Heartbeat Day
The women were all dressed for the workday to follow: sassy shoes, ironed blouses, shirts with collars, skirts, and pleat-front trousers. The majority seemed to have jumped out of a lifestyle magazine presenting what’s in for autumn as if they wanted to shout: “Look, I’m worth so much more than my eggs.” All smartened up and desperate to be the most successful picture of submission.
The waiting room is based on the third floor of a blank brick office building, looking more like a conference center for wealthy businesspeople than a clinic. It is a bright room that shines even on dark and rainy autumn days. The glossy white leather chairs are arranged in a circle with a glass table placed in the middle. The essence of hope and Channel no. 5 floats through the air while women are staring down on phones and magazines. Baby pictures are pinned to cream-white walls, a sideboard with fancy refreshments stands close to the door, and pamphlets filled with expensive treatment suggestions are piled up on windowsills. Connection does not seem convenient here, the patients rarely talk to each other, no sounds of whispering. It reminded me a bit of silent meditation with very little chance to reach your Zen.
Caitlyn and I sat next to each other and wrote text messages, ranking women's outfits while guessing their professional and social status.
yellow skirt and black patent leather
shoes def. wife of real estate shark.
white ribbon plays Bree in desperate
housewives!
A woman wearing a yellow skirt and black patent leather shoes had raised her head from a magazine that was resting on her lap for the last fifteen minutes and smiled into our direction.
spooooooky. yellow skirt
can read minds!!!
PS: too many exclamation marks!
I overdid it.
yellow skirt is gay as hell!!! u open
the closet? And YES white ribbon
IS Bree. wanna ask her out? (lol)
Caitlyn and Sarah, a monotonous voice echoes from the speakers into the waiting room. That’s us, me and my wife Caitlyn. We left our last names behind and had jumped into a pool of first names to support the clinic’s wish to respect the sensitive nature of the treatment. We listened to a whole bunch of names during that time waiting for treatment, and I think it is safe to say that the 80s and 90s haven’t been that bad. You know it after having nothing left to read than “Baby names: Unique and Trending” in a room filled to the brim with desperate patients. To give you a glimpse: Cletus, Danger, Stylez. I’m sure you agree, that the human race does face its final days. And what’s even more dire, on the last four pages, the author describes how and why social security depends on name choice. Most teachers subconsciously believe that Emma is smarter than Susy. I’ve learned so much.
The morning monitoring runs from six to eight am; it is all about the early bird. The lucky ones are encouraged to arrange childcare in advance — too devastating for the barren soil. And there have been incidences, women have snapped after receiving negative test results because of defective embryos, or chromosomal issues, or bad egg qualities. Some could not handle it, not anymore. To these women, a playing child in the corner of the waiting room, all flesh and tiny and alive, had the same effect as laser lights on mice, triggering their brain region that controls hunting and killing. A woman desperately wanting to be a mother once kidnapped a child from the waiting room after the doctors had told her to give up fertility treatment for good. On days with fewer patients, the nurses joined us to tell the same story over and over again. The woman had been found in a toy store hours later, hidden in a tepee trying to nurse the kidnapped three-year-old by holding a knife in her left hand while forcing the child to access her breasts. “Some get too attached. Up to the point where it does not seem to be healthy anymore.” Caitlyn listened multiple times and cried twice. She has always been very sensitive to the tragedy of others. I wouldn’t say I’m dull, but as a therapist, I’m just more used to it.
***
“Did you not know?” friends kept asking.
“No, I did not,” I kept answering.
“But there must have been signs!” they kept insisting.
“Not that I knew of,” I kept answering while smiling, high from all the endorphins besieging my body.
“Did you wake up one morning thinking Well, maybe I should question my sexuality?” they kept probing.
“How does that even make sense?” I kept answering.
“Just a phase,” others kept guessing.
“I don’t think so,” I started defending.
“I JUST MET SOMEONE for god’s sake, it’s as simple as that,” my precariously balanced self started shouting to those not willing to listen.
I also tried: Imagine you should describe being in love or believing in God to a person that had never experienced that feeling. I think it does not matter how detailed you describe it, you cannot transfer a feeling that had not lived in a body for at least a second. The person can guess, imagine, empathize, but will never truly know what you are talking about.
