Brian
I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve had sex with a little plastic cup over the past year, but hopefully this time is the last. I wouldn’t dare complain to Michelle about it thought, because what she has to go through to get tested for fertility issues is so much worse, invasive and uncomfortable in every single way.

We did this at the start of the year and Doctor Ferguson and his whole team told us that they couldn’t find anything wrong with either of us, we just weren’t lucky, and they told us to keep trying. That’s exactly what we did, and when the tour started not long after that, Michelle and I did it every single time she came to visit me on the bus, we did the recommended positions, the lay upside down for three hours afterwards and then we would go off and do it again. It didn’t make much sense to me, if there was nothing wrong then why wasn’t it working? Why couldn’t I get my wife pregnant?

“Talk to me,” Michelle pleaded softly from my side, taking my hand in hers.

“Are you sure you’re alright about all of this?” I asked “I mean, everything we’ve been going through this year and even last year, nothing has happened, not even close to something, and we’ve done everything we’re supposed to do, but still… no baby,”

“I think…” She trailed off and looked down at my wedding ring and traced it with her thumb “It’s going to happen for us when it’s supposed to happen,” She looked up into my eyes and smiled that beautiful smile of hers “We’re good people, Bri.” She told me “And we’re going to be amazing parents, but we have to promise each other that we’ll do whatever it takes to get at least one baby of our own,”

“I promise,” I said sincerely “Whatever it takes, I’ll do it, for you, for us and for little Baby Haner,”

“Mr and Mrs Haner?” The receptionist called out, spotting us when we lifted our heads and I raised my hand a little “The doctor will see you now,”

We stood up together and walked into Doctor Ferguson’s office hand in hand. She gave my hand one tight squeeze before sitting down, but she kept her fingers locked with mine.

“Brian,” Doctor Ferguson greeted as he walked into the room “Michelle,” He gave us both a warm smile and sat down on the other side of the desk and sat our files down in front of him.

“So?” I asked “What’s the verdict?”

“First of all,” He sighed, pushing his glasses further up his nose “I don’t know how we didn’t find this before, but something showed up this time,”

“Is it me?” Michelle asked slowly, choking back her tears already “Brian? Both of us?”

“Well…” He looked at up both, sympathetically, and that’s when my stomach sank “Brian, you have a low sperm count, and Michelle… you have an inhospitable environment,”

There was almost a full minute of silence between the three of us. I could only stare at the doctor while Michelle looked at out intertwining hands.

“What does that mean?” She asked firmly, putting on her brave face, but I could see right through it.

“It means that Brian’s sperm don’t have the… motivation, if you like, to go anywhere once inside of you and the ones that make it anywhere near an egg are killed off by your uterus,”

“What can we do?” I asked.

“You can keep trying,” He said and we both scoffed in unison “But there’s a ninety-percent chance that you won’t be able to conceive naturally,”

“What are our other options?” Michelle asked.

“I would suggest IVF, but there’s a very high risk of miscarriage in your situation, so that just leaves surrogacy or adoption,”

“Surrogacy?” I asked.

“Like IVF, only we wouldn’t put the fertilized embryo back into Michelle, we would put it into another woman, of your choice, either through friends, family or a surrogacy agency,”
~~~~
Matt
Val had been over today, and luckily for me she didn’t leave our son with her folks, she brought him with her and let me spend the day with him. When she got a call saying she had to go in to work and would need to be there for the rest of the night, well, I didn’t need to do much convincing to get her to leave him with me. I was still living in our old place so his bedroom was still here with most of his other things.

A visit from Brian wasn’t what I had been expecting just after dinner.

Jack was asleep upstairs in his crib when Brian turned up at the door. I knew something was wrong right away when he didn’t just come inside like he usually does, like all of the guys do, he knocked. The look on his face when I opened the door broke my heart, and I knew that the doctor’s appointment he and Michelle had this morning hadn’t gone how we had all been hoping.

“So, what does that mean exactly?” I asked when he finished relaying the events of their day off to me.

He chuckled sarcastically and took another swig of his beer before speaking.

“My swimmers are too lazy to get off their asses and Michelle has a womb that’s prepared to kill the ones who do,”

“Man,” I sighed, running my hands through my long hair “I don’t know what to say,”

“You don’t have to say anything,” He shrugged “But if you’re going to, for the love of God, do not tell me you’re sorry,”

“I wasn’t going to apologize for it,” I told him immediately “But, what are your options now?”

“Keep trying and waste more time,” He started “Adopt, or use a surrogate,”

“What do you want to do?” I asked.

“Whatever Michelle wants to do,” He said “I promised her before we found out the results today that I would do whatever it took,”

“Well,” I sighed “I think you should go home to her tonight instead of crashing on my couch like I know you’re planning to, and talk this whole thing over, talk about your options and think about what you might want to do,”
~~~~
Hannah
I hadn’t heard a single thing from Brian or Michelle all day and I was starting to freak out. Either the results were really freaking good and they wanted to tell me to my face, or they were so horrible that they were hiding away from me, and probably everyone else too.

