My Last Love Story (12 page)

Nirvaan claimed he was tuckered out and wanted a nap. “Was a long weekend, baby. And my head’s starting to hurt.”

He was lying about the headache. By now, I could tell with some certainty when my husband was tired or felt under the weather and how severe or mild those ailments were. I’d seen him in various stages of sickness for five years—more, if you counted the periodic coughs and colds and fevers we’d nursed each other through since our engagement.

“If you’re not well, Zayaan should stay home with you.” I touched his cheek. Nothing. It didn’t feel hot or cold or clammy. I was right. I could’ve called him out on it but didn’t think it was worth the aggravation.

I wondered what Nirvaan was up to. I didn’t think I could bear any more surprises that he seemed to enjoy springing on me these days.

He kissed my forehead, my nose, and gave me a brief peck on my lips. “No way. Blood and doctors freak you out. Someone needs to hold your hand for the tests and drive you back and forth. And I’ll be fine…once I sleep. I’m going to knock myself out with some NyQuil.”

I didn’t tell him it was
his
blood,
his
pain and suffering, that freaked me out and not my own. Nor did I point out that no one but a husband should hold his wife’s hand when her uterus was being examined—especially when the checkup was solely due to
his
whims and wishes.

Zayaan seemed to have developed a fascination with the car’s key fob, refusing to look at either one of us during this dialogue. His ears had turned red though. I knew if I touched his lobes, they’d be hot. They always grew hot and red when he was angry or embarrassed.

Without further ado, Zayaan and I got going, leaving Nirvaan to his NyQuil daze. I pulled up the clinic’s address on the GPS and turned the satellite radio to a top-hits station, raising the volume high to deter conversation. I didn’t want to talk about this. I was too busy fostering my anger and martyrdom into Hurricane Level 5.

Zayaan gave me a good ten minutes to cool off before he turned the volume down. “If you’re this against having a child, why don’t you tell him to piss off?” He sounded well and truly aggravated.

Not a pleasant sensation, was it, to have your arm twisted behind your back?

“Why haven’t you?” I asked calmly, staring out the window.

It was a lovely sunny day, crisp with light and a mild breeze and a potential for joie de vivre.

“Nirvaan didn’t want you to drive back alone. You’ll be light-headed…maybe have cramps?” Now, he sounded doubtful.

The question also confirmed that Nirvaan had discussed some things with him…private things. And I did not like it.

I hoped my expression was as serious as a heart attack when I looked at Zayaan. “I meant, why didn’t you say no when he asked you to drop everything and come live with us? Why didn’t you refuse to raise his child for him? How do you propose to do that? You live in London. And what makes you think I’ll allow it or even want it? We have nothing in common. Not anymore. Why make this more difficult than it already is?”
Why don’t you just say no, so I don’t have to?

Throughout my little speech, Zayaan kept shooting me brief glances, as he couldn’t fully look at me while driving. He didn’t say a word though. Not during, not after.

Too soon, the GPS announced we’d arrived at our destination.

“Please drop me at the front,” I instructed when he would’ve turned into the parking lot. “
Merci beaucoup
.” I tried to soften my words with horrible-sounding French. I’d been reading a lot of books on Napoleon and had now progressed—in my reading but regressed in time—to the reign of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, the Dauphine and Dauphin of France. Today, my head, aside from all the other rubbish, was swimming in an eighteenth-century French court.

I couldn’t help but compare Nirvaan to Napoleon, both tenacious little plotters.

Zayaan pulled the Jeep near a set of wide automatic doors. Of course, he replied in blemish-free French, “
Pas de problème
. I’ll park and come find you.”

I shook my head. “Nirvaan isn’t here. We don’t need to pretend, Zai. You and I both know that neither one of us wants to be here.” I got out of the car and held the door open. “I’ll be a couple of hours at least. Go away. Do something…somewhere else. I’ll call you once I’m done.”

“Simi.” He looked confused and frustrated, en garde to argue.

“Zai, please. I’m embarrassed enough for both of us. And I have to do this alone.” Without waiting for a reply, I shut the door and turned on my heel, walking through the automatic doors and into a waiting elevator.

Sooner or later, I would be alone, so why not start acclimating now?

After jumping through the familiar hoops of medical formalities at the front desk of Monterey Bay Fertility Clinic, Martha, a pudgy nurse in blue hospital dregs, guided me into an examination room with a pit stop to the restroom where I peed in a cup.

She weighed me, took my blood pressure, and asked if there’d been any changes in my health or medications since the last time she’d seen me three days ago. “Have to ask, honey. That’s just the way it is,” said Martha with a naughty eye twinkle. She handed me a green paper gown and requested I change into it. “Take off everything.”

“That’s Just the Way It Is”
was the title of a ’90s song by Phil Collins. I had a sudden vision of my mother singing it—or rather, humming it. I couldn’t have been more than six or seven, but I remembered her singing so clearly with her soft, wavy hair, her pretty smile, and peaches-and-cream skin that smelled like rose water. If genetics was to be believed, I had the DNA to be a good mother even if I didn’t have much luck with life.

When Dr. Archer came in—a smile teasing his countenance, as usual—and asked how I was doing and if I was ready to roll, I asked him if he knew the song. He did, fondly. After those pleasantries, he told me what was on the menu today. He really said
menu
, as if we were ordering a box of à la carte goodies from Godiva instead of a bunch of tests to determine the best way to get me pregnant.

