanting it—but she’d opted to have Peter’s sperm injected. To have their baby created inside her body.
After months of thought, talking with Peter’s brother, Wood, and Cassie, and after counseling, research and more thought, the doctor part of her, the analytical part had only one question left.
How soon could she start monitoring her system for ovulation so that she could get her deceased husband’s sperm inside her? At thirty-four, she was far too conscious of time passing.
As a woman who ached with the need to have her own family, and to honor the husband who’d died when she’d lived, she couldn’t get pregnant fast enough.
The sun had been shining when she’d come into the clinic half an hour before, with a forecast of blue skies and sixty-five degrees in Marie Cove that March Thursday. The sterile, mostly white room in which she sat had a bit of a chill. Or she did.
Refixing her long dark hair into a ponytail, she glanced for a time at her blunt-cut but perfectly healthy-looking fingernails.
Ten minutes had passed since Dr. Miller’s PA had completed her exam and Elaina had been told the doctor would be with her shortly. A quick glance at her smartwatch told her what she already knew—though she had nothing specifically scheduled, her shift at the hospital started in an hour. Having recently finished her last year of residency, she’d taken on a full-time nuclear radiologist position at Marie Cove’s prestigious Oceanfront Hospital—something she’d been working toward for more than a decade. Being late wasn’t an option.
Another five minutes passed. Elaina got up to pace the small room. Checked her watch. Her phone. Saw a work email indicating that Dr. Greg Adams, in the ER, needed her to do some imaging as soon as possible. He had an eight-year-old repeat patient who’d come in again that morning with symptoms that didn’t make sense with the medication she was on, and he wasn’t going to release her until he knew more. He was specifically requesting Elaina’s opinion.
Quickly thumbing off a reply, scheduling the appointment as soon as her shift started, she thought about the child—a young girl with whom she was familiar from a chain of somewhat perplexing previous visits. But she didn’t spend any mental power on the doctor who’d sent the request. She and Greg, though they’d been friends with benefits for a time, had a good working relationship and that was all that mattered right now.
The door opened and Elaina spun from her nonperusal of an impregnated uterine diagram to face Cheryl. And she knew the pronounced lines at the corners of the doctor’s eyes didn’t foreshadow the go-ahead Elaina wanted to hear.
“What?” she pretty much blurted. And quickly followed it with “What did you find?”
She’d deal with it. Yes, thirty-five was the first cutoff date for healthy delivery, and risk grew exponentially in women over thirty-five carrying children. But she had time, at least statistically, to fix whatever had to be fixed...
“Have a seat,” Dr. Miller said, sitting at a black pad-topped stool in front of the monitor mounted on a wall by the door. Elaina didn’t want to sit.
She wanted to read the screen, which she couldn’t see without standing over the doctor’s shoulder. But she trained her eyes on the doctor instead as she reclaimed the chair she’d vacated minutes before. They were both medical doctors. Professionals trained to maintain boundaries, no matter the news being delivered.
Cheryl didn’t look at the monitor. Elaina’s personal information probably wasn’t even up there. The PA had clicked out of it when she’d left the room.
And did it really matter, other than to distract Elaina’s immediate emotions from flooding all over her and onto the floor?
“What we found, and what I’ve just confirmed—” Dr. Miller’s tone was measured “—is that you aren’t a candidate for fertilization.”
Moving back a few inches, as though she could distance herself from the news, Elaina studied the woman who’d been a doctor twenty years longer than she had. Needing to know that she was wrong in her assessment.
“Not a candidate?” she asked. What did that mean? They wanted her to just go away? Be done with the rest of her life’s plan?
Dr. Miller shook her head. “There’s no...”
“Wait,” Elaina interrupted, not ready to hear the medical proof that backed up the doctor’s claim. She had to be fully braced and ready to believe that Cheryl could be wrong first. That medical science did get things wrong sometimes, if for no other reason than because of the human error involved in procuring that information.
Dr. Miller watched her, as though she had all day to sit and wait.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she snapped back to herself, appalled that she was wasting the busy woman’s time. “I...can you tell me, first, is it permanent? Are you telling me I can’t ever get pregnant?”
When Cheryl Miller’s brows drew together, Elaina’s heart sank. Her stomach sank. “I know how badly you wanted to have Peter’s child,” the doctor said. “And only Peter’s child.” Dr. Miller had been at The Parent Portal back when Peter, and everyone he could talk into it, had donated sperm for the then fledging supply in the portal’s “bank.”
At the mention of her dead husband in that moment—her first husband—tears sprang to Elaina’s eyes. He hadn’t been perfect, but Peter had been a good man. Dedicated to giving his all to the medical community.
Dr. Miller had been present at one of Elaina’s initial visits, when they hadn’t been certain that Peter’s sperm was even still viable; her use of another donation had been discussed—and summarily dismissed. If Peter’s sperm wasn’t usable, she’d rethink the plan.
“That’s why it’s a bit difficult for me to tell you that the reason you aren’t a candidate for fertilization is because you’re already pregnant.”
Elaina knew she was not. “The lab mixed up samples,” she blurted out, too flummoxed to keep the thought to herself.
“Your internal exam showed changes in the cervix and uterus that we see within the first few weeks, so we ran the urine test right away to be certain, which is why I’m a bit late getting in to see you. It’ll be another couple of hours before the blood test is back, but...”
“So there’s a chance... Urine tests aren’t the most accurate. Blood tests are. Urine tests are known to be wrong sometimes...” Elaina could hardly believe she was the one babbling. She had never been prone to do anything that didn’t have her exhibiting at least a modicum of control.
“Your cervix is soft and has changed color. Your uterus is already enlarging. You’re pregnant, Elaina.”
She couldn’t be.