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By Mark Nethercote, September 30, 2011 10:00 am

Monday 20th September 2010

One year ago.

Suse strides over to the bench, sitting down hard.  I follow.

“Hello?” Suse says.

“Hi there, Susan, it’s Shelley here.”

“Hi Shelley.”

“Have you got a minute?”

“Yes.”

“Look,” she says, pausing again, “I can’t tell you this officially, as the analyser is still not functioning.  But your beta-HCG level is positive.”

We both sit there for a moment, before looking at each other, our eyes wide.

“Sorry?”

“It’s just the progesterone level that isn’t through yet.  But the beta-HCG, the actual pregnancy test, is positive.  And… Well, we don’t like to give out the result until we have both, but, unofficially, it’s really the beta-HCG level that counts.”

We both sit there, a little stunned.

“So, that’s good, right?” Suse says eventually.

“Yes.  Absolutely.  And the level is nice and high.  Like really high.  It’s 703, and we like it to be above a hundred.  So you’re definitely pregnant.”

“So, unofficially, you’re telling us we’re pregnant?”

“Unofficially, yes, I am.  I just didn’t want you to be waiting till tomorrow to find out.  I didn’t think that was fair.”

“No,” I pipe in, “we were just talking about that.  We were about five minutes off ringing back.”

“Well, there you go,” she says laughing, “I beat you to it.”

We all go silent.

“So, where to from here?”

“Well you know, you still need your ultrasound at five weeks to check that it’s not an ectopic, which will be a week from now.  And, like I said, I’ll give you a call tomorrow to confirm.  To re-confirm.  But for now, it’s congratulations.”

“Thank you, Shelley,” we say together.  “Thank you.”

“Okay, talk to you tomorrow,” she says, hanging up.

I sit there, still.  Still dazed, before Suse falls into my arms.  I hear her begin to cry, and instantly my own shoulders begin chugging, convulsing, as the tears drop from my eyes.  Suse throws her legs over mine, hugging herself into me.

“We did it, honey,” she mews, barely able to speak. “We did it.”

“We did it.”

“We did it!”

“I know.”

“How are you?”

“Stunned, you know.  A bit shell-shocked, really.  I’d been bracing myself for the worst.”

“Same!”

We fall silent, staring out over the water, watching the swans as the silently float around.

“Oh my god,” Suse says, exhaling heavily.  “It wasn’t all for nothing, you know?  The herbs, the acupuncture, the hypnosis…”

“…The candle.”

“The specially concocted pre-conception recipes.”

“The meditation.”

“Ella saying I was pregnant.”

“Meg’s dream we got pregnant on the first round of IVF.”

“The Garfield doctor telling us someone had to be lucky first time.”

We both watch as the birds draw up against one another, rubbing their backs together.

“I was trying not to read too much into it all,” I say, my voice cracking.  “I was trying not to get too excited, you know, to not see too many signs.”

“Me too!”

“A winter baby.”

“Just like we imagined.  Just a year later.”

“Unofficially, that is.”

“Yes, honey.  Unofficially.”

We grip each other tight, and I place my palm against her belly, again imagining the cells multiplying, becoming a baby, a childhood lived out over seconds in my mind.  I smile.

“It’s poetic you know,” Suse says eventually, “that, in the end, it’s unofficial. The whole thing, the whole damn thing, until your child is in your arms, on the day that they are born, is unofficial.  Isn’t it?”

I look at my wife, and I smile, shaking my head slightly at her insight.

I watch as her brow furrows into that familiar frown.  “She said the level was high, right?”

“Yes.”

“Does that mean it’s twins?”

I laugh so hard that I almost fall off the bench.

THE END

To be continued in three months…

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, September 29, 2011 10:00 am

Monday 20th September 2010

One year ago.

I pace around, chasing my own tail.

I’m beginning to get dizzy.

Suse bursts in.

“Let’s go for a walk to the gardens,” she says, sounding almost light.

“Good thinking,” I mumble.

