Baby For The Bear

*****

The fertility center called it simply the Couples’ Room. It was a room where clients met to talk things over quietly before finally committing themselves to what the center would do for them. Most couples came out of this room firmly recommitted to going through with the procedure and embarking on the adventure of fertilization and pregnancy. Most of them.

The room was designed and furnished for maximum comfort in the midst of the possible discomfort of the things people talked about in the time they spent there. It was all polished wood and brass, and plush chairs and sofas, with soothing paintings and murals on the walls and potted plants here and there. It was comfortable. It was warm. It was quiet. This was a place to think and talk, sometimes to cry. Samantha and Ken entered, and shut the door behind them, and sat down, this time not on opposite sides of a table, but on a cozy sofa. And Samantha began.

“I knew all those things she was talking about, Ken,” she said. “I looked them up for myself. This kind of thing, you want to go in with eyes wide open, so I went and looked it all up, and I knew. But…”

“But what?” he asked.

“Sitting in that office, hearing it from her, it made it all…real, I guess is the word. It went from being an idea or a decision to being a thing. An actual thing.”

“I know,” said Ken. “I looked it up too. Or actually I had Pamela research it all for me. All the details, all the pros and cons. All the things she said. And you’re right, doctors have a way of taking something that starts out as an idea and making it a thing. It’s one thing to know it, and it’s one thing…”

“…to hear it,” Samantha finished for him.

“Are you afraid?” Ken asked.

“I know there’s nothing to be afraid of,” she replied. “It’s just…it’s just this whole process, with shots and waiting and harvesting and implanting. Ken, I went into this because it was something I needed. And it’s something I still need. I went into it because I was afraid. I didn’t want to face that whole other process of what you have to go through just to get a damn job. I thought this was a way to get out of that. I was scared of being unemployed, of being broke, of everything that means, which is just…frightening. I didn’t want to face that. I wanted choices and I didn’t want to be scared. But this is just this whole other thing, and…” She trailed off and looked away from him. Samantha had never felt as truly vulnerable in her life as she felt at this moment.

Ken took her by the hand, and the warmth of his hand was like a warmth opening up inside her. She looked back at him, at the sincerity on the handsomest face she’d ever seen. “Samantha, there really is nothing to be afraid of. Nothing at all,” he said. “If you hadn’t come to me, you would have found something else. With your background and skills and experience, something else would have come your way. And you know, it would have probably been better for you than working in the back office of a supermarket. You know what else? If you want another job, I can help you get one. Maybe even something at Brecker American. How ironic would that be—me getting you out of the mess that I put you in?” He smiled with the same warmth that he’d opened up in her. “There’s absolutely something out there for a woman like you.” He stopped short of saying a woman as beautiful as you, but that was what he meant. Could she tell that was what he meant?

“But what about the agreement?” she asked. “All the papers are signed, the contract is signed, everything is set up. What about all that? After all this trouble, would you just be willing to drop that now?”

“What trouble? Contracts can be torn up as easily as they’re signed. And you know I can find another surrogate. I can find someone else to carry my cub, and I can find another job for you. I can make all that happen.”

“And you’d really want to? For me?”

He held her hand a little more tightly, as if to press his sincerity that much more strongly. “Samantha, what you’ve been willing to do for me…it’s so special, it means so much. For being willing to do this, I’d never let anything happen to you. Ever. You can believe that.”

Samantha was so moved, she could not answer in words. She only shook her head at him, understanding his meaning and the real feelings behind it.

“I really was willing to do it,” she said.

“I know,” he replied.

He released her hand, much as they both wished he could go on holding it, perhaps forever. And together they sat in silence, until Ken found it in himself to say something else, something that he was almost surprised that he dared to say.

“Of course,” he said, “there’s still another alternative.”

“What?” she asked.

“If the whole IVF thing is what the problem is, and if you’re still willing to go through with carrying my cub…we can bypass this thing completely.”

Samantha leaned back at him and drew in a little gasp of air at his obvious meaning. “Ken…” she said, unable to speak anything but his name. “Are you… Do you… You don’t really…”

As delicately, as gently, as he knew how, Ken said, “I am. I do. And yes, really. And that idea doesn’t have to go any further either. You can forget I brought it up. You can walk out on me right now. But we both know that possibility is there.”

For a moment, she was speechless, and Ken watched her struggle with her reaction. Then, suddenly not wanting to look at him again, Samantha said, “But this was supposed to be… I mean, there was a way we were supposed to do…this. It wasn’t supposed to involve…anything like that.”