Chapter 5

Julia

“How was your weekend? I didn’t even hear you come home last night,” I said when I saw Kendra sitting at our kitchen table Monday morning.

“I didn’t come home until this morning.”

She had a cheeky grin that I’d seen before from her. Kendra had a way with the guys, she was much better at picking them than I was. I envied her. If I had as much luck as she did, I probably would be more willing to wait to have a baby in hopes of finding the man of my dreams.

It was totally plausible that my own lack of confidence was why I struggled with meeting decent men. I could admit it. When a woman was confident she carried herself differently. When a woman didn’t care if men liked her or not, there was something totally different about how she walked and even the aura around her. I wasn’t one of those women. Even though I felt like I had a normal amount of confidence and I could fake it for an evening or so, I was always rethinking what was going on in my mind. There was constant self doubt in my head during interactions with men. And my night with Mike was no different.

“So that guy turned out to be decent?” I asked.

“Yes, we had an amazing weekend together. You know when you just click with someone and everything seems perfect? That’s what it was like.”

“Nice! That’s really great, Kendra,” I was so happy for her. The last few months both of us had been so jaded about the guys in New York, maybe our luck was changing. Although Kendra had also managed to meet a great guy just last month, who she had promptly dumped after she found out he was only in town for a month of work. “The guy I brought home, Mike. He was spectacular. But I don’t think we will see each other again.”

“Why not?”

“He’s really hot and was extremely nice, but to tell you the truth I just don’t think I’m his type at all. He probably dates models and women like that. And well, there’s something else…”

“So just to be clear,” she said as she interrupted me, “he’s not the one saying any of this? You’re deciding for him that you aren’t the right one for him?”

“Yes,” I laughed. “Plus, my appointment is today with the fertility place. I thought it was next week but it’s today. I’m moving forward with it. Not exactly the sort of thing a guy is going to want if we were to date. He’s not the love of my life and I’m not going to sit around and wait for that person to appear. I’ve made up my mind.”

“Julia, why don’t you wait just a little bit? You are still young; you have plenty of time to start having babies. Just wait a year. Or maybe two. Hell, you are still so young. I can’t believe you are even considering this.”

I totally understood where Kendra and my friends were coming from. I was still young and I knew if I really wanted to wait I could do that. The thing was though, I’d already decided that I was ready to be a mother and I didn’t want to wait. It was unconventional, I knew, but I was ready to get pregnant and have a baby. I was going to be one of those cool young moms with a great career and the perfect life. I just couldn’t wait.

With all the second guessing I did in my personal life, this was something that I was sure of. I knew deep down that I was ready and to be honest there wasn’t much that I still had to think about. It was very unlikely anyone could have talked me out of this plan, not even my best friend.

“I know, I know. But I’m okay with being a single mom. Really, I’m excited about it. I don’t need anyone else around. Actually, I’m more excited about being able to do this all on my own than anything else. I’ll get to pick the name, I’ll get to pick my new apartment and decorate the baby’s room. I make a great living and I’m on track to move up the ladder in a couple of years. Now is the perfect time for this.”

“Julia, this is a little crazy, you have to admit it.”

“No I don’t. Women are having babies by themselves all the time. Just because I didn’t pick some dude up and accidently get pregnant doesn’t make it weird. I’m financially responsible and since we’ve been roommates for so long I have been able to save up a lot of money. I’m ready.”

“Fine, I’m not going to argue any more. I’m sure the process takes time, right? You’ll have the ability to change your mind somewhere down the road.”

“Yes, although I don’t think I’ll change my mind at all. This is an expensive process and I wouldn’t be moving forward if I hadn’t already made up my mind. But today I’m just meeting with Doctor Simon and discussing my options. I have picked out a few possible sperm donors from the registry and I still need to narrow that down before I could move forward.”

“Sperm donor, eww! That sounds gross.”

“It’s not that gross.”

