“Sometimes, it takes a while,” I told Soraya one night.
“A year isn’t a while, Amir!” she said, in a terse voice so unlike her. “Something’s wrong, I know it.”
“Then let’s see a doctor.”
DR. ROSEN, a round-bellied man with a plump face and small, even teeth, spoke with a faint Eastern European accent, some thing remotely Slavic. He had a passion for trains--his office was littered with books about the history of railroads, model locomotives, paintings of trains trundling on tracks through green hills and over bridges. A sign above his desk read, LIFE IS A TRAIN. GET ON BOARD.
He laid out the plan for us. I’d get checked first. “Men are easy,” he said, fingers tapping on his mahogany desk. “A man’s plumbing is like his mind: simple, very few surprises. You ladies, on the other hand... well, God put a lot of thought into making you.” I wondered if he fed that bit about the plumbing to all of his couples.
“Lucky us,” Soraya said.
Dr. Rosen laughed. It fell a few notches short of genuine. He gave me a lab slip and a plastic jar, handed Soraya a request for some routine blood tests. We shook hands.
“Welcome aboard,” he said, as he showed us out.
I PASSED WITH FLYING COLORS.
The next few months were a blur of tests on Soraya: Basal body temperatures, blood tests for every conceivable hormone, urine tests, something called a “Cervical Mucus Test,” ultrasounds, more blood tests, and more urine tests. Soraya underwent a procedure called a hysteroscopy--Dr. Rosen inserted a telescope into Soraya’s uterus and took a look around. He found nothing. “The plumbing’s clear,” he announced, snapping off his latex gloves. I wished he’d stop calling it that--we weren’t bathrooms. When the tests were over, he explained that he couldn’t explain why we couldn’t have kids. And, apparently, that wasn’t so unusual. It was called “Unexplained Infertility.”
Then came the treatment phase. We tried a drug called Clomiphene, and hMG, a series of shots which Soraya gave to herself. When these failed, Dr. Rosen advised in vitro fertilization. We received a polite letter from our HMO, wishing us the best of luck, regretting they couldn’t cover the cost.