feel that I somehow failed you.”
“No, this is where we work together to beat this and have a baby, our baby. Please say you’ll do it for me, for us, Joe.”
As he searched her face, his eyes brightened and he smiled.
“All right, if it’s what you want, I’ll do it.”
Dr. Durbin had given them a list of clinics and they picked Golden Dawn Fertility Corp. After some initial telephone consultations and paperwork, they flew to Los Angeles to start the process.
Golden Dawn was a first-class operation located in a gleaming downtown L.A. office building where they treated Emma and Joe with the utmost care.
They first learned how the clinic screened donors.
All candidates were between the ages of twenty-one and forty and came from top universities or top professions. Their health had to be excellent. Their medical and genetic histories were scrutinized. Their blood and sperm samples were subjected to exhaustive testing to ensure they were free of disease, or of any risk due to lifestyle.
They were genetically profiled, their DNA collected. Doctors and psychologists interviewed them for personality traits and their family’s genetic history.
The clinic introduced them to the donor catalogue, which offered general information, such as race, eye and hair color, weight, height, blood type, education.
Joe and Emma were not allowed to see a photograph, or know the names of the donors. However, they provided pictures of Joe and worked with clinic staff to narrow their choices to a donor that not only met their spectrum of choices, but ultimately resembled Joe as much as possible.
“Judging from that catalogue, I think we’ll have a kid who’s going to be a heck of a lot smarter than me,” Joe joked with Emma as they walked on the beach to watch the sun set on the Pacific before heading home.
The whole process cost them about four thousand dollars.
The clinic worked with Dr. Durbin back in Wyoming to time the insemination procedure. When it was right, the vials from donor #181975 were shipped overnight from California to Durbin’s office, where the doctor inseminated Emma.
“Now, Emma, I want you to consider this medical suggestion,” Durbin said privately to her afterward. “You and Joe should make love tonight as many times as you can. Enjoy yourselves because you never know, this could be that one-in-ten time that Joe’s sperm has a successful mission. It just might increase your chances of pregnancy.”
“You read my mind, Doctor.” Emma laughed.
When she returned for her next scheduled appointment her heart swelled.
“Congratulations, you’re pregnant,” Durbin said.
That night, Joe took Emma out to dinner at the Diamond Restaurant. Nine months later Tyler was born and their world had changed.
When she held him, she wept.
When Joe held him, Emma filled with joy because Joe was enraptured.
“Hey, Dad,” she said. “He looks like you.”
“Maybe,” Joe beamed. “But he’s got his mama’s eyes.”
Emma never believed she could be so happy and so in love.
She was living her dream, right up until the instant Joe swerved to miss an oncoming car.
Why? Why did this happen?
Now, as she rocked, she hugged Tyler’s stuffed bear.
Someone had rescued Tyler from the fire. It happened. Didn’t it?
Or was she losing her mind?
The police insisted she was wrong, the insurance company with its check told her she was wrong. Now Dr. Durbin with his letter told her she was wrong to think her baby had survived.
Another nail of reality had pierced her heart.
Emma cried out and her aunt came to help her to her bed.
“It’s very late, sweetheart, you need to get some sleep.”
Emma cooperated as she ached for rest. She undressed and got into her bed, letting sleep take her because when she slept, she could dream.
And when she dreamed she was with Joe and Tyler again.
In her dreams they were driving together near the snow-tipped Rockies, heading for the picnic north of town. There was no crash. They made it safely to their destination alongside the Grizzly Tooth River, the water sparkling like a rush of diamonds.
Joe is crawling after Tyler who is toddling toward her, running into Mommy’s open arms in the beautiful sunlight and they are so happy, so happy the air rings…and rings…until the mountains vanish…then Joe vanishes…and Tyler disappears into the dark void of night that is ringing…like the telephone at Emma’s bedside.
“What…”
Emma sat up and answered the phone, her head spinning.
“Emma Lane?”
She didn’t recognize the female voice.
“Yes.”
“Emma Lane in Big Cloud, Wyoming?”
The voice was ragged, raw with an underlying current of stress.
“Yes, who is this?”
“Listen to me. Your baby is not dead.”
“What?