We started with the ultrasound. I had the image of my mother in my head as I lay down, but it vanished when chilled gel was squeezed across my stomach to the pelvic bone. I sucked in a breath. My abdomen quivered, and so did the glob of jelly on top of it.

“Sorry,” Dr. Archer mumbled automatically. “Try to relax.”

Why was he sorry when he’d do it over and over until he got the right images? And why should he be sorry for doing his job? If anyone should apologize to me, it was Nirvaan. Had he really expected Zayaan to hold my hand in here? God, how embarrassing.

I winced as the probe pressed against my empty bladder.

“Does this hurt?”

I sucked in a breath. “No. Just some pressure.”

“Mmhmm,” the doctor hummed and continued with the probe.

I craned my neck toward the monitor. My insides looked like a nebula of exploding stars in black and white and sounded like it, too, with the accompanying erratic beeps.

“You said your cycle is irregular?”

“That’s right.” I tensed up but more from what had flashed through my mind than the probe pushing at my ovaries.

I hadn’t always been irregular. For the first two years after my menarche, I’d bled every month like clockwork. Then, after the night of my eighteenth birthday, I’d had to go on the pill. I’d begun to lose weight I couldn’t afford to lose. I’d become emaciated and depressed. The birth control pills had exacerbated my hormonal imbalance and mental state, messing up my system for good.

I gave Dr. Archer the gist of my medical history.

He gave me a breather after the ultrasound and left the room with a brief commiserating squeeze of my arm.

Dr. Archer was a good, gracious man.

A nurse came in with a toolbox dotted with blood-drawing paraphernalia. She stabbed me twice—without compassion—before hitting the right nerve and drew several tubes of blood samples from my arm to check hormone levels, thyroid and pituitary gland functions, and infections. They needed to make sure I was in peak medical health and that nothing would hamper the fecundity of my reproductive organs.

Martha came in and plied me with water, some ibuprofen, and a fresh paper gown.

Then, the nurses left me alone for so long that, at one point, I cracked the door open to check if they’d forgotten I was in there. They hadn’t. They were waiting for the painkiller to take proper effect. I’d thought they’d given it to me to relax my muscles after the ultrasound, but Martha explained, it was to prepare me for the HSG, the hysterosalpingogram.

I closed the door, took a deep breath, and blew it out in ten counts. To deny I was anxious would be fruitless. I hated medical processes. I especially hated procedures that couldn’t be done without me lying on my back with my legs spread wide and exposed. It wasn’t the pain I minded. In fact, I welcomed the pain. It kept me grounded in the here and now and not on past traumas.

My shrink had shown me how to take control of my mind when all it wanted to do was flash to the past and panic. It didn’t always work.

“You’re never going to forget what happened, Simeen. Just about anything will trigger a déjà vu or a panic attack. The way you take control is to remember it here—in this room, with me. Break it down, piece by piece. Then, rebuild the memory, and face it square. Control it. Understand that it was not your fault.”

I hadn’t consciously brought up that night in a long time. I hadn’t needed to. I’d removed myself from all the things that reminded me of the rape—accidentally or on purpose. I didn’t live in Surat anymore. I didn’t draw attention to myself in public, not by dress or words or actions. I’d distanced myself from Zayaan and his family. I’d married Nirvaan, so all those things would be possible. I’d married Nirvaan, so I could safely bask in his glory, and no one would notice I lived in the shadows. No one would realize I’d stopped being brave.

With care and precision, I’d placed those dominoes around me.

But, now, they were falling.

What we did for love.

Wasn’t that a song, too?

Dr. Archer began the hysteroscopy. To say it was painful was an understatement, even with the painkiller swimming in my bloodstream. I was used to the speculum, but then he injected a fluid inside me, a saline solution, and heaven help me, I began to cramp within moments. The slow stabs of pain were worse than the worst menstrual cramps I’d ever experienced, maybe even worse than labor pain. I wanted to curl up in a fetal position and cry like a baby.

I closed my eyes tight, my thighs trembling, and concentrated on puffing out breaths.

Dr. Archer was a constant stream of information, but I tuned him out. I didn’t care what, where, why, or how the procedure was going. I just wanted it to be over.

After what felt like a horrendously long eternity, Dr. Archer patted my leg and stood up. Martha—I didn’t realize she’d come into the room—gently arranged the gown about me, helped me roll on my side, and started rubbing my lower back in soothing circles.

Dr. Archer repeated some of the instructions and told me what to expect and what to look out for. I’d bleed, but if the bleeding were like a period, I should call him immediately. He didn’t foresee any changes or see any problems in my latest blood tests or any other tests, but they’d wait for the results. Once I was cleared, we’d dive into the IVF process.

I was awarded with a personalized cocktail of fertility drugs, which I’d begin administering on the third day of my coming period at the end of the month. My egg retrieval would be about ten days after.

The cramps were fading but not Dr. Archer, who prattled on about stimulating my ovaries and fallopian tubes and how we’d maximize the ovulation cycle.

“Lastly…”

Thank Khodai.
He was almost done.

I blinked and tried to focus on his face. He smiled at me like a benevolent Santa Claus but without a white beard and potbelly. Dr. Archer was a very handsome man, sexy even, with beautiful eyes, grayer today than the usual light blue. And so sweetly compassionate. Dr. Archer was a prime package, wasn’t he?

Lucky Mrs. Archer
, I thought inanely.