After I shut the store, I decided that I wasn’t going to go straight home; I was going to Brian and Michelle’s place first.

When I got there, only Michelle’s car was in the drive and there was only one light on in the house, and it was their bedroom. I parked behind Michelle’s car and climbed out and walked up to the front door. I didn’t bother to knock, I rarely did, but when I tried to just walk in I found that the door was locked, so I used the key that Brian had given me and let myself in.

“Michelle?” I called out as I kicked off my shoes and shrugged out of my leather jacket and hung it up on the rack. When I didn’t get an answer, my heart started to beat faster and my palms started to sweat.

I walked further into their large house until I was at the bottom of the stairs. I could faintly hear some music playing from the next floor up, but it wasn’t the music you normally hear when you walk into this house, it was slow and sad.

Something was seriously wrong.

Slowly, I walked up the stairs and along the top floor until I reached their bedroom door, it was closed over and it was definitely where the music was coming from. I slowly pushed the door open and poked my head into the room to see what was going on. Michelle was sitting in the middle of the double bed against the wall, surrounded in magazines, books and something else.

“’Chelle?” I asked as I walked into the room and closed the door behind me. She looked up at me, startled at first but she physically relaxed when she realised that it was just me “Michelle, what’s going on?” I asked, looking at the items on the bed.

She was surrounded in everything she and Brian had collected over the years. Pregnancy books and magazines, she was clutching a blanket between her hands and pressing it to her face, crying into it, and there was a small pile of baby clothes. But what was on the bed that was the most heart breaking out of all of that stuff, was the mass amount of pregnancy tests.

“Twenty-six,” She said quietly “There are twenty-six negative pregnancy tests,”

I didn’t say anything to her, I just sat on the bed beside her, wrapped my arms around her and pulled her against me. Her head rested on my chest while one of my hands rubbed her back soothingly and my other hand played with her hair and my head rested on top of hers.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” I told her “But when you do, I’m all ears,”

At least thirty minutes passed and all Michelle did was sob into my t-shirt. I was soaked through, but I didn’t mind. She was basically my sister and I loved her like one, she was the love of
Brian’s life and I promised them on their wedding day that I would always be here for them, and I was going to live up to that promise.

“I can’t get pregnant,” She finally said “I’m practically barren, and Brian has a low sperm count so Doctor Ferguson said we could keep trying but it’s a waste of time because there’s a ninety-percent chance of it not working, so-“ She choked out a sob “We’re left with adoption or surrogacy, and I don’t know what I want to do,”

“Well,” I smiled at her as I pulled her away from me so that I could look at her face “let’s talk about these options,”

She admitted that she would love to adopt a baby, someone who wouldn’t have been loved in the family that they were born into, or take a weight off of some young girls’ shoulders, but she was scared that she wouldn’t feel that bond with the baby that maternal mothers do. With surrogacy, she would be happy to do it because the baby would be one-hundred percent hers and Brian’s, but she was scared that she wouldn’t be happy watching some other woman growing her child for her.