We walk out, along Punt Road, down under our bridge, and along the bike track.  We leave the din and congestion and smell of the evening traffic, crossing onto Morell Bridge.  I look at the lattice work, the ornamental Victorian lights, thinking of a simpler time in which this was built.

“What are you thinking?” Suse asks.

“I’m pissed,” I say.  “I’m frustrated.  This is a test that takes ninety minutes to run, and we’ve been waiting all day.  You went in at 9.30am, and we have to wait for six hours?  For what?  So that it can get to tonight, to now, to this point where they won’t be able to tell us tonight?”

We go silent.

“I have to know tonight, honey,” Suse says, slightly desperately.  “I can’t cope having to wait another day.  What am I going to do if I don’t have the result tonight?” she says, her voice rising.

“You’ll just have to cope,” I say testily, “just like I will.  We’ll just be left in limbo for another fucking night, just like the last eleven months.”

We let go of each other’s hands, waiting at the lights.  I walk off ahead, without the green man’s permission, and in through the garden’s wrought iron gates.

Suse catches me, taking my hand into hers.  Through all of this, we’ve tightened as a team.  People say that IVF will make you or break you as a couple.

If nothing else, through all of this torture we’re closer than ever.

As we walk, I squeeze my eyes tight, thinking of the last month, of the last year. Lighting the candle and surrounding it with salt to cleanse the house.  Our fertility ritual under a full moon in Fiji.  The boats that Suse made, to float away the spirits of past pregnancies into the sunset.  Our counselling with Jules.  All of Suse’s medical trials;  her trouble with both shoulders, her ectopic, her blocked fallopian tubes, her brush with multiple sclerosis and a spinal tumour, and then her varicella reaction.

And then I think of this last month.  Of all of her pregnancy symptoms.  Of the incident with the dishwasher.  Of Meg’s dream that we would get pregnant this first time.  Of Ella’s comment in the car.  Of what the Garfield doctor said about someone having to be lucky.  Of that feeling I’ve had, ever since we lit the candle two weeks ago.

That something has got to go right for us.

I open my eyes, and I contemplate the opposite.  The reality of where we are right now, somewhere on the road of IVF, trying to lift our feet into the next heavy step.

We continue along quietly.  The gardens now surround us, the smell, the tranquillity, the soft air.  We walk down our curve, winding right around the lake.  We walk along the path, and as we do, I see Suse’s shoulders rise, the weight lifted slightly in the presence of nature.

“If it gets to five, I’m calling back,” I say.  “I’m not…”

“…It’ll be okay,” Suse says, once again composed.  “She’ll call.

She squeezes my hand, and we walk some more.  We round the bend, past the lawn, the lake in front, a couple of birds fluttering at its edge.  As if on cue, as we pass the park bench, the phone rings.

* * * * *

To be continued…

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By Mark Nethercote, September 27, 2011 10:00 am

Monday 20th September 2010

One year ago.

The hours pass slowly.  I start the plumbing job, but having never done anything like this before, I have trouble judging how long it’ll take.  Added to this it is uncertainty of whether it will another minute or another hour before I’m cradling Suse in the bedroom with bad news, while water slowly fills the house through a leaky tap.  So I sort of start, and then I stop, and then I start again.

I end up not doing it.

Meantime, Suse sits in the lounge room, watching internet TV.  She devours several episodes of marginally talented singers standing in front of cruel judges and a loving audience, while shoving Rice Bubbles continuously into her mouth.

I check my watch at decreasing intervals.  I feel like a relative, having learnt of a disaster in a foreign land, awaiting confirmation of death.  Each time the phone rings, I jump up from my desk, running into the lounge room.  We both stare at the mobile phone screen, at the various names that appear, none of them Shelley.  We let them all go through to message bank.

“I’m going to ring,” I declare, finally, at 3.07pm.

“She said she’d ring us,” Suse protests weakly.

“You don’t want to know?”

“Not really,” she admits meekly.

“Well, I do,” I say.

