After

After Part Three

Gil walked into room and flipped on the light. Sara closed her eyes until her face was a mass of angry slashes and slants. “Go away.”

“You have to eat.”

“I am not hungry.”

She rolled over and faced the wall.

The doctor’s visit had sent her to their darkened bedroom. Gil had let her wallow there for forty eight hours, kissing her hair, rubbing her back and telling her that everything was going to be alright. He was through indulging her. That’s not what would turn his wife around. Sara Sidle Grissom was a woman of action and momentum. When she stopped moving she might as well have stopped living.

Mrs. Grissom I am sorry there is virtually no chance that you will be able to conceive and have children naturally.

He had said “virtually no chance”, to a scientist that meant there was none. It wasn’t going to happen for Sara. It wasn’t in the cards. She would never give birth to Gil’s child. She felt parched and dry. What kind of woman couldn’t even conceive children, anyone could do that. She saw women everyday that had no business birthing or caring for children but here she was with a good job, a hardworking caring husband and a solid base of family and friends and she would never give birth.

Gil moved around the bed to sit on the edge were Sara was faced. “Sara honey we have to move forward.”

“There’s nothing to move forward too Gil. You married a woman who cannot give you children. What kind of wife can’t give you babies?”

Gil did not like where this conversation was going. Since they had gotten the test results she had become increasingly foreboding.

A man needs a wife that can have children.

You say that is okay now but in time your feelings will change.

“Sara if I woke up tomorrow and I could not hear one sound ever again would you leave me?”

She closed her eyes tighter. “It’s not the same thing. So don’t say that it is.”

“Honey I cannot pretend to know what you are feeling.” He thought of his own visit to the fertility clinic.

Mr. Grissom your sperm count isn’t just adequate it extremely high for any man but for man your age….

Gil had not wanted to come home and tell Sara about the sperm count. He had fervently hoped that he was the reason they couldn’t conceive. They had started with fertility tests because it was easier and because he was older. When he told her that the doctor said that his sperm count was fine he had avoided eye contact. Sara had seen the shift in his eyes and pressed him for the details. The doctor’s exact words had drained color from her already pale face. If Gil had an unusually high sperm count, then the problem lie within her.

Now she sat her eyelids pressed together willing him to go away so that she could be miserable in peace.

“Answer me. If I woke up in the morning and I couldn’t hear would you leave me?”

Reluctantly she spoke. “No”

He laughed softly. “Whew you had me worried.”

She laughed despite herself. “Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Make me laugh. This is serious.”

“Who said I was taking it lightly? Honey I know that giving birth was important to you. Hearing for the rest of my life is important to me. We married each other, through the good times and bad the times. You don’t get to take me back just cause I got a bad genetic crap shoot and I don’t get to trade you in for another model that has working reproductive parts.

Something in his voice made Sara turn towards him. She was surprised to see fear etched on his face. As quickly as it had come it faded away just as quickly as he looked down at his wife.


“You aren’t the only one that has fears Sara.”

Sara blinked.

“When we are out together at the grocery store or a restaurant sometimes I catch a reflection of us in a mirror and I think what is she doing with this old man? Look at her. She is going to get a glimpse of us right now at this very moment and she’s going to walk out the door and never come back.”

Sara touched his hand lightly

“It’s not just me who sees it Sara. I see men, young men who realize that you aren’t a relative when you hold my hand or kiss me and they think it too. They wonder, why is that beautiful woman with middle aged, gray haired guy who could stand to loose a few pounds. Then they hear your voice or you laugh at something I said and the resentment deepens. She wants to be with him. She actually loves him.”

Sara sat up. She had never known Gil felt this way.

“You know what people think Sara.”

She nodded. Some people thought she was with Gil to further her career, to make a name for herself in the forensics community but mostly they thought she was with him for the money. Gil wasn’t rich but he was close, very close.

The house, the large flawless stones in her wedding set and Sara’s new car all conspired to feed the rumor mill. She had never considered that it bothered Gil. He seemed to take it all in stride laughing at the open mouthed expressions of old friends and acquaintances when he introduced Sara as his wife. She suddenly felt very small and selfish.

“What I’m saying Sara is that I get scared too but I am able to move beyond it not because I have so much faith in myself but because I have faith in you. You said you wanted me. You said you loved me and would never leave me. You have never broken a promise to me, not one and I don’t intend on breaking any promises to you, so can we just please figure out another way to start our family?”

Sara smiled at him. How could she love anyone else?

“You can’t give birth but you can still be a mother. We can still have a family. Hell we already have family, if you tell any one of them that I said that I will disavow all knowledge Sara Sidle Grissom.”

She laughed a deep giggle that was contagious.

“I mean it. I will. I have a reputation to maintain. We have a delicate balance in the group and I am the stern father figure.”

Sara looked sat up. She looked at his hands. “What’s that?”

Gil waggled his eyebrows Marx brothers style. “Well Mrs. Sidle. I hold in my hand the beginnings of our family.”

Sara leaned back on the oak headboard. Gil frowned she was pale and now her skin was nearly transparent. He touched her cheek.

“I don’t know if I can do those fertility treatments. They sound so brutal and the cost. I don’t know Gris and the thought of implanting your sperm in some other woman weirds me out.”

Gil laughed again. They were going to get through this.

“Sweetie if you want to do the treatments we can do those treatments. I don’t want you to worry about money. That, however, is not what I am talking about. I hold in my hand the Catholic Services adoption screening application.”

Sara eyed the glossy brochure and white pages that Gil proffered. She pulled them from his hand. “Adoption…”

At least she’s taking the papers.

“Doesn’t that take a long time?”

“Only if we want a baby who has two White parents.”

Sara turned the pages of the brochure. It was full of children and babies of all shapes sizes and colors. Sara felt he heart tug.

“Sot this is okay for you?” she asked.

“It’s more than okay with me”

He handed her a pen. “Time to fill in the blanks Mrs. Grissom.”

She snagged the pen from her smiling husband.