Mixed Blessings

by Danielle Steel

  “I wish I had been that lucky, just once.” Mark rolled his eyes and they both laughed. “Anyway, what harm can it do to check it out? Then the guy tells you you’re in great shape, you feel like a stud, you come home and throw her on the floor and take her, and bingo, she gets pregnant. That’s all the doctor does … it’s a little morale booster for the troops at home, right?”

  “You crazy guy …” Charlie was more touched by his concern than he knew how to tell him.

  “Me, crazy? Am I the guy who let his wife go to Las Vegas? I think you’re the crazy one here.”

  “Yeah. Maybe so.” Charlie smiled, but he felt better than he had in a long time, and the Mets were winning as they finished their beers. It was ten o’clock before Mark drove him home, and after he dropped Charlie off, Charlie walked slowly up to their apartment, wondering if he should see the doctor. It seemed a little extreme to go to a specialist so soon, and there was probably nothing wrong with him at all, but in another way, it might be reassuring. It was odd to think of it though, considering the fact that Barbie didn’t realize he was making a concentrated effort to get her pregnant. She had no inkling at all. In fact, he was the last thing on her mind that night, as she partied with her old friends, and ran into some guys she hadn’t seen in years, in Vegas.

  On Labor Day weekend, Pilar discovered for the third time in three months that she wasn’t pregnant. She was depressed this time, but philosophical. She and Brad had already agreed that if it didn’t work this time, she was going to see a doctor. She had been making discreet inquiries for a while, and Marina had told her about a reproductive specialist in Beverly Hills, and if she was as good as Marina’s source said, it was worth the drive to see her. L.A. was only two hours away, and the doctors she’d called to check on her all said she was fantastic, and well worth it.

  On the day after Labor Day Pilar made an appointment for the following week. Normally she would have had to wait months, but Marina’s friend intervened, and asked if she would see her quickly, and she agreed. And Brad had also agreed to go with her.

  He wasn’t entirely sure that he liked the idea that Marina had found them a woman doctor, but Pilar felt strongly about it, and he thought it was important for her to feel at ease with the physician they went to.

  “What are they going to do to me?” he asked nervously on the drive down. He had had to recess the case he was on for the afternoon, which was something he did very rarely.

  “I think they’ll probably cut it off, check it out, and sew it back on. No big deal. They won’t start the big stuff till next time.”

  “A big help you are,” he growled, and she laughed, grateful that he had come along. She was nervous about the visit, too, and she didn’t know what to expect. But the moment they met Dr. Helen Ward, a small, neat-looking woman with bright blue eyes and salt-and-pepper hair, they knew they had come to the right office. She was intelligent and calm, totally focused on what they wanted from her, and clear in the information she gave them. At first, Brad thought she was a little too cold and too clinical, but as they talked for a while she seemed to warm up to them, and she had a nice sense of humor. She practiced medicine the way Pilar practiced law, with compassion and intelligence, but also with immense skill and professional precision. And it reassured both of them to see that she had gone to medical school at Harvard, and she was in her mid-fifties, which pleased both Brad and Pilar. She had been particularly clear that she didn’t want a young, fiery, experimental doctor. She wanted someone serious and calm, who would choose the more conservative routes, while still doing everything she could to help them.

  After an initial chat, she began their charts, and asked them each intense questions about their health, and past and present medical problems. Brad was pleased to see how comfortable Pilar was with her, especially when she told her about the abortion she’d had when she was nineteen. She didn’t like talking about it, but she had told Brad about it late one night, after a lot of wine, but she also told him that to this day she still felt guilty. She had had every good reason not to have the baby, she had been a freshman in college, with no way of supporting a child, and the baby’s father, her first affair, absolutely refused to help her. Her parents would have disowned her, or worse, or so she thought. And she had been just terrified, and desperate enough to have an illegal abortion in Spanish Harlem. And now, more than once, she had found herself wondering if that abortion was part of the reason she wasn’t getting pregnant. But Dr. Ward assured her that that wasn’t likely.

