Another Man's Child. Tara Quinn Taylor
insemination he wouldn’t have to feel guilty anymore. He wouldn’t have to feel like I’ve been cheated.”
Beth spread her hands wide. “That’s what I’ve been telling you all along, Lis. I’ve thought artificial insemination was your answer from the first, but it’s not me you have to convince.”
Lisa sat back hard in her chair. “I know. So how do I convince my husband that it’s a good thing to impregnate myself with another man’s seed?”
“You’re a doctor, Lis. You know that part of it is little more than a medical procedure, like getting someone else’s blood. We have blood banks. We have sperm banks. Legally, and every other way that really counts, the baby would belong to Marcus.”
Lisa knew that. She crossed one leg over the other. “How is the donor selection actually made?”
Beth pulled what looked like a homemade catalog from a pile in front of her and tossed it to the outside edge of her desk, just within Lisa’s reach. “You look through there and you pick one.”
Lisa took the catalog, opening it slowly. She scanned the first couple of entries. “These listings are incredibly thorough,” she said, glancing up at Beth. She’d expected to see physical characteristics, medical history, maybe even an IQ, but the records also contained notations of schooling, of likes and dislikes, habits.
“But remember, they only represent the final product of one particular genetic toss-up, mixed with an unknown environmental upbringing. There are no guarantees.”
“No, of course not” Lisa continued reading. If only she could find one with eyes of Marcus’s particular shade of blue, with his rich brown hair and quick mind.
“The one on page forty-nine is probably what you’re looking for. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Marcus was the donor.”
Lisa shut the book. “I’m not really in the market.”
Beth rocked back in her chair. “Fine. But if you ever decide you are, page forty-nine’s there.”
Shaking her head, Lisa tried to make herself think clearly, to not let herself hope for—or want—something she couldn’t have. “Page forty-nine. It’s really that impersonal, is it?”
“Yep.”
“But what about the donors? Couldn’t one come back looking for his child?”
Beth shook her head. “Not here they can’t. In the first place, a donor must sign a waiver before the process is ever begun. And then, as soon as all medical tests are administered and the man is cleared for donation, all records are destroyed.”
“Destroyed? They aren’t locked in some cabinet somewhere or sent out into cyberspace?”
“We destroy them, as is the common practice at most fertility clinics.”
Lisa folded her hands, rubbing her thumbs together. Back and forth. Back and forth. “So what happens after a donor is chosen?” She was just curious. It was fascinating what medical science could do.
“The mother has a physical, blood tests for HIV, rubella and so on.”
“I just had my yearly last week, and I’ve been having that blood work done each year since Marcus and I first started trying to have a family,” Lisa said.
Not that it mattered. She couldn’t seriously consider any of this. Not without Marcus’s support. She folded her arms across her chest.
Beth smiled. “I thought you weren’t in the market.”
“I’m not.” She couldn’t be.
“Well, if you were, you’d need to get out your ovulation kit again, back to the old basil thermometer every day. And as soon as you begin ovulating, you have an ultrasound done and a blood test to show your hormone level. Then come to see me within the next twelve to thirty-six hours. But remember to give me at least an hour to thaw page forty-nine.” Beth grinned.
“That’s really all there is to it?”
“For you it is. The important forms have already been signed.”
“They can’t be.” She knew Marcus had to sign a waiver, allowing her to have the procedure done. Because, legally, married to her, the baby would be his responsibility, too.
Beth pulled a thick folder from a cabinet behind her. “Remember that first time you two came in here—professionally, that is?”
Lisa remembered back to the day she and Marcus had first come in for testing. They’d been so full of hope. Beth had asked them if they were willing to do whatever it took to have a baby. They’d both replied with an emphatic yes. And she’d given them each a stack of papers to take home, red tape that could slow down the process if they had to stop and sign for each procedure. They’d signed them all that night and Lisa had returned them the next day.
“There wasn’t anything about…”
“Yes, there was. I have his signed waiver right here.” Beth pulled a sheet of paper from the file.
Frowning, Lisa leaned forward. It was Marcus’s signature all right. “But he wouldn’t have…”
Lisa thought back to that night. Marcus had gone into the office the minute they’d arrived home. He’d come back out with the completed stack of papers in record time and tossed it on the hall table, as if it wasn’t the least bit important. He’d just wanted to be done with it, so sure that they weren’t going to need anything but the basic tests to set their minds at ease, certain they’d conceive as soon as they quit trying so hard. He hadn’t read the papers.
“It’s notarized,” was all she could think of to say, still staring at the form. The other information had been typed in. Marcus had simply scrawled his signature across the bottom.
Beth was nodding. “I had it done here, along with a stack of other things. At the time, I really didn’t think we were going to need it.”
Lisa remembered Beth saying much the same thing that first day. She’d thought that having the tests would simply help them relax and let nature take its course. It was probably the only thing Marcus had heard that whole afternoon. The only thing he’d wanted to hear. Which was another reason it had hit him so hard when they’d finally learned the truth. Until that point he hadn’t even allowed the possibility of sterility to enter his mind.
“He didn’t read what he was signing,” Lisa finally said.
“Were you with him?”
“No.” She’d been in the bathroom, drying tears she didn’t want him to see. Because she’d had a feeling, even if he hadn’t, that they had a problem. She was a doctor, and her instincts had been crying out for months. Oftentimes a couple couldn’t conceive while trying too hard because they made love strictly to have babies. She and Marcus had always made love because they couldn’t stop themselves.
“Then you don’t know that he didn’t read it, Lis. It’s possible that he read what he was signing and, dismissing it as an impossibility, signed it, anyway, just to avoid further discussion. Marcus has always thought he could control the world, or at least his part of it.”
Lisa smiled sadly. “He’s always been able to until now.”
Beth’s eyes softened. “So what’s it going to be, Lis? Are you going to pull out that ovulation kit?”
Lisa looked at the paper again. At Marcus’s scrawl across the bottom. Unable to speak through her tears, she shook her head.
OLIVER WEBSTER was worried. His thirty years as a professor of law at Yale had in no way prepared him to deal with the problems facing his daughter’s