Life Blood --III---Page 7

It took only a few minutes for Hannah Klein's assistant, Lori,
to run the pregnancy test that confirmed my suspicions and
settled my future. Steve's and my final attempt, another
intrauterine insemination (IUI, med-speak for an expensive
"turkey baster") with the last of his deposit, had failed. The end.
The bitter end.

"Morgan," Hannah declared, staring over her desk, her raspy New York voice boring through me like a drill, "given how this has all turned out, maybe you ought to just start considering adoption— if having a child still means that much to you."

Hannah Klein was pushing seventy, a chain smoker who

should have been dead a decade ago, and she unfailingly spoke
the truth. Her gaze carried only synthetic solace, but I was
probably her fifteenth patient of the day and maybe she was
running low on empathy. Oddly, though, sitting there in her office,
miserable, I felt strangely liberated. I adored the woman, a child of
the Holocaust, with layers of steel like a samurai sword, but I also
loved the thought of never again having to go through the
humiliation of cowering in her straight-backed office chair, like a
so-so student on probation waiting to receive my failing grade.
        It was now time to come to grips with what I'd known in my
heart for a long time. God had made me a theoretically functional
reproductive machine that just wouldn't kick over. Translation: no
cysts, fibroids, polyps, no ovulatory abnormalities. My uterus and
Fallopian tubes were just fine, Steve's sperm counts were okay,
but no baby was swimming into life inside me.

Sometimes, however, reality asks too much. It's not easy

getting your mind around the idea that some part of your life is

over, finally over. The baby part. To admit that it's time to move on
to Plan B, whatever that is. Such realizations can take a while,
especially if you've been living with high-level hope, no matter
how irrational.

"I frankly don't know what else we can do," she went on,

projecting through my abyss of gloom. She was shuffling papers
on her ash-strewn desk, white hair in a bun, fine-tuned grit in her
voice. Upper West Side, a fifty-year fixture. She never wore

perfume, but to me she always smelled faintly of roses mixed with smoke. Earthy. "Aside from trying in vitro."

We'd already discussed that, but it was definitely the bottom
level of Hell. Besides, I was running out of money, and spirit. And
now, with Steve gone, the whole idea seemed moot anyway.

"So," she concluded, "barring that, we've done everything

possible, run every test there is, both on you and on your . . ."

"Steve," I inserted into her pause. She seemed to deliberately
block his name at crucial moments. Maybe she thought I could
have done better. Maybe a nice solid dentist who owned a suit
instead of some freelance photo jock who showed up for his
sperm counts wearing khaki safari shirts. Well, let her deal with it.
        ". . . and I can't find anything. Sometimes, the body just won't
cooperate. We may never know why. You've got to face that. But
still, adoption is always an option."

Adoption. All along I'd told myself I didn't have the courage, or
the heart. Making movies is a full-time job, not leaving time to go
filling out forms and jumping through hoops for years and years.
And to cap it off, I was just two years short of the big four-oh and
financially struggling—hardly an adoption agency's profile of
"ideal."

But now, now I'd just discovered Carly Grove and the miracle
of Children of Light. So maybe there really could be a way to
adopt a beautiful child with no hassles. Maybe it would simplify
everything to the point I could actually pull it off. Could this be my
Plan B? Then what if Steve came back? Could we be a family
finally?

I wasn't used to being that lucky. And I still wanted Hannah
Klein's thoughts, a reality test, which was why I pressed her on
the point.

"Truthfully, do you think adopting is really a workable idea for somebody like me? Would I—?"

"Morgan, I know you're making a film about the realities of the
adoption process. We both realize it's not easy." She must have
seen something needful in my eyes, because she continued on,
adding detail, letting the well-known facts convey the bad news.
"As you're well aware, finding a young, healthy, American baby
nowadays is all but impossible. At the very least it can take

years." She was fiddling with some papers on her desk, avoiding
my eyes. Then she stubbed out her cigarette in a gesture that
seemed intended to gain time. "And even if you're willing to take a

baby that's foreign-born, there still can be plenty of heartbreak. That's just how it is."

"I'd always thought so too," I said. "It's actually the underlying
motif of my picture. But today I had an incredible experience. I
filmed an interview of a single woman, early forties, who just
adopted a baby boy. It took less than three months and he's blond
and blue-eyed and perfect. I saw him, I held him, and I can assure
you he's as American as peach cobbler. The way she tells it, the
whole adoption process was a snap. Zero hassles and red tape."
        "That's most exceptional." She peered at me dubiously.
"Actually more like impossible. Frankly, I don't believe it. This
child must have been kidnapped or something. How old, exactly,
was he when she got him?"

"I don't know. Just a few weeks, I think."

Her eyes bored in. "This woman, whoever she is, was very, very lucky. If what she says is true."

"The organization that got the baby for her is called Children
of Light," I went on. "That's all I know, really. I think it's up the
Hudson somewhere, past the Cloisters. Have you ever heard of
them?"

Dr. Hannah Klein, I knew, was pushing three score and ten,
had traveled the world, seen virtually everything worth seeing. In
younger years she was reputed to have had torrid liaisons with
every notable European writer on the West Side. Her list of
conquests read like an old New Yorker masthead. If only I looked
half that great at her age. But whatever else, she was
unflappable. Good news or bad, she took it and gave it with grace.
Until this moment. Her eyes registered undisguised dismay.
        "You can't mean it. Not that place. All that so-called New Age
. . . are you really sure you want to get involved in something like
that?"

I found myself deeply confused. Were we talking about the

same thing? Then I remembered Carly had said something about an infertility clinic.

"Frankly, nobody knows the first thing about that man,"

Hannah raged on. "All you get is hearsay. He's supposedly one of
those alternative-medicine types, and a few people claim he's had
some success, but it's all anecdotal. My own opinion is, it's what
real physicians call the 'placebo effect.' If a patient believes hard
enough something will happen, some of the time it actually might.
For God's sake, I'm not even sure he's board-certified. Do yourself
a favor and stay away. Oftentimes, people like that do more harm