I pick up the phone, and dial.  The phone peals five times before it answers.  I feel my heart in my mouth.

“Hi, You’ve called Shelley from Monash IVF,” begins the recorded message.

My heart starts again.

* * * * *

I return to my job of doing nothing in particular. Seconds take far longer than they should.

Never before have I been so inefficient at being inefficient.

It crawls all the way to 4.12pm, before the phone finally rings.  I run out to find Suse there, the shrieking of a contestant’s final flat note cut dead with the pause button.  The mobile rings again, the ‘old phone’ ringtone breaking the silence, sounding like something from a Hitchcock movie.  We both look at the screen to see the name: ‘Shelley’.

Suse answers on speaker phone.

“Hello?”

“Hi there Susan, it’s Shelley here.”

“Hi Shelley,” she says, sounding like the scolded child, about to be punished.

“How are you?”

“Okay.”

“Have you got a minute?”  She sounds apprehensive.

It’s bad news.

Fuck it all.

“Yep.”

“Look…” she says, pausing, “your result isn’t through yet.  They’re having some troubles with one of their analysers.”  I take a gasp.  “So, I’m just ringing to let you know that I haven’t forgotten about you.”

“But the result will be through today,” Suse says, as statement more than question.

“Most probably.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll give you a call when it does.  Just hang in there, okay?”

“Okay.”

The phone goes dead.

“You’ve got to be kidding me, don’t you?” Suse says, her head falling into her hands.  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

I stand.  And I walk out of the room and into the study.

Looking for something expensive to throw at the wall.

* * * * *

To be continued…

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By Mark Nethercote, September 26, 2011 10:00 am

Monday 20th September 2010

One year ago.

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By Mark Nethercote, September 22, 2011 10:00 am

Saturday 18th September 2010

One year ago.

“This fucking dishwasher!” Suse yells.

I look over at her, from my position folding laundry.  We’ve had a really nice day, managing to keep ourselves busy.  There has not been a moment of tension.

Until now.

“The fucking dishwasher!” she yells again, kicking its scuff board hard.

“What’s wrong?”

“It won’t fucking start!” she yells.  She kicks it again.

I see her open it, pressing buttons randomly, before slamming it closed again.  Each time this doesn’t work, she lets out another shrill squeal.

“This fucking piece of shit!”

We have an Italian dishwasher.  I got it second hand from a mate.  It looks great, but it’s not very user friendly.  It has eight buttons, with various uninterpretable symbols.  It requires that you depress the two on the right simultaneously, before choosing one of the other settings, and then closing it tight to get it to start.  If you don’t do it quite right, it doesn’t work.

If you’re flustered, you haven’t got a hope.

I look at Suse, depressing the buttons unevenly, slamming it shut, squealing, and then pulling it open again.  Each time she does it with more force, each time throwing herself into it ever more.

“This,” she says, pointing, “is a fucking piece of shit!”

“Okay.”

“It is an absolute piece of shit, Mark!”

“Settle down, Suse.”

“I’ll settle down when you get it to work, Mark,” she says menacingly.  “Make it work, Mark!”

“Settle down, Suse.”

“Make it work!  Make the fucking dishwasher work!”

“Give me a second,” I say.

I walk over and open it, depressing buttons.  Suse leans her head over my shoulder, breathing fire.

“Can I have a moment?”

“I’m just watching to see what you do!”

I have a first go at it.  It doesn’t work.

“See?  See!”

“Hang on, Suse.  Just settle down!”

“I’ll settle down when that piece of shit works properly!” she yells, storming off down the hallway, “I can’t fucking take that piece of shit anymore!  This is bullshit!” she screams.  “I can’t take it!” she says, breaking into tears.  She throws herself onto the bed.

“Calm down, Suse,” I yell.  “Or you’ll lose the baby!” I say, more quietly.

The sobbing stops dead.  I pause for a moment, opening and closing the thing to no avail.  I walk down the hall and into the bedroom.  Suse lies there, her arm up under her head, facing the mirror.  I lie down beside her.

