“I’ll hang on for Réiltín to get changed if you want to head on back to work,” Jo said to Ryan. They had come in separate cars.
“Okay, I’ll see you later – tell our Little Star that I’m so proud of her,” Ryan said and left.
Jo and Isla stood there awkwardly for a few moments before Isla said that she’d better go back to work herself.
“I’ll walk you out,” said Jo. “Réiltín will be a while yet.”
They walked off the pitch sidelines.
“So, how’ve you been?” Jo asked.
“I’m good.”
They walked along the tarmac surface of the schoolyard, passing by some other parents who waved at Jo. She waved back at them then looked at Isla.
“You’re not still thinking of trying to have a baby, are you?” she said in a whisper.
Isla was taken aback with how forthright she was being. “Well . . . I’m just getting my blood tests done at the moment to check my hormone levels,” she said quietly. “Once I have them I have to go back to the clinic to see what happens next.”
“I had hoped you would have seen sense by now. Can’t you see that it’s complete madness, Isla?” Jo sounded weary. “What has got into you?”
“Jo, I want to have a baby, that’s all it is, and unfortunately my circumstances dictate that this is the only way that it’s going to happen for me. I really wish it didn’t have to be this way but I’m heading towards forty and I can’t afford to sit around waiting for Mr Right to arrive. If I want to be a mother, this is the only way that I can do it.”
“But why all of a sudden? I’ve never once heard you mentioning the fact that you were feeling broody before. I don’t understand what has changed and why you want it so badly that you’re prepared to go it alone? It just seems like such a crazy, hare-brained notion!”
“Look, it’s taken me a lot of time to pluck up the courage to do this. Please, can you not be supportive of me?” Isla’s voice was raised.
“Keep your voice down, we don’t want the whole school learning about your mad ideas,” Jo hissed. “I’m your sister, Isla. I am being supportive – that’s why I’m trying to make you see sense. I don’t want you to make one of the biggest mistakes of your life because if you go ahead with this it’s not just you who will suffer the fall-out – there’s going to be a baby involved too. That’s not fair, Isla.”
“Why are you so against me having a baby, Jo?”
“I’ve already told you – you won’t be able to cope with the responsibility. You’ve never been able to face things when life gets hard – you dropped out of school when you found it getting tough. You were no help when Dad died and who was left to sort everything out? Me, that’s who! All our lives I’ve been picking up the pieces for you and I’m not going to stand by and watch an innocent child suffer, all because you took a notion to have a baby one day. But then again, I guess you’ve always been self-centred.”
“I’m going to go now or else I’ll say something that I regret. Bye, Jo.” Isla walked off across the schoolyard and didn’t look back.
The sky opened on her way back to the café. The rain spilled down, forming puddles on the pavement. She didn’t have an umbrella with her so she kept her head down and picked her way through the puddles.
When she got back to the café it was quiet with most of the customers emptied out. It was Michelle’s day off so Fran was in instead. He was just getting ready to go home when Isla came in and put her apron on. She went out to the kitchen and got stuck into clearing up. She felt the pressure of tears building behind her eyes. She hated fighting with people, especially Jo, but she had upset her.
“Did your niece win her match?” Greg asked as he began emptying out the salad trays.
“She did, by two points . . .” She couldn’t hold back the tears any longer and they spilled down her face.
“That’s great – hey, what’s wrong with you?”
“It’s nothing Greg, just family stuff, you know?” She wiped the tears away quickly with the backs of her hands.
He nodded. “Okay . . . well, I’m not going to pry but I’m here if you want to talk about it, you know that, don’t you?”
“Thanks, Greg.”
“Do you want to do something after work?”
“Sorry but I’m just not in the mood today. I’d prefer to be by myself if you don’t mind?”
“Sure, no worries, I understand.”
Greg stacked all the chairs up on the tables as Isla washed the floor and then they said goodbye as he locked up.
She decided to walk home the long way by the river. The path was a muddy trail bounded by the river on one side and the gates leading to the gardens of the houses backed onto it on the other. The earlier rain had cleared away to leave behind a bruised sky. She met a few dog walkers and joggers but otherwise was left alone with her racing mind. Maybe Jo was right, she thought. Maybe she wouldn’t be able for the responsibility of having a baby. She had made some valid points. Isla knew she wasn’t good under pressure; she did tend to run away from things. Would she do that to a baby? After their upbringing the last thing she wanted to do was to mess up a child’s life. Yes, she wanted to have baby but was the way she had to do it just too much? Maybe she should just cancel the whole thing – when she thought about it, it was kind of crazy. Yet whenever she thought of having a child of her own and cradling a newborn in her arms, the picture in her head filled her with such an intense happiness, and she knew that that was what she wanted. When she saw what Jo had with Réiltín, she wanted that feeling for herself.
It had started to get dark by the time she reached the path that cut back up to the street where she lived. She came out through the turnstile and saw the glow of the streetlights had just come on, lighting the street in a sodium glow. She walked along until she reached the dry cleaner’s, put her key in the door and climbed the stairs to her flat.
