Moonlight Road (Virgin River #11)(55)

“What she’s feeling,” John said.

“She’s feeling like she wants a baby, right now, no matter how inconvenient it is—and she wants it to be ours.”

“She might be covering up a feeling of loss with plans to have a baby with a surrogate,” John suggested.

“That’s what I told Brie—that Mel seems to be determined to beat this thing, to be in control of having a baby, even if she can’t have it herself. Did you know that Mel and her late husband had a bunch of fertilized ova stored in some freezer in L.A.? They’d tried the whole in vitro thing, but in Mel’s uterus. I keep asking myself—is it just because for someone like Mel, this is business as usual? Or is she trying to get beyond the whole hysterectomy by proving it won’t stop her from having as many children as she wants? Like she’s in denial about some things.” He shook his head. “Not only haven’t I ever been up against anything like this before in my life, I have no idea how to deal with it.”

“You have to be honest with her, Jack. You have to tell her you don’t want to.”

Jack leaned back in his chair and stretched out one long leg till his booted foot hit the desk. “There’s the problem. I told her. Several times. She’s not listening to me at all. She pats my hand like a patient grandmother and tells me to keep an open mind and talk to John about it.”

“Well, there you go,” John said, standing up. “You talked to me.”

“Not with an open mind,” Jack said, also standing. “Now what?”

“Now you have to talk to your wife and tell her the truth—you’re not going to do it because you don’t think it needs to be done. Get the cards out on the table. All the facts—this wasn’t an issue until recently. Make sure it isn’t more about losing fertility, losing an organ, than about wanting more children. You have to tell her, Jack—you’re not a participant. Have a real honest talk. Maybe she is in denial. She might be running scared from the grief that’s pretty normal in women who go through hysterectomies right in the midst of their childbearing years.”

“Aw, Jesus,” Jack said. “I’ve been through some serious grief with Mel. Her dead husband, you know. I can’t say I look forward to something like that again. Maybe it would be easier to just visit the masturbatorium…”

“Some women,” John said, interrupting, “go through a serious adjustment when they face the end of their childbearing years. It isn’t just in the case of hysterectomies. Some women in menopause feel that with the absence of their periods. When they have to use lubricants, facing the end of all that womanly stuff of youth, they feel that they’re just not as much of a woman. They feel like failures, like life is passing them by. I suggested a good lubricant to one of my patients and she said her husband rejected the idea, that if it wasn’t natural he wasn’t interested—he felt she wasn’t in the mood if she didn’t lubricate like when they were twenty. I told her to send him in to talk to me—that it was normal for a fifty-eight-year-old woman to be drier than a twenty-eight-year-old woman. Sometimes they feel old age staring them in the face…. They feel like grandmothers when they’re way too young to feel that way. One woman cried in my office and said, “I’m way too young to be this old!” They worry that their femininity and youth are slipping away. It isn’t logical, but it’s real.” He shrugged. “Sometimes it’s just hormones and we have to make adjustments. Sometimes I prescribe antidepressants for a while.”

“I’m not doing my job if she feels that way….”

John just laughed. “You can’t control everything, Jack. Just take a media study—wrinkles and gray hair on men tend to make them look more worldly and powerful, but the world sees the same thing in women as the end. It’s not so, but it can be an emotional battle for some women.”

“That just doesn’t seem like Mel,” Jack said. “She’s so levelheaded….”

“If you’ve already told her you don’t like this idea and yet she’s made an appointment to have eggs harvested—is that levelheaded?”

“God,” Jack said, dropping his gaze to the floor.

“Sometimes counseling helps. Sometimes just a husband’s tender reinforcement that she’s the woman you want no matter how her body changes…Listen, let me know if you need help. But for Mel’s sake—face it down. Get to the bottom of this.”

Jack was silent for a long moment. He took a deep breath. He stuck out his hand to shake John’s and said, “Thanks. You were absolutely zero help.”

John laughed. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it easier.”

“Not as sorry as me.”

“Good luck. But really, if it doesn’t work out, call me. I’m willing to get in this with you two, but I’d like to be sure what we’re dealing with, for her sake. Mel is really important to me, too.”

“Now, that might help. I appreciate it.”

Aiden was still feeling a bit melancholy by the time he got back to Luke’s. He saw that Luke, Shelby and Art were sitting on the porch at the house, and Luke gave a wave. Aiden walked over. “How are you feeling?” he asked Shelby.

“Ready,” she said with a smile.

“And how are you feeling?” Aiden asked Luke.