Chapter 1: Corabelle
It seems like every day lately is the first day of the rest of my life.
College. Graduation. Grad school. My first teaching assistant position.
But this one is just as big.
A nurse leads Gavin down the hall to an exam room. I follow, a little slowly, looking at the giant quotes painted directly on the walls.
If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.
Instead of IMpossible, believe that I’M possible.
I hope it’s all true.
We enter a room. A frigid blast of air-conditioning makes me shiver.
“Why is it always so cold here?” I whisper to Gavin.
“Maybe they want our balls to shrivel before they get all up in them,” he says.
“Gavin!”
He laughs, and I’m glad he can be happy right now. I’m trying not to completely and utterly freak out.
All around us, wall-sized cork boards are lined edge to edge with photographs of babies. Some of them have just been born, a happy father in paper scrubs holding up the red-faced infant. Others simply show the babies, cherubic and precious on their fancy birth announcements. A few depict the whole family.
But mostly, the focus is on the fathers.
Fathers who had their fertility restored after reversing their vasectomies.
Fathers like Gavin.
Of course there are no pictures of the men who aren’t successful. The ones who won’t be holding a squalling baby. Who regret their choices. Whose marriages may be strained. Who may argue over adoption and donor sperm and the legalities of all the other options.
Or who choose to be childless.
That might be us.
Today we find out.
“We’re surrounded,” Gavin jokes as he hops up on the exam table. His voice isn’t quite as jovial now. I think he’s a little unnerved by the pictures too. The last room didn’t have them. I wonder if it’s a sign. They put you in the baby room if the reversal worked, a plain one if it didn’t.
“I’m just going to take your vitals,” the nurse says to Gavin, her voice curt and to the point. She has all the bedside manner of a billy goat.
I watch her strap a little device to Gavin’s wrist. She cocks her hip in the pale green scrubs like this is all too much trouble. She’s slight, small boned, pale skinned, fair haired. Her attitude makes up for her tiny size.
The little box beeps and she takes it off him.
“Am I dead?” Gavin asks.
She is not amused. “Vitals are fine,” she says as she turns away. “The doc will be here in a second.”
The door closes behind her.
“She can’t thaw out,” Gavin says. “It’s the refrigerated rooms.”
This makes me smile. “Maybe it’s to control the man meat.”
“I knew I was nothing more to you than a hot lay.” He returns the smile, and I start to feel a little better. No matter what happens today, we’re in this together.
“It makes up for your terrible fashion sense,” I tell him.
He kicks his legs out, examining his work boots. There are oil smudges on his shirt, right under the little patch that reads “Gavin.”
“It’s weird for me to be the one on the table,” he says.
“Hopefully it will be me next,” I say, looking around at all the pictures.
“I thought we were going to wait,” he says. “Until you’re through grad school.”
“I know.” My eyes fall on one baby face, then another. That IS what we decided. To do the reversal surgery now, while we had the money, gifted to us from Tina’s artist friend in his will. And while Gavin was still young. By the time we could afford a child, his chance of a successful reversal would be lower.
Money is an issue. We are behind on everything. I finished my undergraduate degree without scholarship help and am up to my eyeballs in student loans. And I’m only halfway through my master’s degree. Gavin has to take classes slowly since he puts in so many hours at the garage.
I do have a teaching assistant position, which will help me achieve my dream of teaching college later on. But it doesn’t pay much. We’ll continue to get behind. Life is hard, but headed the right direction.
And now this.
Two swift knocks on the door are followed by the doctor peering in. He’s the polar opposite of his nurse, all smiles and friendly handshakes. He is tall and lean, casual in jeans and a pale blue button-down beneath his open white lab coat.
“Gavin,” he says. “Good to see you. Sounds like your recovery went fine.”
“Used an ice pack or two, but things seem to be in working order.” Gavin flashes a glance at me and even though I’m his wife, my face heats up.
“Good, good,” the doctor says. My mind is blanking on his name. It doesn’t matter. What he says is more important than who he is right now.
He pulls up a stool. “Let’s talk about the results of the sample you gave us last week.”
My face flames again. There are few things as awkward as helping your husband generate a sperm sample for a cup.
“We’re three months out, so we should start seeing swimmers in there,” the doctor says.
I’m bracing myself for the next part, where he says there aren’t any. I’m so sure he will say this that I actually hear it, so when the doctor goes on, I’m momentarily disoriented when his words don’t match my head.
“We are seeing activity now, which is good, really good.” He nods at both of us. “But the count is low. Right on the cusp of what could reliably create a conception.”
Gavin lets out a long stream of air. “So what’s next?”
“We’ll retest in another three months,” he says. “Are you planning to conceive right away?”
“No,” Gavin says, then turns to me for confirmation. I nod. “Is there anything we can do to help it?”
“Not necessarily for the count, but if it stays low, certainly we can wash the sperm, get the concentration up, and then do an insertion. It’s not unusual to need this after a reversal.”
Gavin’s eyes look like they are going to pop out of his head. “Who would insert it?”
The doctor chuckles. “Your wife’s obstetrician,” he says. “It’s a fairly simple procedure.”
“And expensive,” Gavin grumbles.
“Altering the path you chose early on isn’t easy,” the doctor says. “I’m glad to see that we’ve made progress, though.” He stands and pats Gavin’s shoulder. “You two are young. You’ll get there.”
“Thank you,” I say.
He does another round of handshakes, then he’s out the door.
Gavin jumps off the table. “Not bad news,” he says.
“No, not the worst.”
He extends his hand, and I take it. It’s warm and strong and just holding it makes me feel better. This is Gavin, the boy I’ve known since I was a baby. Who crossed the alley behind our houses and slipped inside my fence from the time he could walk.
We’re on the path to undoing the damage he did when he was eighteen and angry at the world, screwing over fatherhood because it had screwed him.
We walk back down the hall, past the nurses’ station, to the checkout. While he makes his next appointment, I spot one more quote on the wall by the door.
Keep your face to the sunshine, and the shadows will fall behind you.