Chapter 14
Failure
The day had come for Isla’s appointment with the clinic to discuss the results of her blood assays. She had gone to her doctor as instructed and given the necessary samples on the days that Dr Harvey had specified.
As she sat in the plush waiting room, she was nervous. She knew that this would be the deciding factor as to whether or not she was going to be able to have a baby. Her nerves weren’t helped by the dreams. The night when the baby had been crying still left her feeling a bit uneasy. She had to admit that it had sowed a small seed of doubt in her mind.
Finally, she was called in to see Dr Harvey. She took a seat across the desk from him while he brought up her file on screen.
“Well, Isla, how’ve you been?”
He was staring at his large flat-screen computer as he spoke to her. His face gave nothing away.
“I’ve been good.” She could hear the anxious edge to her own voice.
“Okay then, I won’t keep you waiting any longer. We have the results of your blood assays back which, as I explained, is the first step to determine if you would be a suitable recipient for donor sperm.” He paused for a breath before continuing, “Now, there is no easy way for me to tell you this, Isla, but unfortunately the results were not as good as we would normally like them to be. One of the tests we did was to measure your AMH level. AMH stands for Anti-Mullerian Hormone and it is a hormone secreted by cells in developing egg sacs also known as follicles. Women are born with their lifetime supply of eggs, and these gradually decrease in both quality and quantity with age so the level of AMH in a woman’s blood is generally a good indicator of her ovarian reserve. Unfortunately the results have come back to say that you have an AMH of 0.3 which is extremely low. We have had success using IVF with women with low AMH scores before so it’s not an automatic disqualifier. However, you will recall the blood tests we did on Day 3 of your cycle where we measured your follicle-stimulating hormone – FSH? Well, FSH is produced by the pituitary gland at the base of the brain. When a woman goes into menopause she is running out of eggs
in her ovaries. The brain senses that there is a low oestrogen environment and signals the pituitary to make more follicle-stimulating hormone. So more FSH is released from the pituitary in an attempt to stimulate the ovaries to produce a good follicle and some oestrogen hormone. In a menopausal woman, the pituitary is releasing high levels of FSH to try and stimulate the ovaries – even though there are no follicles or eggs left. The woman’s body never gives up trying so FSH levels are permanently elevated. As women approach menopause their baseline FSH levels will tend to gradually increase over the years. When they run out of follicles capable of responding, their FSH will be continuously high and they stop having periods altogether. You had an FSH level of twenty-three on Day 3, which I’m sorry to have to tell you, is indicative of failing ovarian function.”
“Failing? What does that mean?”
“I’m sorry to say, Isla, that the results would suggest that you are experiencing the early onset of menopause or premature ovarian failure as we term it medically. I’m afraid I couldn’t recommend any artificial reproductive techniques for you. It would be medically remiss of me to allow you to go ahead when it is very unlikely that it would work. I’m so sorry that it’s not better news.”
“But I’m not yet thirty-nine! Surely I’m too young for the menopause?”
“For some reason this happens to about one per cent of women and it can come as a terrible shock when it does. You mentioned your periods had become very irregular, which would be a sign of it. Did you notice any hot flushes, night sweats?”
She nodded. She had been waking up to find her sheets saturated but she’d thought that she just had too many blankets on the bed or perhaps it was connected with the strange dreams she had been having. She never thought for a minute that it could be something like this.
“Can’t I do IVF or something – isn’t that what that is for?”
“Your body isn’t responding to your own hormones therefore it is unlikely to respond to the drugs we would use as part of an IVF cycle either, and without eggs there can be no baby. I’m sorry, I do wish it was better news.”
“So that’s it – I have no more options?”
“The only other options open to you would be egg donation or embryo donation. It should be noted, however, that the number of available egg-donors falls far short compared with the number of sperm-donors available – supply falls far below demand. Also using an egg-donor might not even be an option that you are willing to consider if having a genetic link to the child is important to you? Again, I’m sorry to be telling you this.”
“Right . . . I see . . . okay . . . I’d better go then . . .”
Suddenly she felt awkward and embarrassed. She wanted to be far away from this man and his impossibly orderly office. She went to stand up and leave the room but realised that she had forgotten her bag so she turned back around for it but banged her knee against the chair in her rush to escape. The pain shot through her leg and she was mortified by her clumsiness.
“Sorry . . . I’m going . . .”
Dr Harvey flashed her a sympathetic but strained smile.
She picked up her bag and said goodbye again.
