I looked up at the ceiling and screamed, “Yes!”
I could hear Simon running from the kitchen.
He appeared in the doorway in a matter of seconds. “Bad yes or good yes?”
“Good yes. It’s negative!”
He lifted me up into the air and spun me around. “I’m so goddamn relieved.”
With my hand over my heart, I let out another breath. “Me, too.”
Simon kissed me hard then said, “If Brendan’s going to have a sibling someday, we’re gonna be the ones to give it to him.”
A week later, it must have been a full moon. Brendan had been in a horrible mood all day. It culminated in him swearing at Simon, who’d merely asked him to do a simple chore. It was unlike my son to be so flippant.
I was doing laundry down in the basement when I heard them talking above me.
Simon was yelling, “Excuse me. What did you say?”
“Nothing,” Brendan said.
“You don’t talk to me like that. Do you understand? You need to have respect for your mum and for me. Finish putting the bottles away and then I want you to go to your room until I tell you to come out.”
Brendan whined, “Simon…”
“Go!” Simon repeated. “I’ll call you when dinner’s ready.”
I rushed upstairs to find Simon leaning against the counter, looking upset.
“I heard everything. You did the right thing,” I assured him.
“If I had spoken to my dad like that, there would’ve been hell to pay.”
My dad. I wasn’t sure if he realized the way he’d said it implied that he considered himself Brendan’s dad.
I couldn’t help smiling at him.
Simon picked up on my expression. “What?”
“You’re cute when you’re mad.”
“Oh yeah? I’ll take it out on you later. How about that?”
“I’d like that. And I think you should move in permanently,” I said.
“Um…yeah…I’ve been living here for quite some time. I’d say it’s permanent.”
“I meant into my bedroom.”
He lifted his brow. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, alright, then. You’re not gonna hear complaints from me on that.”
And just like that, on a random night with a full moon, Simon officially became the man of the house.
They say when life throws you lemons, make lemonade. I wasn’t entirely sure how that applied to infertility, which often seemed like an empty, thankless, process in which there weren’t even any lemons to work with.
The ironic thing was that everything else in our life had been going perfectly the last few months. The hospital system finally came around, hiring me for a permanent internist position in their new walk-in clinic just outside of the city. The hours were consistent, 7AM to 5PM, allowing me more time to spend with Bridget and Brendan than ever before.
Even though Bridget and I had vowed not to let the baby thing stress us out, with each month that passed, it seemed to be something we wanted more and more. Bridget’s thirty-fifth birthday would be here before we knew it. And it became clear that leaving it up to “fate” wasn’t working. If we seriously wanted a baby, we were going to need help.
We opted to see a fertility doctor who checked my sperm count only to determine it was abnormally high. While this was good news in a sense, it only put more pressure on Bridget. And I hated that. We tried medications first, and that led to daily injections. I’m not going to lie—the shots were really tough to watch. But we knew it was likely the only way it was going to happen, and the doctor had said waiting too much longer would only further decrease our chances.
I’d wanted to propose to Bridget for some time, but all of our mental energy had been expended while trying to conceive. Planning for a grand proposal kept falling by the wayside. Even though we’d discussed the fact that neither one of us felt the piece of paper was necessary to define our commitment, it was still something I wanted.
Never had that rung more true than on a certain night when Bridget was standing across from me in the bathroom. She was administering a subcutaneous injection into her abdomen for what felt like the umpteenth time. It just hit me how much she was willing to go through for me. I couldn’t say that anyone had ever showed me so much love through actions in my entire life. Suddenly, I realized I couldn’t wait anymore. I wanted to marry her—yesterday. Sure, we didn’t need the piece of paper to define our relationship, but I wanted it.
She was disposing of the syringe in a glass jar when I came up behind her and planted a kiss on her neck.
“What’s that for?”