Prologue
Audrey
Ten Years Ago
The doctor was still talking. I knew she was, because her lips kept moving and words kept leaving her mouth, but all I could really process was a loud ringing in my ears, drowning out everything except the few pieces that managed to cut through.
Charts were spread across her desk, and behind her, a diagram of a uterus hung pinned to the wall like it was mocking me.
“There has been significant scarring...”
“It’s unlikely that you will ever be able to fall pregnant.... natural conception would be extremely difficult...”
“There are alternative options...”
I could barely process any of these words; it didn’t feel like it was happening to me.
She kept pointing to the scans, explaining how the scarring had built up over the years, how it had likely started long before I’d ever thought to question it. I had endometriosis.
Maybe that was what hurt the most.
I’d been living with the pain for years.
The kind that left me curled up in bed with a heating pad. The kind that had me calling in sick more often than I cared to admit. The kind I always brushed off as ‘just a bad period’. My mother had period pain. My sister had period pain. So I assumed mine was simply the same thing, only worse, and worse wasn’t didn’t always mean that something was wrong. I just thought I couldn’t handle the pain, but I should have dealt with it back then.
This was the third time I’d sat in a chair just like this one, in front of a doctor just like this one, hearing some version of the same sentence dressed up in slightly different words. The first doctor had been gentle about it. The second had been clinical, almost like it was part of his daily routine. This one at least had the decency to look like she meant her apology, even as she confirmed everything the other two had already told me.
Jake sat beside me, his hand resting over mine on the armrest, his thumb moving in slow, steady circles against my skin, the way it always did when he could tell I was falling apart. He hadn’t said much during the appointment itself, just listened, nodded, asked the occasional question I didn’t have the strength to ask myself.
We had been married for six months. Most newlyweds spent their first year arguing about furniture or planning vacations.
We were spending ours in fertility clinics.
I nervously fumbled with the diamond on my finger. This was our promise to forever and the life we were going to build, but right now it was all falling apart.
“Mr and Mrs Hammer?” the doctor said gently, pulling me back. “I know this isn’t the news you were hoping for. But there are still options. IVF, donor possibilities, surrogacy. This isn’t necessarily the end of the road.” She continued.
I nodded because I didn’t trust my voice not to crack.
Beside me, Jake turned and laced his fingers through mine, ignoring the doctor for a moment like she wasn’t even still sitting there.
“Hey,” he said softly. “Look at me.”
I did, even though it cost me something to do it. The same eyes I’d fallen in love with years ago.
“We’ll figure this out,” he said. “Whatever happens, we’ll figure it out together.”
The knot in my throat tightened.
“I’m not going anywhere, Audrey.” He added.
The doctor watched us both in silence, her expression softening into something sympathetic, the kind of look she’d probably given dozens of couples sitting in that exact spot before us.
For the first time since the appointment began, I felt myself breathe.
I wanted so badly to believe him. I let myself believe him, because the alternative, sitting in that office accepting that everything we’d built our marriage around might never happen, was more than I could hold at once.
But in the end, he left, and I was all alone.