  “Most women who have even several abortions go on to have healthy children, and there’s nothing to prove that women who have had abortions have a harder time getting pregnant. If you’d had a serious infection afterward, that would be another story, but from what you’ve described, it sounds pretty normal.” All of which reassured Pilar immensely.

  They talked about Brad’s children, their birth control for the past fourteen years, and after she took their histories, she did an exam on Pilar, and found no noticeable problems. As always, with infertility, she was particularly wary of infections.

  “Is there any particular reason why you both wanted to come here? There’s nothing in either of your histories that suggests any kind of complications, and three months of trying to conceive is really very early to be getting worried,” she said encouragingly with a warm smile and, more than ever, Pilar decided she liked her.

  “That’s fine if you’re sixteen, Doctor Ward. I’m forty-three. I don’t feel like I have a lot of time to play around with.”

  “That’s true, and we could check a few things, your FSH and progesterone levels, which could affect your ability to get pregnant, thyroid and prolactin, for the same reasons. We like to see your progesterone levels above a certain point to ensure conception. We can check your temperature every morning, and keep a basal body temperature, or BBT, chart. And we might give you a little boost with some clomiphene, just to see if that helps. Clomiphene isn’t always useful in women over forty, but it might be worth a try if you’re willing. It’s a hormone that will fool your body into producing unusually high levels of progesterone, to help you get pregnant.”

  “Will it make me grow hair on my chin?” she asked bluntly, and the doctor laughed.

  “Not that I’ve ever seen. It may make you a little tense though, a feeling of stress for the five days that you take it, and shortly thereafter. It causes some people minor problems with their vision, mild headaches sometimes, and it can cause nausea, mood swings, even ovarian cysts, but usually there’s nothing major.”

  “I think I’d like to try it,” Pilar said confidently. “What about anything stronger? Hormone shots?”

  “I don’t see any reason for that yet. We don’t want to get overenthusiastic about interfering with nature.”

  She didn’t want to go overboard on a woman with no obvious problems. Dr. Ward suspected that, if Pilar could have, she’d have asked for more drastic measures, like in vitro fertilization, where they would provoke her ovaries to produce several eggs with the use of hormones, then take several of the eggs from her ovaries, fertilize them in a petri dish with her husband’s sperm, and then put them in her uterus and hope she stayed pregnant. It proved very successful sometimes with the fertilization of the egg, if both sperm and eggs were healthy, but it did not guarantee that the patient would be able to stay pregnant. But at Pilar’s age, there was no question of in vitro fertilization. Most centers refused to do it on women over forty. And IVF was not an easy process. It required heavy doses of hormones, careful removal of the eggs by experienced hands, and the procedure only had a ten to twenty percent success rate. But for the lucky few who succeeded with it, it was a godsend.

  Dr. Ward did a few simple blood tests on Pilar, gave her a prescription for clomiphene, asked her to start taking her temperature every morning before she got out of bed, showed her how to keep the BBT chart, and then she gave her a kit that would detect the LH surge before ovulation.

  “I feel like
I just joined the Marines,” Pilar said to Brad as they left, carrying their kit and all Dr. Ward’s instructions about when to make love, and when not, and how often.

  “I hope not. I liked her. What did you think?” Brad had been impressed by her intelligent views, and conservative positions. She refused to be pushed into doing too much just because Pilar was well-read and knew something about some of the more sophisticated options.

  “I liked her too.” Pilar was disappointed, though, that she didn’t have any miracles up her sleeve. She seemed to favor a very conservative approach, but that was what they had wanted. And their options were limited anyway, because of Pilar’s age. She was too old for in vitro fertilization, even if they needed it, and maybe even for clomiphene, although she was going to take it.

  Dr. Ward had suggested intrauterine insemination. She felt it might give them a better chance at conceiving, if Pilar didn’t manage it on her own with the clomiphene.

