Chapter9
Elizabeth looked up at the ceiling of the doctor’s office where she’d been waiting for about an hour, between the waiting room and the actual office itself; she’d gone in two days before to get the bloodwork and other tests actually done, and thanks to the money that Luke had been willing to pay to have the results expedited, she was ready to hear the results. She’d had a preliminary fertility test done when she’d signed up for the surrogacy site; after all, there was not much point in signing up if it turned out that she was unable to have children at all. That had confirmed that she was, at least, able to carry a child, and healthy enough to do so.
The tests that Luke’s doctor had wanted to do were more intensive, and Elizabeth was surprised to learn that it was even possible for so many tests to be done in such a short timeframe. Amazing what money will get you, she thought idly, waiting for the doctor to come in.
There had been an ultrasound, an x-ray of some kind, a pelvic exam--all of which had been sent to some kind of expert, and which Elizabeth had signed off on Luke receiving copies of--and blood tests. “Normally, we have to do some of these tests on certain days of your cycle,” the doctor had said; the woman had given Elizabeth a wry grin with that news. “But if you’ve tracked cycles and you know down to the day about when in your cycle you should be--and you do, thanks to that clever app you have--then we can extrapolate data a little bit. Of course, ideally, we’ll have you in again just for the bloodwork parts when your period happens, so we can get a full profile.”
So, Elizabeth waited, knowing that Luke was waiting to hear from her as well. He would be getting the reports from the doctor and probably a call from the woman as well if he wanted to discuss them. There was something in Elizabeth that squirmed slightly at the idea of a semi-stranger having such intimate knowledge of her body, but she reminded herself that Luke had hired her to carry a child for him; if it hadn’t been him, then she would have had similar experiences with whoever might have chosen her profile, for the sake of carrying their frozen embryos or something similar to that. She had to count her blessings that at least it was someone who she knew a little bit of.
Finally, the doctor came in. She was a woman of about fifty years of age with graying blonde hair and a slightly weathered look to her face; wrinkles had already started to show themselves on Dr. Marchman’s face, but she had a kind of crackling vitality that belied her age. “I’m sorry for the wait,” the woman said, bustling into the room and closing the door behind her. “I just had to counsel a couple who found out that it’s dad who’s the problem.” She shook her head, sighing. “Lord save us all from fragile masculinity.”
“It’s all right,” Elizabeth said. “I didn’t have much planned for today, anyhow.” Dr. Marchman laughed and sat down, opening up the file.
“You work freelance, you said, right?” Elizabeth nodded. “Then I’ll believe it and not think you’re trying to make me feel better. In any case, we can get you out of here quickly, because the results are all very favorable.” She looked over the charts and reports in the folder and nodded to herself.
“That’s great news,” Elizabeth said, smiling.
“I’ll want you to come back in for another blood draw when your period starts, to look at your hormone levels and get a full portrait,” the doctor said, looking up. “But there are no blockages, and while your uterus is slightly tilted--that’ll cause you some discomfort during the pregnancy itself, and is probably why your cramps are so bad--you should have no trouble getting pregnant. Your hormone panels all look good, and your nutrient levels are great.”
“And you already know that Luke’s…”
“Luke’s results are favorable as well,” the woman confirmed with a nod. “From what I can see, there’s no reason that I can predict for you to even need any kind of fertility-boosting treatments--either of you. Of course, stress and other factors can lead to some trouble, but if you’re just starting out, there’s no reason to think it will take less than about three months for you to get knocked up!” Dr. Marchman beamed. Elizabeth couldn’t help laughing at the slightly sardonic twist to the woman’s words.
“You’re going to be my doctor throughout the process, right?”
“Luke has asked me to be, yes,” the doctor replied. “If you’re interested in a different obstetrician…”
“No--no, I was hoping I would just work with you,” Elizabeth said. Dr. Marchman smiled broadly.
“I was going to say that I know some excellent men and women, but it’s nice occasionally to spread out from my usual specialty arena and focus on one patient from beginning to new beginning.”
“Can I get copies of the reports?” the doctor nodded.
“Absolutely! We’re happy to supply them. Luke’s already gotten his copies by courier as of maybe ten minutes before I came in, so when you meet with him later and he tries to convince you to try something--some treatment or something like that--you’ll have your own paperwork and my advice that you not try anything until you’ve gone at it for three months and haven’t gotten results.” Elizabeth snorted.
“You don’t really think he’s going to try that, do you?”
Dr. Marchman shrugged.
“He seems like a reasonable guy,” she admitted. “But these billionaires--sometimes they expect the stars and moon on a silver chain, delivered to their door without any talk of physics.” Elizabeth had to laugh at that image.
“I think I’ll be all right, but I would like a copy of my paperwork just to have it,” she said.
“Like I said: happy to oblige. One recommendation I’ll give you is to find a good prenatal vitamin now--some of the iron in the formulas can upset your stomach--and start taking it right away. Your nutrient levels are great, but the transition to a new vitamin regime can shake things up, and if you’re going to have stomach problems, it’s better to have them before you get pregnant.” The woman turned in her chair and opened up a drawer in the little desk she’d sat at. Elizabeth watched as she reached in and pulled out a bunch of sample packets.