We fell in love on a beach in Thong Nai Pang Noi, where I’d vacationed, and Caitlyn taught loners how to surf. After Caitlyn and I dated for a couple of months, I decided to tell my family and friends. I explained to them that I wouldn’t be interested in labeling myself but that I’m deeply in love with Caitlyn Summerset and that she might be my person. And yes, I’d realized that she is no boy, and yes again, she has blond hair instead of my usual brown fetish. Not ash-blond but that golden, natural blond I’ve been dying for ever since. And to me, that was all that mattered.
***
Precariously balanced, my childhood friends would say, but not that day. That day I was nervous. Nervous like dogs during thunder nights or girls just seconds before receiving their first, long-awaited kiss. I woke up early (common), took a quick shower (unusual), squeezed out the toothpaste tube way too harsh (morning rush routine), freed my hair from the blow dryer (on brand), cleaned the kitchen and bathroom spotless (alarming), ran the house up and down by taking two steps instead of one (caused an accident, twice), lost balance, fell, and sat down wet-sweated to regain breath and cool my ankle with an ice pack while waiting.
Caitlyn rang me five minutes before turning into Melody Drive where we had bought a medium-sized ranch just a couple of years ago. It’s funny how things turn out — I’d never seen myself in a small town, spending weekends surrounded by neighbors, talking local sports teams, smokers, and cake sizes for birthdays, or attending town meetings, God forbid! But I guess, without knowing, deep down I’d yearned for it. I was ready to give up big city life for less crowded places and carved pumpkins, decorating the town’s Christmas tree and sitting on our front porch reconnecting to the smile-and-wave old-fashioned way. I was all in for happily ever after.
It poured cats and dogs when Caitlyn stopped in front of our house to pick me up. I jumped into the car while the engine was still running. It was a special day for us, Heartbeat Day, as Caitlyn had written in our kitchen calendar with a heart next to it.
“We will be okay,” I said, kissing my right palm before touching her cheek to then fasten the seat belts.
“I know,” she said, looking at me smiling with her big mouth all over her face tightening the corner's nuances too wide to make sure that I know that she is not okay and her smile a well-shaped fake.
***
Caitlyn came out to herself when she was barely eight, and it took her another seven years to tell her parents and even longer to be proud enough to live visibly. She opened that door for me a few weeks after we had met. According to Caitlyn, her parents seemed to gather all energy available to make her believe that the way she loves disqualifies her from having any right to getting married, and having children was not even worth mentioning. She said to me that she remembered it like it was yesterday. The three of them were sitting at a sumptuous Thanksgiving table prepared with plates, glasses, cutlery and serviettes, table cloths, and candle-holders, all arranged in perfect harmony. She had practiced in advance, puzzled her teenage quirks when it came to boys into a reasonable narrative about who she was. Caitlyn even asked her high school sweetheart at the time, to practice with her how to react to questions her parents could ask.
“But things always end up differently right?” she said, looking at me with a sad face while unfolding her past. Caitlyn had not expected wholehearted support from her father when she finally kicked those three words out of her mouth, but at least she thought she knew him well enough and was loved enough to not be disowned. Her mother, subordinated to her father and Jesus for as long as Caitlyn could remember, chained through the strife of her bondage tried to comfort her within her self-inflicted and limited power with sayings such as “God has great experience in the life change department Caitlyn, he’ll help you to find your way back.”
Her father ignored her presence until she headed to college, a day she imagined him celebrating and drinking ice-cooled cocktails on a Hawaiian beach. It took Caitlyn years to wipe off the skin of shame her parents had slipped over her, hushing her true self while being part of their household. She told me that she repeated those scenes over and over again. Even with me, it took her a while to feel comfortable enough putting her wish of becoming a mother, bearing a child, and building a family into words without her father’s voice drowning her hopes and dreams.”
***
So, here we are.
Heartbeat Day.
Two years, five months, and three days after we’d decided to get on that boat. A smiling nurse led us to one of the examination rooms. We sat on leather chairs and waited. Again. We knew how to do that, we had waited for quite a while. Caitlyn was staring at the walls while I was busy counting the tiles. It was quiet, we were not talking, just waiting.
[Silence]
“I hate my life.” Caitlyn threw into the quietness.
[Silence]
“What?” I asked, knowing that I would prefer not to hear it again. I’d heard it before. I know that tone, the intention of that sentence — she was scared.
[Silence]
I stood up and walked towards the floor-to-ceiling windows. It was still raining. The houses on the other side of the road looked charming, with candle lights, and moving people within cozy homes. My favorite time of the year. I stepped back from the window, crouched down, and hold her hands.
“Bae, believe me, everything will be okay, and I’m here. WE will be okay”
“But what if there is no heartbeat?” she said.
