Page 1 of Forever Christmas
Chapter 1: Corabelle
It seems like every day lately is the first day of the rest of my life.
College. Graduation. Grad school. My first teaching assistant position.
But this one is just as big.
A nurse leads Gavin down the hall to an exam room. I follow, a little slowly, looking at the giant quotes painted directly on the walls.
If opportunity doesn’t knock,build a door.
Instead of IMpossible, believe that I’M possible.
I hope it’s all true.
We enter a room. A frigid blast of air-conditioning makes me shiver.
“Why is it always so cold here?” I whisper to Gavin.
“Maybe they want our balls to shrivel before they get all up in them,” he says.
“Gavin!”
He laughs, and I’m glad he can be happy right now. I’m trying not to completely and utterlyfreak out.
All around us, wall-sized cork boards are lined edge to edge with photographs of babies. Some of them have just been born, a happy father in paper scrubs holding up the red-faced infant. Others simply show the babies, cherubic and precious on their fancy birth announcements. A few depict the whole family.
But mostly, the focus is on the fathers.
Fathers who had their fertility restoredafter reversing their vasectomies.
Fathers like Gavin.
Of course there are no pictures of the men who aren’t successful. The ones who won’t be holding a squalling baby. Who regret their choices. Whose marriages may be strained. Who may argue over adoption and donor sperm and the legalities of all the other options.
Or who choose to be childless.
That might be us.
Today we find out.
“We’resurrounded,” Gavin jokes as he hops up on the exam table. His voice isn’t quite as jovial now. I think he’s a little unnerved by the pictures too. The last room didn’t have them. I wonder if it’s a sign. They put you in the baby room if the reversal worked, a plain one if it didn’t.
“I’m just going to take your vitals,” the nurse says to Gavin, her voice curt and to the point. She has all thebedside manner of a billy goat.
I watch her strap a little device to Gavin’s wrist. She cocks her hip in the pale green scrubs like this is all too much trouble. She’s slight, small boned, pale skinned, fair haired. Her attitude makes up for her tiny size.
The little box beeps and she takes it off him.
“Am I dead?” Gavin asks.
She is not amused. “Vitals are fine,” she says as she turns away.“The doc will be here in a second.”
The door closes behind her.
“She can’t thaw out,” Gavin says. “It’s the refrigerated rooms.”
This makes me smile. “Maybe it’s to control the man meat.”