“Do you really think there’s a baby in there?” she whispers.
“Yes.”

“I feel like shit, Mark.  I feel constantly nauseated, and I’m totally knackered.  This has got to be a baby, doesn’t it?  It’s got to be.  I can’t do this every month if this isn’t pregnancy.”

I touch her tummy, something I’ve been doing over the last few weeks.  It settles her further.

“Is there a baby in there?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

We go quiet.  Suse sniffs away snot.  I keep my hand on her tummy.

“What’s she saying to you?”

“He likes the dishwasher.

“Does she?”

“He does.  So go easy on it.”

“Okay.”

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, September 21, 2011 10:00 am

Friday 17th September 2010

One year ago.

Every second takes a second – which is a long time when you’re watching.

I’m on call, and almost wish to be called in, just to pass time.

“I think this weekend is going to be really hard,” Suse says.  “I wasn’t worried until the candle went out.”

I feel myself bristle.

Suse hasn’t said it, but we both know that I was the one who didn’t want it lit.  We both know it’s my fault.  They mightn’t be my blocked tubes, but when it comes to the candle, I’m definitely the one who dropped the ball.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, September 14, 2011 10:00 am

Sunday 12th September 2010

One year ago.

The fucking candle went out.

We were up to the fourth one.

The first one, as I said, was from the two-dollar shop.  In fact, that’s not true, it was from ‘Cheap Prices’ in Station Street.  $3.50 for that one.  It burnt well, nicely, cleanly, for four days.

The next one was from ‘Ishka’.  It was a proper candle – you know, a scented one that was handcrafted in Australia for five times the price.  It even came with instructions on the base, in case we didn’t know what to do with one of these new-fangled contraptions.  They implored that we keep the wick trimmed and never leave it unattended, like it’s a pet or something.  It filled the house with the stink of vanilla for days, and burnt all the way to the bottom, outlasting it’s expected life by thirty-six hours after lighting the third, giving us a double glow for all of that time – and increasingly questioning our risk of twins.

Eventually it burnt out, but not before I’d whipped back to ‘Cheap Prices’ and bought them out of their unscented, six-inch variety.  A total of seven candles is what we’ll need to make it through to judgement day – the pregnancy test in just over a week.

“Should we light a new one?” Suse asks in the middle of the afternoon.

I look at it for a while, as it burns high and bright, the lake of wax growing deep.

“Nah, we’ll do it tonight,” I say, “It’s still got a couple of centimetres to go.  We don’t want to give anymore encouragement for twins.”  She smiles.

We potter around.  Suse cooks while I construct Ikea products.  It’s a typical Sunday afternoon.  Having screwed and tapped and rivoted for just over an hour, I emerge from the study, walking back into the dining room.  Immediately I notice an anaemic hue to the room, the warm, jaundiced light having gone.  As I round the corner, I look at the table.  I see the candle is out, the flame dead.  A brand new one, the resuscitation device, sits three centimetres to its left.  I let out a gasp.

“What?” Suse asks from the stove.  I hear the clang of a saucepan lid.  “I knew it, I fucking knew it!” she yells, grabbing at the matches from the cupboard.

She runs over, lighting a match as she does, touching it to the new candle.

“No, no, no!  Not that way!  Re-light the old one.”

“There’s no wick left!  It drowned, just like I new it was going to,” she mumbles, slightly desperate.

We stand still for a moment, frozen in shock, like parents having just found their child blue.  I grab the lit match from her hand, trying to revive the submerged wick, burning my finger on the growing flame.

“I said that’s not going to work!” Suse says.  I drop it.  I pick up a pen and dig it into the setting resin, trying to unveil the wick.  Still no luck.

The barbeque match lies on the top of the deadened candle, curling up, lighting the length of the tinder bright.  A pool of wax forms around it, next to the drowned wick.

I take the new one.  “Hold it!” I say to Suse.  She grips it in her palm and we tip it, lighting the virgin candle from the flame.

