15

The Ten Excruciatingly Long Days of Christmas

No one was more of an afterthought to In Vitro Round 2 than Tiffany. She was the last part of the process, she was nobody’s sister, and if she couldn’t get pregnant this time, there was a good chance we’d replace her as our surrogate. As coldhearted as it seemed, two strikes is all a surrogate usually gets when there are so many others who could do the job. It was hard not to think that, if we gave Tiffany the ax, we’d probably never see her again. Sure, we’d bonded with her on a deeper level than we expected, but our relationship was still defined by the baby we were supposed to have together. Would we really meet up with her in two years or ten years to show her the child we’d had with someone else? And what if we never had a kid? Would the sight of her just remind us of our shattered dreams? Bleak as it seemed, Tiffany was either going to be a vital part of our extended family—or a footnote. “What was that second surrogate’s name again? Tammy? Bethany?” It didn’t matter how much we cared about and admired her. Fate could just as easily turn her back into What’s-Her-Womb.

We were resigned to keeping our expectations low this time, but Dr. S was no help. “They’re perfect!” he shouted. “Perfect!”

We’d just arrived at Westside Fertility, on the morning of the embryo transfer, and Dr. S rushed out to greet us, tripping over his scrubs as he pulled them up to his waist. It was almost as though he’d been keeping an eye on the door so he could tell us at exactly the moment we arrived, like a kid eager to show off his school art project to his parents. In this case, his macaroni and glitter masterpiece was a curled-up ultrasound photo of three bumpy circles on a gray background.

“Three embryos?” I asked, remembering that was exactly as many as we’d had last time.

“Yes! All tens!”

“Great,” Drew said.

“Yeah, great,” Susie added.

Dr. S seemed disappointed by our lack of enthusiasm. “Guys, this is awesome!”

“We had three embryos last time,” I reminded him. “Two of them were tens.”

Dr. S shook his head. “Next to these, those were garbage.”

“Hey guys,” Eric said, as he and Tiffany walked in behind us. “What’s up?”

“We have three embryos,” I monotoned. “All perfect tens.”

“Great,” Eric said, exactly as excited as we were.

“Yeah. Great,” Tiffany concurred. “So are we transferring all three?”

Drew shrugged. “Why not?”

“You guys,” Dr. S said. “There’s a very, very high chance of triplets.”

“Great,” we all seemed to say in unison. Dr. S sighed. A minute later, he was leading Tiffany down the hall to begin the procedure.

We were prepared to wait an hour before we saw Tiffany again, but it was only a few minutes later that Eric came to get us.

“She said you guys can come back.”

“Really? Is she decent?”

“She’s recovering. She doesn’t mind if you see her.”

I assumed this meant Tiffany would look pretty much like she always did—fully dressed, fully upright—but when we entered the embryo transfer room, she was neither. Clad only in a hospital gown, she was posed on what appeared to be a backward-tilting luge that might launch from the starting gate at any moment. Her legs were in the air, spread apart, and held up by stirrups. Her body sloped downward to the abdomen before leveling off at the neck. It seemed like a position invented to torture Chinese political prisoners that someone just happened to discover was also helpful in getting embryos to attach to the wall of a woman’s uterus.

“Hi!” Tiffany said, cheerfully, as we spread out around the outskirts of the room.

“Are you sure you want us in here?” I asked, guiltily. I half-shielded my eyes, unsure which would be ruder—not making eye contact or gazing directly at a woman in embryo-attachment position.

“It’s fine,” Tiffany assured me. Clearly, she had overcome whatever modesty she had around us. While we were keeping our emotional distance from her, she was welcoming us freely into a realm of personal privacy that normally included only her husband.

“How are you doing?” Susie asked. She fearlessly sauntered up right beside Tiffany.

“I have to pee,” Tiffany confessed. “Like, really badly.”

“How long do you have to stay like this?”

“The doctor said an hour,” Eric replied.

“How long do I have left?” Tiffany pleaded, shifting her weight back and forth to find a slightly less excruciating spot on her medieval contraption.

Eric checked the clock. “Fifty-two minutes.”

Tiffany groaned.

It was all so strange, knowing that three embryos created by my sister-in-law and me were tucked away inside this woman we barely knew, just inches away. In nine months, one or more of them might slide out of her, with a face, a Social Security number, and twenty tiny appendages protruding from its extremities, more or less. Drew and I might be dads to a person who was, in some form, in this room with us right now.

All Tiffany could think about was her bladder.

“Oh my God! I really have to go!” she whimpered. She shifted some more, clutching the sides of her torture luge, struggling to hold in her pee.

“You can’t even go to the bathroom?”

“No! She’s not allowed!” Eric insisted. “The doctor was very clear!”

“How long now?” Tiffany asked.

“Fifty-one minutes.”

