Reflections

I still think about this particular couple I encountered in my reproductive endocrinologist's waiting room over two years ago. We didn't officially meet, of course. I don't even know their names. A doctor's waiting room before seven a.m. on a Friday morning is not the ideal setting to make small talk. 

I don't even remember what number IUI attempt we were there for. Third? Fourth? While I can't place the exact date, I do remember that I'd lost some hope, but not all. I had a tenuous grip hoping "minor medical intervention" to conceive would actually work for us. 

Looking at her across the room curled low in her chair, clutching blue rosary beads in her hands I thought, please let them get pregnant. Please let this procedure work for them. I was committed to this stranger's success – absorbed in a future she so clearly deserved. 

She whispered soft prayers in a language that I couldn't decipher due to her hushed tones. Her partner looked tired. That special kind of exhaustion that comes when you've resigned yourself to the idea that no matter how hard you try in life, shit typically doesn't work in your favor. He wasn't praying. But he cocked his head slightly to the left and leaned into her. 

I remember thinking, I hope their child gets her hair. Bursting brown curls framed her face and made her appear younger than the lines of worry on her face portrayed. She wasn't totally present. Her eyes were open, but they didn't take in the dull waiting room furniture in muted tones of beige, brown, and cream. Instead, she was fixated on a vision in another dimension. A future she yearned for with abandon. I couldn't take my eyes off her. 

In a waiting room with people desperately trying to conceive, likely with a few failures in the rearview mirror, it's a faux pas to simply make eye contact. Ironic really, because we're finally surrounded by like-minded people who truly get it. This awkward and fleeting time spent in cramped, ugly rooms should actually be sweet relief from the trite pretension of daily life where we constantly promise others and ourselves that everything will be okay. 

We fear that if we look too closely, we may just shatter into a million tiny irreparable pieces. We're barely keeping it together as is. Confused by an odd mixture of a heavy heart, tired body, and a hopeful mind we're constantly attempting to balance and reconcile every minute of every day. 

If we look too closely, we'll find our own vulnerabilities made plain on a stranger's face. We'll see our own pain and suffering too starkly and we simply won't be able to continue the charade of hope and optimism. Before getting shuttled into the small exam room crammed with well-meaning medical professionals to put our feet in stirrups and watch millions of microscopic white sperm get released into a hormone pumped uterus; we look up, we look down, we look all around, but we certainly don't look at each other. 

But not me. Not that day. I couldn't take my eyes off of her. When the nurse quietly called them back, I held my breath as they disappeared behind the door. Was the searing pain in my gut and heart for those two strangers? Or was it for Scott and I? And who's to say that pain isn't the same?