We put it down.

A candle has been burning continuously for ten days.  From before the reimplantation.  Each new wick has been diligently lit from the one before, all from the original flame.  Until now.

“Do you think it means something?” Suse asks.

“No,” I say with irritation, images of asphyxiated, brain damaged infants floating through my mind.  “Of course not.”

“Do you think it means our embryo didn’t make it?”

“No!” I say, even more forcefully.

We both stand there, staring at the innocent candle.  I feel sick to my stomach. Six minutes is all it takes for brain death.  Six minutes.  How long was this candle out for?

Two rational humans stand side by side, both lost for words, wondering on the fate of an unborn child.

Based on a candle.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, September 2, 2011 10:00 am

Friday 3rd September 2010

One year ago.

The instructions reiterate that I wash my hands, like I’m not about to touch my own penis.  They ask me to print my name on the pot and the consent form.  I one-up this by writing my full name, date of birth, ID number, wife’s name, and her ID number.

I’m not taking any chances.

I turn on the TV, and open a web browser.

I Google: ‘Porn’.

I open about ten tabs.

And then I sit there, butt naked, the heater on full, scanning through free porn, in the comfort of my own home, and knob myself.

And I do a very good job.

* * * * *

I head to the bathroom, again slowing as I pass the candle.  It flickers as I go.  The pot sits in the warm palm of my unused hand while I use the other to clean up.  I return to the living room, holding my pot, before re-dressing in the clothes that are strewn across the floor.

The pot goes straight into the jeans pocket.

‘Keep warm after production,’ the instructions warn, ‘but do not heat above body temperature.’

I grab the keys, the consent form and the biological hazard bag, and I jump back in the car.

It’s 10.02am.

As I drive back up the road towards the hospital, the sample jar sticks uncomfortably out of my jeans pocket.  At the lights, I wrestle it out and check the lid one more time.  I hold it up to the light to check the volume, surprised to see a few bubbles.  I guess anything liquid that sits in your jeans pocket is likely to bubble a little.

I feel a creeping over me, as I look to my right and see a woman in her car, staring.

Her jaw wide open.

The lights go green, and I floor it round the bend, pressing the jar against my warm palm.

* * * * *

I sit in the same seat, near the receptionist with the allergy to sperm, like I’m waiting to see the principal.  Occasionally she looks across at me, forcing a smile when I catch her staring at my Biological Hazard Bag.  I keep it on my lap like a loin cloth, ensuring the pot is upright.

My phone rings.

“Hello, is that Mark?”

“Yes.”

“This is Dorothy from Monash IVF.  I believe you were going to provide us with a sample?”

“I’m holding it in my hands as we speak.”

“Oh.  Are you on your way in?”

“I’m here.  I’m waiting for someone to come down and collect it.”

“Where are you?”

“In Day Procedure waiting room.  My wife is getting her eggs collected right now.”

“And where is your sample?”

“In my hands.  I’m holding a jug of sperm in my hands.”  The receptionist looks up like I just swore.

“Right.  Sorry.  I didn’t realise.  Someone will be there in a few minutes.”

I hang up and look around.  The waiting area is filled with seventy-year olds getting their hips screwed and their colostomies hemmed.  Not one other person in the room has a jug of sperm in their hands.  I concentrate very hard on the middle distance, staring carefully like there’s something important for me to see.

Eventually, a woman appears.

“Mark?”

She beckons me to the same corridor, forty-eight eyes following me as I go.

“Is that the sample?” she asks, pointing from hands hinged close to her body.

“Yes.”

She takes out a pair of purple gloves, putting them on theatrically.  “Could you repeat your full name?”

“Mark Edward Nethercote.”

“Date of birth?”

“29th May 1975.”

“ID code.”

I pull out the card from my wallet, repeating the number.

“Great, thank you.”

“It comforts me that you do that,” I say.

“Do what?”

“Check my details.  To make sure you’ve got the right person.”

“It’s not something we want to get wrong.”