“Wow,” Elizabeth said as the woman began sorting through them, picking out one of each type.
“There’s a lot of options out there,” Dr. Marchman said with a little grin. “Some of these have pretty high iron, which you don’t really need, but you also don’t have the genetic issues with accumulating too much iron. Each packet has two to three days’ worth of vitamins, so enough time to know whether you’re going to react poorly. Find the one you like the best, and when you come in again, I’ll write you a prescription for that.”
The rest of the visit went quickly, just as the doctor had promised; the longest that Elizabeth had to wait was for the office manager to print out copies of her paperwork. She took her phone out of her purse as she walked out of the doctor’s office and found Luke’s contact information in her address book. While looking around to try and remember where she was supposed to pick up the train, she called Luke, knowing that he expected to hear from her as soon as she was out of the visit.
“Just got the results about twenty minutes ago,” Luke said as soon as the line connected. “Do you want to meet with me for lunch? I know it’s a bit early, but some of the places in town are open already.”
“Why don’t we get some of that pizza you were talking about before?” Elizabeth gripped the paperwork in its folder a little tighter, realizing that if he just gave her a location to go to, it was going to be a little bit tricky for her--she still wasn’t sure about the trains. But she was determined to get used to the transportation system in Chicago and not rely on her car or the offer that Luke had made to get her a driver. Even he didn’t use his driver all the time, Elizabeth knew.
“If you want to meet me at Giordano’s, that should be pretty straightforward from the office,” Luke suggested. “About five minutes by train.”
“Aren’t there like five of those?” Luke chuckled.
“Okay, yeah, that’s fair,” he admitted. “Meet me at the one on Jackson Boulevard, that’s close to both of us right now.”
“Give me a second to look it up, so I can make sure I know where to go,” Elizabeth told him. She opened up the Map app in her phone and found the address, confirming it with Luke quickly. It was, as he said, just a quick train ride; it would put her deeper into the city, closer to the Loop, but the train ride back to her apartment would be fairly direct afterwards.
She told him she’d be there in ten or fifteen minutes and hung up, feeling weirdly hot and cold all over. It was one thing to move to Chicago, another thing to sign a contract, and yet another thing still to know that she and Luke would be trying to make a baby in a matter of days. Do you really think you’re going to get pregnant on your first try? I mean...even people who have sex all the time don’t always “take” for a few months, and Dr. Marchman even said to give it three months before you try anything more intensive.
As Elizabeth headed towards the train stop, she shook off her feelings of apprehension. She would have a few days in a row of great sex, and then she and Luke would both wait about a week or two to see if she’d gotten pregnant. If not, then they would try again, having sex a little more often. Elizabeth felt a little wriggle of warmth flowing towards her hips at the thought.
It had been a while since she’d had sex--or at least, it had been a while until she and Luke had hooked up the night of their meeting--and she was eager for more, especially since Luke seemed to be so good at it. Someone had clearly told him that orgasms increased chances of conception.
Or maybe he’s just really into getting a girl off, she thought idly, shivering a bit in memory. It was kind of a shame, really, that she’d found someone who was--by all indications--incredibly good in bed, and she would only be having sex with him for the sake of getting pregnant.
Elizabeth managed to get onto the right train, headed towards the Loop, to get to Giordano’s, looking around her at the other commuters. That time of day--a little before the lunch hour--there weren’t as many people on the train, and the ones that were seemed mostly to be tourists, taking in the sights. What they were doing so far out of the Loop, Elizabeth couldn’t say, but she pulled her sweater a little tighter around herself and hoped that she didn’t “read” to the few natives on the train as a tourist too.
Of course, she thought, she was in a very different position than the people who would only be in the city for a few days or a week on the outside; she was living there. It didn’t matter that it still didn’t seem to be quite real, even with her things arriving at the apartment Luke had gotten her the day before, even with them all unpacked. She would go to a furniture store the next day--it would be the weekend--and she’d make some purchases there, have them delivered and hopefully then it would be a little more real.
Her kitchen, she had to admit, was nicer than the one in Portland. It had been updated; the gas range was practically brand new, and the fridge was definitely brand new. Her older pots and pans and dishes almost hadn’t seemed right in that space, but Elizabeth knew they would eventually.
She had gone grocery shopping, a real grocery trip, after going to the doctor’s before; the food in her fridge marked with the familiar labels helped interrupt the sense that she was somewhere foreign. Elizabeth thought that once she was able to reliably sit in her living room and drink a cup of coffee while watching a late-night show from the night before, she would feel more at home. It would come to her quickly. And then in a year or a little more than that, she would be moving back to Portland, over a hundred thousand dollars richer.
Elizabeth heard the call for her stop and hurried to get off. She checked the map application again and saw that she should only have to walk a bit around the block to get to Giordano’s. She shoved the folder with her doctor’s notes and records in it into her purse and started away from the stop, checking a few times on her app to make sure she was headed in the right direction.