Taking the stairs down to the ground floor, she went outside into the fresh air. She took the steps leading from the Georgian building down to the pavement two at a time and, when she reached the footpath, she stopped and rested her back up against the railings thickly painted with years of glossy white paint. She hadn’t been expecting that at all. She felt winded. She watched the traffic pass by on the road in front of her. Her head was spinning. Whir, whir, whir . . . car after car went by, each with its own people going about doing their own things, fretting over their own problems or worries that the rest of the world knew nothing about. That was it for her now, she thought. She was at the end of the road before the journey had even started. There was no way she was going on a crusade to have a baby at all costs and setting down the arduous path of trying to get a donor embryo – the genetic link was important to her. Disappointment was there but so too were shock and anger. She felt cheated that her body had done this to her without giving her a chance to do something about it. If she had known about it earlier, she could have tried to have a baby earlier. If she had been unsure about having a baby before then, suddenly it seemed like the one thing that she wanted most in the world.
She didn’t go back to the café afterwards. Instead she texted Greg to say that she wasn’t feeling too well. She knew he would hold the fort for her. It started to rain so she pulled up the hood of her parka. The cars turned on their wipers. Puddles were starting to form at the side of the road. She walked along the chewing-gum-strewn pavements, stepping over the cracks.
Chapter 15
Everything Happens for a Reason
Isla went into work early the next morning well before the café was due to open. She had felt bad about not returning after her appointment the day before and wanted to try and make it up to Greg. She hadn’t been able to sleep anyway. She had spent the night tossing and turning and thinking about what might have been. As she came down St John’s Street towards the café she knew that Greg would already be in the kitchen getting ready for the day ahead and she found herself wanting to see him. He was the one person she wanted to be near right then.
As she gave him a hand to make the day’s scones by mixing flour, butter and sugar together with her hands, she found there was comfort in just being in his calming presence. He didn’t ask her why she hadn’t returned after her appointment the day before or why she was in an hour before she was meant to start; it was like he could just sense that she needed to be there. She worked faster than usual, kneading forcefully until the mixture turned doughy. Then she cut the dough up and put the tray in the oven. She went out the front to get ready to open up by lifting the chairs down from the tables.
Greg turned the sign from ‘closed’ to ‘open’ and soon customers began to trickle in through the door. She found it hard to concentrate on her tasks that morning. She found herself watching women with babies even more closely than usual. It stung. She greeted Mrs O’Shea and Mrs Price and set to making their breakfast for them but she made a pot of coffee instead of tea. Mrs Price came back up to the counter and handed it back to her and she had to make it again. She was insulted that Isla had got their order wrong. Then Isla accidently short-changed another customer and had to apologise profusely.
“Your head’s all over the place today, Isla, love,” Greg said when the rush had died down. His clear blue eyes were sympathetic.
“Sorry, Greg, I’ve just got some stuff on my mind.”
“Did you get on okay in the doctor’s yesterday?” She had used the doctor as her excuse. “I hope you don’t mind me asking but is everything okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “But sometimes life is a bit shit, isn’t it?”
“Look, why don’t we go for a drink tonight? You sound like you could use some cheering up,” he coaxed.
“Yeah, all right, we’ll go for one.”
At five o’clock her phone rang as they were cleaning up for the day. She reached inside her apron pocket and, when she took it out, saw that it was Réiltín.
“Isla?” She sounded panicked.
“Yeah? Is everything all right?”
“I think I just got my period.”
“Are you okay?”
“I think so but it’s a bit . . . weird . . .”
“Where are you?”
“At home. I’ve none of those, y’know, things and I’m too embarrassed to buy them on my own . . .”
“Well, did you call your mum?”
“No, she’s still at work – anyway I don’t want to tell her yet. She’ll just tell Dad and make a big deal about it all, probably say something cringey about how I’m a young woman now and then she’ll probably want to do ‘the talk’ again.”
“I hear you. I’ll come over and I’ll run into the pharmacy on the way, okay?”
“Thanks, Isla.”
She went out the back and found Greg humming along to the radio as he cleaned the oven.
“Greg, I’m so sorry to do this again for the second day in a row but would it be okay if I headed off now? Something’s come up with my niece Réiltín.” She saw his face drop and watched the disappointment wash down over it. “Oh, I’m sorry, Greg – I totally forgot we were supposed to be going for a drink after work, but it’s an emergency. We’ll do it again soon, yeah?”
“Sure, Isla, you go on. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Isla went into the pharmacy on the way home and bought a packet of pads before walking on to Sandymount. She climbed the stone steps to Jo’s seafront house and, before she could even knock on the door, Réiltín had opened it to let her in. Oscar bounded down the hall behind Réiltín, wagging his tail furiously at Isla.
“Well done, you!” Isla said. “That’s a big moment – don’t worry, I won’t say anything cringey like welcome to womanhood but still it’s great news. At least someone in this family’s reproductive system is in good working order.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Here you go,” Isla said, giving her the pads. “Do you want a demo?”
“Are you serious, Isla?”
She could see Réiltín was having second thoughts about having confided in her but then, when she burst out laughing, Réiltín laughed too.
She went into the bathroom and Isla slid down onto Jo’s thick wool carpet with her back resting against the wall and talked to her through the door.
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