I tried to defend it but Kendra was right on this one, it did sound a little gross to be talking about sperm at all. I didn’t even want to imagine what it was like for the men to be hiding away in sterile doctors’ offices spewing their seed into a cup. But I liked this plan much better than having to be tied to some random dude for the rest of my life.

If I happened to get pregnant from a guy I dated for a night or two, well, that seemed like a recipe for disaster to me. There could be custody battles and child support hearings and all sorts of messiness. Nope, my way was much easier. I just paid for some sperm and hired a doctor to squirt it into me, then BAM! It was baby making time.

“Well do you want me to go with you? I’m not totally on board but I’ll go with you if you need support.”

“Kendra! That’s so nice of you!” I wrapped my arms around her and held on tight. This was the sort of friend she was. She clearly didn’t like my plan, but she still offered to be there for me. “You are amazing! But I think I should do this alone. I want to be focused and plus it’s good for me to practice my independence.”

“Good! I really didn’t want to go to that place,” she laughed. “But you let me know if you ever need some backup, I promise I will go with you. And I’m sure I’ll come around to this whole idea if you end up going through with it. I’ll be here for you.”

“Thanks again, Kendra. You’re a really good friend.”

“I know. I know. I’m the best. The baby can call me Auntie Kendra.” We both laughed at the idea, but it was likely what would end up happening. Since I didn’t have any sisters Kendra was as close as I was going to get to that sort of relationship.

“That’s a plan,” I said with a hug before finally heading out of our apartment and to my doctor’s appointment.

My heart was pounding out of my chest as I maneuvered my way through the city to the clinic office on 56th street. After much rumination I’d settled on Doctor Bruce Simon. His online reviews were stellar and many of his patients had noted going back to him over and over again.

The first appointment was supposed to be more like a blind date, or at least that was what I had gathered from everything I’d read up on this process. I was going to interview him and his practice to see if we were a good fit and he was basically going to be making sure I was a good fit as well, but honestly I couldn’t imagine any doctor not working with a woman that was willing to pay them.

My fingers were freezing as I pressed the button for the elevator up to his office. It was a beautiful fall day and the weather was in the mid 70’s so I shouldn’t have felt as cold as I was feeling. But as I looked at my hands I saw I’d been clenching my fists the entire trip to the office and still had fingernail marks on my hands from the tight grip.

I took in a few deep breaths as the elevator door closed and I did my best to try and calm down. Getting pregnant with the help of artificial insemination wasn’t all that hard, but there were a ton of steps to jump through. Doctors had liability issues if they helped a woman who wasn’t healthy get pregnant, even if it was something as little as squirting some sperm inside of her. The rules, or what I understood up to this point, were daunting. Especially if you consider I could have decided to lie under some random dude and get pregnant without so much as a check of my pulse before I did that.

As the elevator doors opened I took a few steps and stood in front of the fancy glass doors to Doctor Simon’s office. My vision was blurry as I stared at the sign on the door. I couldn’t even read the names on there but I saw the large RMA letters and knew I was in the right spot.

I pressed open the door and took another deep breath in an attempt to calm down. It wasn’t helping much though, I still felt like I could hear my heart beating in my ears and my breathing was so heavy that I was sure everyone in the waiting room could hear me.

“Good afternoon and welcome to Reproductive Medicine Associates. How can I help you?” the young blonde at the desk said with an annoyingly chipper smile.

“Um, hello. My name is Julia Rivas. I have an appointment with Doctor Simon.”

“Miss Rivas, here you are,” she said with her fake smile. “I have some paperwork for you to fill out. The doctor is running a little behind, but it shouldn’t be too long.”

“Thank you.” I grabbed her clipboard with my shaky hands and found a spot in the corner of the room.

The waiting room was filled with happy couples and only a few single women. I didn’t necessarily feel out of place, but I didn’t feel comfortable either. Handling new situations on my own was just one of the things I needed to adjust to if I was going to be a mother though. So I took another deep breath, wiped the sweat from the palm of my hand, grabbed the pen, and started filling out my life story on the clipboard stuffed with papers.