She spotted Luke standing out in front of the restaurant, waiting for her; he didn’t have a folder in his hands, but Elizabeth was sure he’d committed as much of her medical reports as possible to memory. “So, good news all around, it sounds like,” he said, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek. Elizabeth allowed it, trying to ignore the little tingle that went through her.
“Yeah. Dr. Marchman told me that if you try to talk me into any kind of treatment outside of three months of trying, I should beat you over the head,” Elizabeth told him with tart playfulness. Luke laughed.
“I want to do this as naturally as possible,” he said. “Now to celebrate, I think a nice, big pizza is in order.” He guided her into the casual restaurant, and Elizabeth actually felt relieved that they weren’t going to be eating at a place that was as high-end as their previous meals together had been.
It wasn’t quite busy yet, with only a few people seated at tables. They got their seats, and Elizabeth breathed in the smells of sauce and dough, meats, and veggies cooking as it wafted through the dining room, along with the smaller odors of frying things. It was a place that she could see herself in probably once a week for the kind of treat that wasn’t exactly great for you, but which was delicious and indulgent and fun.
“This is one of the big Chicago restaurants for pizza,” Luke explained. “It’s not the only place to get a deep dish, but it’s one of the better ones in my opinion.”
“I will let you do the ordering, since I assume you know what’s good,” Elizabeth suggested.
“How do you feel about peppers?”
Elizabeth shrugged.
“Not so great about them raw, but cooked they’re okay,” she said. The waitress came to their table, and Luke set aside the menu they’d been handed.
“We’ll get the garlic-parm fries to start, and the special deep dish,” he told the woman. “What do you feel like having to drink?” Luke turned to Elizabeth, and she glanced at that part of the menu for a moment before deciding.
“Root beer,” she said. Luke nodded.
“I’ll have Pepsi,” he told the woman, and they both handed back their menus. When they were alone again, Elizabeth wondered how to get on the topic of what they needed to discuss.
“So, everything’s a clear go-ahead, it looks like,” she said, trying to keep her tone as light as possible.
“Yeah, all our results are back, and you should be ovulating within a few days, right?” Elizabeth nodded.
“Since you’d said that you planned on basically having a sex-marathon with me for that time, I’ll probably try and finish up my projects in queue before then,” she said. Why did it feel so awkward--so stilted--to talk about having sex like that?
“I mean, we can try to have fun with it,” Luke said with a slight smile. “It doesn’t have to be like training for a triathlon.” Elizabeth snorted.
“Yeah, I guess we might as well enjoy it while we can,” she said. “Especially if we don’t take this month, and we have to keep going at it on a schedule next month.”
“Oh, that would be such a shame,” Luke said playfully. “I’m sure neither of us would enjoy meeting up a few times a week to have sex.”
“As long as you’re willing to take me out to dinner first, I am game,” Elizabeth countered, raising an eyebrow.
“I would never think of denying you the fringe benefits,” Luke said, inclining his head towards her.
They lapsed into more general talk then, waiting for their food to arrive, and Elizabeth wondered again how to talk about things without feeling like she was trying to talk about medical treatment for her feet.
“I was thinking,” Luke said. “Maybe we could make it a bit special, that marathon of sex.” They dug into the fries with the house-made ranch sauce, and Elizabeth took her first bites of a slice of pizza--stuffed with sausage, peppers, onions, and mushrooms, it was indulgently delicious in the way she liked: unpretentious, stick-to-the-ribs food.
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah, I was thinking I could take you out for a nice meal, and we could maybe go to a movie or something, and then back to my place--or yours, if you prefer--and stay in the rest of the three days, order in food whenever we get hungry, all that,” Luke suggested.
“Or maybe we could cook a meal together,” Elizabeth countered. “I assume you have at least some basic cooking skills.” Luke snorted.
“Very basic ones,” he said.
“Well then, we’ll make a very basic meal together,” Elizabeth concluded. “I think that would be nice. Besides, it would probably be healthier than eating a ton of takeout food--and now that we’re good to go on trying to make a baby, I should at least pretend to care about what I’m putting into my body.”
They went over the details until they came to an agreement, and Liz felt--for the first time--actually comfortable with what their “long weekend” was going to look like: they’d go to dinner, get a slightly romantic ambience going, and then go back to Luke’s place, where they would spend the next two and a half days. She agreed to keep checking her temperature to make sure she knew when it was getting close to time, and then they both focused entirely on the food, leaving the details of their plans to conceive a child together to worry about later.
By the time she left the restaurant, giving Luke a quick kiss on the cheek with her goodbye, Elizabeth wondered if things would become easier or harder between them once they’d conceived. She wasn’t sure if she hoped that it happened in a matter of a few weeks or if she hoped that it would at least take a couple of cycles for her to conceive, but she knew that whatever the case was, she was committed to the outcome.
In a year or maybe a little more, she would be leaving Chicago and leaving Luke to raise the child she’d borne for him. And then, her normal life could recommence. She tried to feel as optimistic about that as possible, but somehow, in spite of how strange Chicago still was to her, Elizabeth couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she was going to be sad to leave it.