With that she turns on her heels, and leaves.

I stand there for a moment, before turning back towards the waiting room.

Everyone is watching.

Everyone.

I wave.

Three of them wave back.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, September 1, 2011 10:00 am

Friday 3rd September 2010

One year ago.

Suse’s name is called, and we follow an impossibly small nurse wearing oversized Crocs through the doors and into the next section of the maze.  She trips on her own tiny feet;  in even the smallest sized shoes she wears two pairs of socks, and yet she still trips every three or four steps.  When we sit, requisite questions follow about Suse’s teeth, her lack of pacemaker, if her blood pressure is always that low, and whether we’d like them to pinch her jewellery while she’s asleep.

Suse then follows the tripping nurse to the change rooms, and returns wearing a large art smock, a hair net, and cloth foot covers.  She looks like a lunatic art teacher who works part time at the deli.  We sit for two more minutes, and then we’re ushered through to the departure lounge, where she gets the chair that goes up and down, and I get the footstool.  In turn, we sit here for a few minutes in awkward repose, until a man who has been passed several times finally gets the courage up to say hello.

“Hi there, Susan, I’m Martin.  Martin,” he repeats, turning to me.

“Mark,” I say.

“No, Martin,” he says once more.

“And I’m Mark.”

“Right you are,” he says, laughing awkwardly.  He crouches close.  “Now I think you guys are aware that Dr Fleischer won’t be performing the procedure today?”

“Yes.”

“And that Professor Vermeulen will be supervising?”

“Supervising?  She’ll be doing the procedure, won’t she?”

“No, I’ll be performing the procedure while she looks over my shoulder and says, ‘yep, great, looks good.’  Do have a problem with that?”

I look at Suse, her eyes having gone wide.

“No disrespect to you Martin, but I’ve only just met you, and I have a great deal of respect for Professor Vermeulen.  She was a lecturer of mine at University.”

“And you would like her to perform the procedure?”

“We’d feel more comfortable with that, yes.”

“So in that case, I’ll be looking over her shoulder while she performs the procedure, and I’ll be saying, ‘yep, great, looks good.’ ” We all laugh easily at the break in tension.

“Do you have any questions, Susan?”

“If you could just walk me through exactly what will happen, that would be great.”

“Okay,” he says, beginning to move his hands animatedly, in a game of Charades.  “We’ll place a needle into each of the follicles, and see how many of them have eggs.   For someone like yourself who has limited follicles, we’ll puncture each of them, even though the smaller ones probably won’t have eggs in them.  We’ll flush them out, searching for eggs – just in case.  To get as many as we can.”

“Sure,” I say.

“You’ll be under a light anaesthetic, you see, and you’ll be out the other end in no time.  You may have a bit of spotting and some period pain for a couple of days, but it should all settle down pretty quickly.  Do you have any questions?”

I look across at Suse, who is staring blankly ahead.

“I’m fine.  Suse?”

She shakes her head.   Martin gets up and disappears as quickly as he arrived.

“Are you okay, honey?”

“Well, for someone like me with such limited follicles, I guess I’m as good as I can be.”

* * * * *

I drive down the back streets towards our house.  As I brake behind the one-hundred-and-seventy-year-old man they hire specifically to piss off the residents of Richmond, I quell the urge to beep.  I ride the break down Lennox Street, through the repeated roundabouts and over the speed bumps towards Swan.  Eventually – despite having until eleven – I overtake him, almost causing him to crash.  I round the corner, heading west up Swan before pulling down our street to the end, squealing the breaks as I zoom under our roller door and pull up hard.

As I enter I walk slowly, careful to not blow out the candle that we lit last night.

Suse has always been a candle-kind-of-girl, but ever since the clairvoyant at the café with the salt and the candles, I’m also a convert.

“Let’s light a candle for incubation,” she said last night, out of the blue, “inviting a soul to join us.”

We lit it together, both striking the match, both saying something softly as we did.