It was nearly a half hour before I’d completed my large packet of paperwork. The questions went on and on as if they were never going to end. When was your first period? How long have you been considering having a child? What steps have you gone through to try for a child? Some of the questions seemed absolutely ridiculous to me while others were clearly more geared toward couples who were having fertility issues. But as I walked back up to the young blonde at the desk, I finally felt my breath calm. This was what I wanted and filling out thirty minutes of paperwork wasn’t going to sway me from my dream. In fact, I was even more certain of my plans now that I’d managed to navigate that road block.

It was a road block, I was sure of it. They put this enormous packet of information together to deter young women who just wanted to gather information and weren’t really interested in moving forward. Of course, some of them would stay and stick through the paperwork for the appointments. But I suspected more than a few women had dropped that clipboard and made their way out of the office. If the months of waiting for an appointment was enough of a deterrent, the paperwork might have been.

There were a steady stream of names being called to go back to their appointments, but my name wasn’t called at all. There were a few women in the waiting room that had been there longer than I had, but soon even they had been called back to a room. I waited patiently. Certainly this was just another road block put up to keep women out of the process who weren’t totally dedicated, or at least that was my theory.

Then a woman, who had just come in five minutes earlier, was called to go back to the patient area. I couldn’t take it any longer and jumped out of my seat, about to lose my cool before I realized this was not going to help me get accepted into this office. I had to keep my cool. Certainly a woman who could easily fly off the handle about a late appointment wasn’t going to be considered a good mother.

“Excuse me, do you know how much longer it will be? I’ve been waiting for quite some time.”

“Oh, yes, I’m sorry. I was just about to have you come up. Doctor Simon is still running late. If you’d be okay with seeing his partner I could squeeze you in, or we could reschedule you for a later date.”

I’d already taken the day off from work and waited most of the morning. As much as I really wanted to meet Doctor Simon, since he was the one I’d picked, at this point I just wanted to get through this appointment and onto the next step in the process.

“How much longer will the doctor be?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know. He could be just a few minutes or he might not make it in at all today.”

“Oh.”

“His partner is very good and I know they share notes when they have to cover for each other. It’s possible you’d even end up with his partner delivering your baby since they rotate their on-call nights. It might be a good thing to meet him now.”

“Okay,” I said with all the fake acceptance I could muster. “I’ll see him.”

“Great, it should be less than an hour and I’ll have you back there.”

I clenched my fists tight and pressed my lips even tighter as I made my way back to my little corner of the waiting room. Another hour! This place was ridiculous. My stomach grumbled with hunger as I waited out my time and watched as other women went ahead of me.

By the time my name was finally called I was in a thoroughly bad mood. Even her upbeat banter was lost on me as the nurse took my vitals and went over my pile of paperwork with me. When she finally stepped out of the room I was livid about the whole situation. This doctor’s office wasn’t behaving like one of the top-rated fertility centers in the city. They certainly didn’t appear to be the rising star that so many women were talking about.

Granted I might have been confused by the dozens and dozens of offices I’d looked at. Each of them had blurred together and I couldn’t have been sure about everything I’d read, but I was positive the women who had come to see Doctor Simon loved him and to be honest I wasn’t even sure who his partner was.

When I heard the doctor outside my room I hurried to get my agitation in check. Deep breaths, smiling, and I prepared for him to enter the room.

“Where’s the chart?” I heard him said to the nurse.

“Just go in, I’ll get it to you in a second. I’m finishing something up,” the nurse replied.

As the door opened I took a deep breath again but then stopped breathing all together when I saw who was standing in the doorway.

“Julia?” Mike asked with an awkward look on his face.

“Hey, Mike. Wow, you’re a fertility doctor? I didn’t see this one coming,” I laughed nervously.

He was totally silent as he sat down on the rolling stool across from me. I was sitting in a rather uncomfortable metal chair and laughed nervously about the whole situation. How did I not know that this was the sort of doctor he was? It was rather humorous, especially after the morning I’d had already.