  “It all seems so complicated for something that should be so simple,” Brad said, still surprised by all the elaborate tests and medicines and mechanics for the infertile.

  “Nothing’s simple at my age,” Pilar complained, “even putting my makeup on is a lot more work than it used to be.” She grinned and he leaned over to kiss her.

  “You sure you want to do all these things? That medication doesn’t sound like much fun. You have enough pressure at work without taking pills to make you feel more stressed.”

  “Yeah, I thought of that. But I want to give us the best chance we can get. I’d like to try this.” Now that she had made up her mind, she wanted to do everything she could to have a baby.

  “Okay. You’re the boss,” Brad said warmly.

  “No, I’m not. But I do love you.” They kissed and drove back to Santa Barbara after having dinner in L.A. at the Bistro. It was a pleasant evening for them, a nice chance to get away. And when they got home, Pilar put out all her new treasures in her bathroom, the LH kit, the thermometer, the chart. And they had stopped to fill the prescription on the way home. She didn’t have to start it for another three weeks, and only if she didn’t get pregnant during this cycle. Meanwhile, she had to start taking her temperature, and using the kit the next day, and the following week she was going to try to get pregnant.

  “It looks like an arsenal of hope, doesn’t it?” Pilar smiled at Brad as they brushed their teeth, and she waved at all the paraphernalia on her dressing table.

  “That’s all right, if that’s what we have to do. No one said it had to be easy, or simple. All that matters is the result, in the end.” And then he sobered a little, as he leaned over to kiss her. “And if the result happens to be that you and I are alone, and all this doesn’t work, then that’s all right, too, and I want you to know that. I want you to think about that, Pilar, and try to make your peace with it too. It will be wonderful if it works, but if it doesn’t, we still have each other, and a life full of people we love and who care about us. We don’t have to have this baby.”

  “No, but I’d like it,” she said sadly, as she looked at him, and he put an arm around her shoulders.

  “So would I. But I won’t risk what we have for it. And I don’t want you to either.” He knew from others that the process could become so obsessive it could destroy a marriage, and that was the last thing he wanted after waiting so long to marry her. What they had was just too precious.

  She was still thinking about what he’d said as she sat staring into space at her desk the next morning. She had dutifully taken her temperature the moment she woke up, and before getting up to go to the bathroom, and charted it neatly on the graph that came with the thermometer. She had done the LH kit right before she went to work. That took a little more time, juggling a urine cup and half a dozen tiny little vials of chemicals in her bathroom. But the results showed that her LH surge hadn’t occurred yet, which meant she wasn’t ready to ovulate. Brad was right. It did seem complicated for something that should be simple.

  “What are you looking so unhappy about?” Alice Jackson asked as she walked by Pilar’s office.

  “Oh … nothing … just thinking …” She sat up, and tried to forget what she’d been mulling over, but it wasn’t easy. All she seemed to think about these days was getting pregnant.

  “It doesn’t look like a happy thought.” Alice stopped for a moment with her arms full of files. She was researching a difficult case for her husband.

  “It is a happy thought, just not an easy one,” Pilar said softly. “How’s your case coming?”

  “We’re almost ready for trial, thank God. I’m not sure I could go through another six months of this.” But they both knew she would if she had to. She loved working with Bruce, and doing research for him. Sometimes it made Pilar wonder what it would have been like to work with Brad. But she couldn’t imagine it, much as she valued his advice. They were both too definite in their styles, too strong in their opinions. They were great as husband and wife, but she suspected they would have been considerably less so as partners. She was more of a bleeding heart than Brad, and she liked taking on difficult, near impossible cases, and then winning them, preferably for the underdog. There was still a lot of public defender in her. Brad, on the other hand, had never stopped being a D.A., or so she said, when they argued about the law. But most of the time, the arguments were pretty friendly.