I really wasn’t sure what my role was at that point. On the one hand, I’ve never felt within my rights to tell a woman she couldn’t relieve herself. On the other, I didn’t want Tiffany peeing out my baby.

In any other circumstance, Drew and I would have done anything to ease her pain, screaming at the doctor to just let her go to the bathroom, dammit. Instead, we just played dumb.

“We can check with Dr. S, but you know what he’s going to say . . .”

“I’m sure he’s with other patients. Do we really want to bother him?”

Tiffany squirmed and danced, even though she was in no position to do either. I couldn’t decide: Were Drew and I the world’s biggest assholes, or were we just being good parents?

Tiffany’s bladder was wrung through the Iron Maiden for forty-four minutes, after which we all decided unanimously that it had been an hour. It was the length, without commercials, of an hour-long TV show, so that was good enough for me. We called the doctor in. “She really has to urinate. Is that okay?”

“What?!” He threw his hands up and focused on Tiffany. “These guys won’t let you go to the bathroom?”

Susie flew home, and a few days later, Drew and I joined her. The entertainment industry traditionally shuts down for the holidays, so we regularly spend the last two weeks of the year visiting our families on the East Coast.

With the possible exception of the Clauses, no family takes Christmas as seriously as the Tappons. It’s the one time of year all four kids can get together, and they always arrive loaded with gifts. Their ceiling-scraping Christmas tree is buried in them—neatly wrapped boxes with bows and tags that feature everyone’s names in every possible combination in the “To:” and “From:” fields. Packages for more distant relatives and friends are dispersed throughout the house underneath one of the half dozen other trees.

Rochester is a perfect place to spend the holidays because there’s almost always snow, and it’s so freaking cold that no one wants to go outside. It’s like a Norman Rockwell Christmas, where people sit around all day, swapping stories by the fireplace. Drew and his siblings still wrote a note to “Santa” every Christmas Eve, though their notes took on a snarkier tone as they entered their twenties and thirties. “Susie’s been a good little girl this year. Please bring her some new ovaries.”

The afternoon of the twenty-second, a car pulled up in the driveway.

“He’s here!” Drew shouted, and he sprinted outside in shorts, barefoot, to give his brother Peter a hug.

Since declaring our arrangement “fucked up,” Peter had done a complete 180. All he wanted to know as he lugged his shopping bags full of gifts over the threshold was if we’d heard from Dr. S’s office yet.

I shook my head. “Any minute now.”

Two hours went by, with no call. I wondered if the lab would screw up again and forget to give us the results. This time, we’d have to wait until after Christmas. That would ruin everything—or maybe save the holiday from gloom. I couldn’t be sure.

As usual in a family that size, there were half a dozen conversations going on simultaneously when we were all called to dinner. We gradually assembled in the dining room as Mrs. Tappon put a platoon-sized meal on the table. Ham, turkey, fresh-baked rolls, side dish, side dish, side dish. Nine chairs were squeezed in around the table, gathered from every room in the downstairs.

“Where should I sit?” each of us seemed to ask at the same time. As we negotiated our positions near our favorite foodstuffs, I felt a vibration in my pocket.

It was a private number, but I knew who was calling.

“Hello?”

In an instant, the entire room fell totally silent. Everyone stopped scrambling for seats, put down whatever food they were holding, and turned toward me, tense with anticipation.

“Hello, Gerald?” I heard Aida say. It was only two words, but I got the sense from her tone that she knew the results.

“Yes?”

“I have some good news!” she continued. I looked around the room, just then realizing that no one else had heard what I’d heard. They were all still waiting, searching my expression for clues.

“Hold on,” I said. “I’m going to put you on speaker.”

Mrs. Tappon was stone-faced. She thought I was being foolish to broadcast the call to the room. She was sure it was another letdown. She didn’t know I’d already figured out what Aida was going to say.

Everyone leaned in. “Tiffany’s blood test came back,” Aida said. “She scored a 142. You’re definitely pregnant!”

The cheers shook the room. Drew, Susie, and I shared a tight hug that seemed to last for hours. All around us, the rest of the family paired off in every possible combination and hugged everyone else. But the three of us never let go.

“Congratulations!” the nurse shouted, trying to be heard over the rest of us. I’d almost forgotten she was on the phone.

“Thank you so much! You made our Christmas!”

I had to walk into the other room to finish the call. Keeping the ebullient Tappons quiet would have been impossible at this point, but the nurse had much more to tell me. She had already scheduled Tiffany’s first ultrasound for Tuesday, January 6. She even gave me the baby’s due date: September 1. Our baby. This wasn’t just a hypothetical kid anymore.

I was just about to hang up when I realized I’d forgotten to ask one very important question.

“Is there any chance we’re having triplets?”

Aida chuckled. “With a 142, it’s probably a singleton.”

I couldn’t believe it. A baby. I was going to be a dad.