“Wow. I have a really busy day today. I thought we sort of handled this whole thing that morning when I left,” Mike said curtly as he crossed his arms.

“What?”

“I didn’t take you as the sort of girl who would do something like this.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m flattered, Julia, really. But I have a busy day. I’ll call you, okay,” he said and stood up to leave the room.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t come here to stalk you. Is that what you think is happening here? Wow, you are really full of yourself.” I felt the blood nearly boiling inside me at the insinuation that I’d purposely ended up in that room waiting for him. I had no idea he worked there. I certainly wouldn’t have showed up pretending that I wanted to get pregnant and hoping that would get me another date.

“So, you just happened to make an appointment with me but didn’t know it was me? Come on now,” Mike said as he stood in the doorway.

The nurse appeared behind him. “Here you go, doctor. Sorry it took so long to get her chart. She was another one of Doctor Simon’s patients that needed to be seen today,” she said and handed Mike what I assumed was my medical chart.

He held onto it and looked back at me with only the slightest bit of remorse. In fact, I wasn’t even sure it was remorse at all. As he stood there about to open the chart that held all the secrets to my medical, sexual, and fertility history, I slapped the chart out of his hand.

“I don’t know who you think you are but I’ve been waiting for months to see Doctor Simon. I waiting for hours in the waiting room and just finally agreed to be seen by his partner. I had no idea it was you and the fact that you’d even think I was someone like that means you obviously didn’t get to know me at all the other night. What sort of crazy narcissist thinks a woman who wants to have a baby would stalk her one night stand and show up at his office? That’s utterly insane.”

“Wait a second. You don’t need to be so upset, Julia. I was just confused.”

“Right. And the first conclusion you jumped to was that I was a crazy stalker? Great. Perfect. Could this day get any better?” I stood up and gathered my purse. There was no way I was staying. No way I was going to continue to talk about the biggest life decision I have ever made with a man who was so stuck on himself he thought I’d come there for him. Nope, I’d just wait for Doctor Simon and set up a new appointment with him.

“I’m sorry, Julia. Please sit back down. I will see when Bruce is going to get in and you can see him.”

“Sir, Doctor Simon hasn’t been answering his phone at all,” the nurse said quietly. “I’ve been trying him all morning.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I yelled and pressed past Mike. “Schedule me with him and call me with the time.”

“Julia,” Mike called after me.

“You know what?” I turned back to him in a furry of anger. “I actually thought you were a good guy. I had heard Rob talk about you for years. I had a crush on you since the moment you went off to college. But I definitely didn’t think you’d turn out to be such a jerk.”

Then I realized that I’d just given away my own little secret. I just connected Mike to my brother Rob. His face was pale with acknowledgment as everything started to click for him. I could tell by his expression that he still hadn’t realized who I was until that very moment.

I turned to leave. This was done. Whatever had been between us was done. Clearly I wasn’t going to run off and live happily ever after with Mike. I’d known it when he left that morning after our night together, but I knew it even more as I stood there in front of him watching his face contort at the realization he’d slept with one of his friend’s sisters.

I was halfway down the hall before Mike even made an effort to respond. “Julia Rivas,” he yelled after me. “Rob’s little sister. I…”

I didn’t wait to hear what else he had to say. I pressed through the waiting room door and stormed out the glass front doors to the office.

Nervously I waited at the elevator, hoping desperately that Mike didn’t come running out there after me. I was mortified by the whole thing. Not only by the fact that he never realized who I was, but by the fact that now he knew I was trying to have a baby and that he actually thought I’d stalked him and snuck into his office like that. Mike definitely wasn’t thinking as highly of me as I had been thinking of him.

Even after realizing that I hadn’t stalked him, the whole thing was just horribly embarrassing. I was sure I wouldn’t be coming back to see Doctor Simon either and now was going to have to find a new doctor and wait months and months to get into them.

As the elevator doors closed tears poured down my face. Nothing was turning out the way it was supposed to. My entire life had gone from feeling perfect to feeling like I would never be happy again. How quickly life could turn around.