I Always Will

Epilogue Part One

Row 7 years later

I lie flat on my back, staring at the ceiling. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel right now, but if I'm honest, the emotion I'm feeling is...disappointment.

Which doesn't really make sense.

Beside me, Riley breathes. Says nothing. Just breathes.

I learned a long time ago not to assume he's feeling the exact same thing as I am. Given all we've been through, I could expect he might be feeling the same vague sense of it's-not-supposed-to-be-like-this, but I could be very wrong. Making that assumption could rob him of his need to express his own feelings. It could rob me of his comfort as well.

I know all this. Yet somehow I fail to be mature and loving. Somehow I manage to say...

"Well. That was the worst sex we've ever had."

He gives me a weary chuckle. Takes my hand. Pulls it to his lips, kisses it.

"IVF Embryo transfer is not sex," he says. But gently. The last six months have been the hardest we've had in nearly a decade, and Riley has been more incredible each and every day.

I look over at him, sitting on a stool with a gimlet eye trained on me. I'm stuck on my back, on a procedure table where I am required to lie flat with my legs elevated for the next two hours.

"Well, I disagree," I tell him. "It's penetration of me with a part of you. That's the very definition of sex. And frankly, my darling, it pretty much sucked."

It really did.

It was just as awkward as if I had been having a gyno appointment with my husband watching, but much more head-trippy, because if you really think about it? In essence, a doctor I hardly know was using a tiny plastic tube to knock me up. He was performing the act, though the little blastulas of hope who were birthed into creation in a petri dish were sired by my husband.

Riley and I weren't even present at their conception. We weren't there when they were nurtured for the first three days on some artificial support medium. We definitely weren't there when our potential children were evaluated and genetically tested and chosen from their potential siblings as being the strongest, the most perfect. We didn't decide which of the twelve embryos got a chance at life and which were put into the purgatory of cryo-freeze.

A dozen people—technicians and embryologists—have looked at our babies through a microscope for days, and now three other people were in the room with us handling the embryos that were injected up into my uterus.

Presto pregnancy.

Poof!

I'm pregnant. For the moment, I suppose.

It's all kindsa weird if you really think through all the steps. Basically, in-vitro fertilization is like the Hunger Games of having a baby. But instead of a televised fight to the death, it's a monitored struggle to life, where only the strongest survive.

And these little guys will need to be strong. Very strong. Just because they're alive inside my body at this moment, doesn't mean they will be in two weeks. Or in four weeks. Or not even in ten weeks, when they should be nearly safe. Secure.

I say as much to Riley.

"Row, it's going to work. IVF gives the doctors control of your hormones while at the same time making sure the embryos are healthy. The doctor said we have every reason to think, with a little hormonal support, that we'll have a good outcome on the first try. I believe this is how we get the family we want. I really need you to believe it, too."