  The telephone rang before she could continue her conversation with Alice Jackson about her case, and then her intercom buzzed, and their receptionist told her it was her mother.

  “Oh, God,” she said, and she hesitated, wondering if she should even take the call. Alice saluted her and moved on, with her arms full of briefs for Bruce. “Okay, I’ll take it,” she said into the intercom, and then pressed the button on the line that was lit. It was noon in New York, and Pilar knew that her mother had been working for five hours by then at the hospital, she’d be ready for a quick lunch, and then another five or six hours of patients. She was tireless, and she set a gruelling pace, still at her age. Brad had said more than once that it was an encouraging omen for Pilar, and she always rather less charitably suggested that her mother was too driven to slow down, and too mean to quit; it had nothing to do with omens.

  “Hi, Mom,” she said casually, wondering why she’d called. She usually waited for Pilar to call her, even if it took a month or more. Pilar wondered if she was coming out for another convention. “How are you?”

  “Fine. There’s a heat wave in New York today. It’s incredibly hot. Thank heavens our office air conditioning is still on. How are you and Brad?”

  “Buried in work, as usual” And trying to have a baby. The vision of her mother’s face if she knew actually made her smile, as she continued the conversation. “We’ve both been pretty busy. Brad’s been on a long case, and half of California seems to have come through my office this month.”

  “At your age, you should strive for the bench, like your father and Brad. You don’t need to be handling cases for all of California’s liberal riffraff.” Thank you, Mother. The call was typical of most of their exchanges. Questions, reproaches, mild accusations, tangible disapproval. “You know, your father was on the bench when he was quite a bit younger than you are. And he was appointed to the Court of Appeals at your age—it was quite an honor.”

  “Yes, I know it was, Mother. But I like what I do. And I’m not sure this family is ready for two judges. Besides, most of my clients are not ‘liberal riffraff.’” But she was annoyed at herself even for trying to defend herself, her mother always provoked her to do that.

  “From what I understand, you’re still defending the same people you were defending in the public defender’s office.”

  “No, fortunately, most of these have more money. So how about you? Busy in the office?”

  “Very. I’ve appeared in court myself twice recently, testifying in cases that involved neurological injuries. It was very interesting. And of course, we won both cases.” Humility was not one of Elizabeth Graha
m’s strong suits and never had been, but at least she was predictable, which made her easier to deal with.

  “Of course,” Pilar said vaguely. “I’m sorry … I’ve really got to get to work. I’ll call you soon … take care.” She hurried her off the phone with the same feeling of defeat she always had when she talked to her mother. She never won, her mother never approved, Pilar never got what she wanted. But the sheer stupidity of it was that she had known for years that she wouldn’t. Therapy had taught her that long since. Her mother was who she was, and she was not going to change. It was Pilar who had to change her expectations. And for the most part, she had, but there were still moments, like when she called, that Pilar expected her to be someone different. She was never going to be the cozy, sympathetic, warm-hearted loving mother Pilar had always wanted. And her father had been much the same. But she had Brad for that now, for all the loving and support and kindness she had craved for so long and never had, and when she needed the illusion of a mother near at hand, she had Marina for that, and so far neither of them had ever failed her.

  She called Marina that afternoon, during a recess in court, to thank her for the referral to Helen Ward, and Marina was pleased that she had liked her.

  “What did she say? Was she encouraging?”

  “Pretty much. At least she didn’t say what my mother did, that I’m way too old and we’ll have deformed children. She said it might take some time and a little effort.”

  “I’m sure Brad will be happy to oblige,” the older woman teased, in sharp contrast to the retort Pilar would have gotten from her mother.

  “He suggested as much himself.” Pilar laughed. “And she gave me some pills, but they may or may not work. The bottom line on all this is that there’s hope, but I ain’t no spring chicken.”

  “Who is? Just remember my mother … last baby at fifty-two …”

  “Stop that. Every time you remind me of that, you scare me. Promise me I’ll at least be under fifty.”