The white ceiling looks like heaven, I say to the nurse who hands me a paper cup of water and asks me again, maybe for the third time, to rate my pain on a scale of one to ten. Three, I say, which is true. For once the hurt is minimal.
Nine is the number I don’t know I hate until the doctor comes in. Out of nineteen follicles, only nine eggs are retrieved during our first but not only round of IVF—because we’ll need more rounds of IVF. When my husband and I find out the next day that our unlucky nine is sliced into thirds, leaving us with only three mature eggs to fertilize, something slices me open too. First my ovaries, my body. Then my heart, my breath. I look around my kitchen for the nurse to ask me again about my pain scale, but she isn’t there.
It only takes one. This is what everyone tells us when we learn we only have a single embryo after our first round. We try to believe them, try to hold hope. A candle is purchased at Target, notes of tea tree and spearmint. In my gut, I know it will never work. The embryo must multiply its cells for five whole days before it’s considered viable.
I contemplate standing on the sidewalk outside the clinic to let the embryo know I’m there, its mother. I imagine a future where I push a stroller in the sun, grab a coffee on the corner, talk to the blue eyes looking up at me. That’s where you began, I’ll say, pointing to the grey building on Lake Street. And this spot on the sidewalk is where I stood and prayed for you, begged for you to hold on.
When my nurse coordinator emails me with the news that our embryo is no longer an embryo, I’m at my nephew’s birthday party and little boys run around the backyard with frosting stains on their t-shirts. I grab my keys, sneak out the front door, drive to an empty parking lot and wail into the steering wheel. A woman approaches my window, then apologizes, saying I thought you were someone else.
Me too. I want to say. I thought I was someone else too.
Two days later, I take my nephew to the bookstore. We read about Buzz Lightyear and sip hot chocolate while swinging our feet on barstools. Then we drive to the park and he runs around in the leaves.
I think about our embryo, how it died at less than four cells. Or was it ever even alive? I’m not sure what to make of it. How can you love and hope for something so small? How do you make sense of the light that continues to filter through the trees?
Later that weekend, my husband and I laugh so hard during a TV show that we can’t breathe. My body hurts from laughing, then it hurts when I remember the pain.
I am okay, and I am not okay. My heart expands and shatters and somehow keeps pumping blood in my chest. We are crying, laughing, living. Tears run down my cheeks from both joy and sadness.
They taste the same.
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Kayti Christian is a Los Angeles-based writer and editor. She is currently writing a memoir about her journey with IVF and infertility. You can find more of her work on Substack.