I tried to keep my inner composure, breathed in deeply, and replied in a tone sweet as honey: “There will be a heartbeat.” Knowing that I could not know it and that my words were dangerous.
The door opens, and the smiling nurse came back into the room. “Dr. Brianna needs another moment, but she will be right with you!” the nurse said and left as fast as she’d come in.
Sometimes time does not fly.
***
We had three weddings all to each other. An official one when gay marriage was legal, a private one after people in power had changed the law, and a third one just Caitlyn and me a year after the last election. Before we’d met having children was not something that felt essential to me to live a happy and fulfilled life. Quite the contrary, I was comfortable with being an aunt or a good friend, even while being in relationships with men. Caitlyn expressed her wish of getting pregnant and starting a family every now and then but it took us years until we started talking about it seriously and more extensively. Time passed and her wish turned into our desire and grew stronger every day.
We attended group meetings for lesbians planning to parent, ranked known donor profiles on cozy Sundays in bed, started to see a therapist to help us through the hardships we assumed were coming our way. And after two years of preparation and getting our bodies in shape, mine too, in case Caitlyn could not do it, we started the advised treatment program at a well-known fertility clinic.
We’ve come a long way.
***
A wide square with an old church was encircled by shops and offices. The place is crowded and busy on most days, filled with tourists, shopping addicts, and business people. My shirt was wet, and I’d lost a sneaker on my way. Running was never my discipline, not even as a child, although most children love to run. I was the one told to sit on a bench using a stopwatch while my classmates would rush from the schoolyard to a nearby shop and back letting them know who had been faster.
It was around four p.m. on a Wednesday, and people were gathering close to `Let’s play´. With new management came a rising sales volume up to ten percent and the local papers baptized it `a true toy gold mine´. During the festive season, visitors from all over the world squeezed their noses to Let’s play’s huge window panes to marvel at just the right mixture of traditional and modern Christmas spark.
An older woman with a yellow rain jacket was standing close to one of the police cars that had parked near the shop I was about to pass. “The city isn’t safe anymore,” she mumbled while grabbing my arm. I freed myself and headed directly towards `Let’s play´. Two security guards and a bunch of police officers blocked the main entrance.
“No passing.” One of the police officers shouted to the gawking crowd and me.
I pushed myself through the cluster of people and said: “They’d called me to get here at once.”
“Your name!” The officer said.
“Sarah Summerset. I’m the therapist.”
After using his police radio, he waved me through.
I’ve never been in a true toy goldmine all alone. I should have been in a rush, but I slowed down. I regained my breath from running and gave myself a second to enjoy the moment; showering in elves hanging from the ceiling tickling my nose with their long white feathers.
“Right over here!” A female police officer shouted and waved and I followed her hand signs.
“Cool as a cucumber, Huh?!” she said when I’d (finally) arrived and pointed to the cuddly toy section.
I walked straight to the teddy bears dressed up as Santa. I saw her sitting on a beanbag. She was wearing her bluish-green scarf that rests on Thursdays between four and five pm on my patient couch. I kneeled in front of her.
“She looks beautiful,” I said looking at her happy sad face.
“Doesn’t she?!” she said.
It is not easy to tell a baby’s sex but her Mommys Girljumper betrayed her.
“How old is she?” I asked.
“Pure and fresh,” she said, smiling at me as she always does.
She held the baby tight and stroked her head.
“But they wanna take her from me,” she started sobbing. “I’m not gonna let them.”
“She looks so beautiful and reminds me of my niece,” I continued talking.
“Has your niece brown hair as well?”
“She does. And some tiny curls are hiding behind her neck.”
“Like my baby,” she said. “I’m happy you came, I wanted to show her to you.”
“That is so nice of you,” I said and continued: “But work keeps me busy and I haven’t had the chance to see her very often recently — my niece.”
“That’s sad.” “Do you wanna hold Clara instead?” she asked offering me all that was left of her trust. She made sure the baby was warm and wrapped a small blanket around her feet. She smiled at me while putting the baby in my bent arms.
The minute I hold her the police jumped into the scene and seized my patient.
***
“How was the rest of your day?” Caitlyn asked, shortly after I’d entered the house.
“Emotional. Exhausting. Sometimes I do feel useless.”
“What happened?”
“One of my patients kidnapped a baby. The one who lost her child last year.”
“Oh, my God, that’s awful,” Caitlyn said while writing our next doctor’s appointment in the kitchen calendar.
November 1st, 4 months pregnant (with a heart next to it)