And while I don’t know anything about the rules for this sort of shit, accidentally blowing out our candle when I’m – blowing out my own candle – would surely not be good karma.

I pass the quiet flame and walk towards the kitchen bench.  I take the pot out of the plastic bag and unscrew its lid, placing it down on the couch.  I pull out the consent form, reading the instructions:  ‘How to Wank 101.’

I’m not joking.

There are instructions.

* * * * *

To be continued…

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By Mark Nethercote, August 31, 2011 10:00 am

Friday 3rd September 2010

One year ago.

We sit down in the waiting area, the same waiting area as before.  The same place as for Suse’s shoulder operation.  The same as for her laparoscopy.

And now this.

I stare at my watch.

It’s 8.13am.

I jiggle my knee up and down.

“What’s wrong, love?”

“I’ve got to give them my sample, love,” I say, edgily.

“You’ll be fine.”

“Well, they told me I’ve got to get it to them by nine.  You know how I don’t like to be rushed.”

“You’re going home to do it?”

“Bloody oath.  I’m not doing it here again.  No more ‘MILFs in Heat’ for me.”

“Did you line anything up last night?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you find some material on the internet to help you out?”

I feel something crawl up my back.  “I guess I didn’t plan that far ahead,” I say.

“You’ll be fine,” she repeats.

“Yeah, sure.  You know how much I love a dry wank.”  The man two seats down shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

Either he’s got piles, or he just heard me.  “I just love the pressure of all of this.  With $2500 riding on my performance.  I just love it.”

“Just, pretend it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Come on, Suse.  How about you do the same.”

She looks at me, in a look of truce.  “Just go up to the desk and ask them about it.  Find out the deal.”

I sigh dramatically, like a teenager whose just been told sense.  I stand, and approach the counter.  The man with the piles watches me warily as I go.

“Hi there,” I say in a low voice, “my wife is here for egg collection today, and I have a question about my sample…”

“…Oh,”  the plain looking lady interrupts, “I don’t know anything about that.  I’ll call someone down from Andrology.”  She refuses to meet my eyes.  “Just have a seat,” she says, shooing me and my dirty hands away from the desk.

I sit back down.

“What’s the go?”

“They’re sending someone down to give me a lecture on technique.  Probably Cheryl and her purple gloves.”

I pull out my phone and begin to play with it.  The plain looking lady and the man with the piles both eye me as I do.

“Anyone would think you were the one having the operation today,” Suse smirks.

“If it goes like last time, I might just need one.”

“Honey, if I had the choice between dry wanking into a cup and having a large needle stuck up through my vagina and into my guts, I’d happily swap.”

Yeah, yeah.  You got me on that one.

* * * * *

Two minutes later, an attractive young woman wearing surgical scrubs walks through the door.  She spots me instantly – like I’m exuding nervous adolescent pheromones or something.  She beckons me with a finger.  I follow her halfway down the hall.

“Hi, she says, “I’m Cynthia.  I believe you had a questions regarding your sample?”

“Yeah,” I begin, shifting edgily from one foot to the other.  “My wife is having harvest at nine a.m.  And it’s…”  I look at my watch.  “…8.19am already. I’ve got to produce my sample.  And I’m running out of time.”

“Running out of time?”

“Well, there’s only forty minutes to go.”

“Oh.  No, there’s no rush,” she says, smiling kindly.  “The sample just has to make it to us by eleven.”

“Really?  I’d been told to drop off Suse, go home, produce the sample and be back by nine.”

“Wow.  That’s some schedule.”

“Tell me about it.”

“That’s enough to put anyone off.”

“I know!”  I laugh with relief.

“We don’t even start preparing the sperm until early afternoon.  So, stay here with your wife, get her in for the procedure, and then produce the sample at your leisure.”

At my leisure?

“Okay.  I don’t know that I’ll do it at my leisure.  I’ll still get right onto it.”

“Whatever works for you.”

At my leisure.

Whatever works for me.

This is so much better than last time.

* * * * *

To be continued…