“You don’t have to make a decision right now,” I told her “but you and Brian need to talk about this, tell him what you told me and let him tell you what he thinks about your options, and when you decide what you guys want to do, I’m here for you, whatever you need, I’m just a phone call away,”
~~~~
Matt
It was only nine-thirty, but Jack was wide awake and he wasn’t happy about something, but I didn’t know what it was and he couldn’t tell me because he couldn’t speak yet. He’d woken up screaming almost a whole twenty minutes ago, so I changed him but that didn’t settle him, I tried to feed him but he wasn’t hungry, burping him didn’t do squat either so I didn’t know what else to do with him. Maybe it was just the sudden change in surroundings. He hasn’t seen me in a few months and whenever he was on tour with us for a week or so, Val was always there to soothe him, although she struggled too sometimes. I don’t think we have a very happy baby, at all.

I was pacing around the living room, bouncing my son on my hip and humming Metallica to him when I heard the front door open and close.

“Matt?” A confused voice came from the hallway.

“In here!” I called out, only making Jack cry harder.

A few seconds later, Hannah walked into the living room and her face lit up like a little kid on Christmas when she saw the baby in my arms.

“Jack!” She exclaimed happily. He dropped his head back and looked at her, when he realised who it was, he turned his body awkwardly in my arms and reached out to her and she didn’t hesitate to scoop him up in her arms and balance him on her hip, but he was still crying uncontrollably, but this time he had a fistful of her hair and not mine.

“Sorry,” I apologized “I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but he won’t stop crying,”

“That’s alright,” She smiled down at him, looking at him like he was the most amazing thing she had ever seen before “How long have you been crying, huh?” She asked him in her baby voice

“Are you upsetting Daddy with all this crying?”

Her voice alone seemed to soothe him a little, and his crying calmed down considerably. It
wasn’t until she moved him so that she was holding him like he was a new born again, so that he was laying in her arms instead of sitting on her hip, he started to calm down even more and his cries were now whimpers of frustration, so, she started rocking from left to right while bouncing simultaneously.

“How do you do that?” I asked softly, stepping closer to her to smooth my hand over Jack’ little tuft of hair.

“I don’t know,” She chuckled as his eyes fell shut “Dad says I used to be able to do it to Mac although I was only six years old,”

“Yeah?” I smiled at her.

“Yeah,” She smiled back “Apparently, one day, Mom was trying to heat up Mac’s bottle but she was restless and wouldn’t stop screaming the house down, and she was laying on the floor surrounded by all the cushions we owned so that she wouldn’t roll away or hurt herself, and I just picked her up and started doing this,” She paused to emphasise her movements “And she stopped crying within seconds,”

“Do you remember that?” I asked her.

“No,” She breathed “But I do remember doing something similar when I was eight and she was two, and she scraped her knee really badly when Brian was babysitting us for an hour, and she wouldn’t stop crying for him,”

“Well,” I yawned, dropping myself onto the sofa while she slowly sat herself down in the armchair “You’re a freaking natural, I’ll give you that, Haner.”

“Well we can’t do this every time your son won’t stop crying, so I’ll have to teach you some of my tricks, Sanders.”

She looked up from Jack and across the room at me, both of us were smiling at each other and she looked as though she was about to say something else when Jack suddenly sat up, coughed loudly and barfed all down the front of her t-shirt.

“Maybe that’s why he was crying so hard,” She laughed while pressing the back of her hand against his forehead “He’s burning up,”

“Shit,” I cursed “I’ll go get you another shirt first,” I stood up quickly and stumbled out of the room in a hurry. I grabbed a shirt from my bedroom upstairs and returned to find Hannah in the living room without a shirt on, dabbing her chest with her ruined top.

She had propped Jack up against the back of the arm chair and by the looks of it she’d used her shirt to wipe him clean, well, as clean as she could get him before she started to clean herself off.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of her though, she was stunning. She had a perfect body, the arch in her back and her little back dimples… I couldn’t take my eyes off of them and found that it was hard to swallow now. I’ve always thought she was beautiful, and sure, I’ve seen her in a bikini before but we were never alone, but this… this was completely different.

What the hell am I thinking?! She’s my best friends little sister, she’s ten years younger than me and my fourteen month old son just threw up on her. Now is seriously not the time, never is the time for these thoughts to be running through my head.

I cleared my throat awkwardly and she turned around.

Dear lord.

I had to force myself to look into her eyes while I handed my muscle shirt over to her, and while she slipped it over her head with ease I looked at my son helplessly and he was already looking at me with a look on his face that almost said ‘Dad, I know what you’re thinking, stop it, I like her too so don’t ruin this for everyone’

“Let’s get you into the bath,” She cooed, scooping him back up into her arms and against her chest so that he was almost over her shoulder “We can clean him up properly and give him some medicine and put him down for the night, okay?” She smiled softly at me while walking closer to me.

“Uh-yeah,” I smiled weakly at her.

“Don’t look so worried, Matt.” She said softly to me, bringing her right hand up and brushing it against my cheek while supporting the baby’s behind with her left forearm “He’s alright, he seems better from bringing all of that up, just a little warm so we’ll keep an eye on him,”

I wasn’t too worried about Jack. He’s been sick before, he seems to be a very sickly baby and throws up almost everything he eats. I was worried about myself and the thoughts I was thinking about the twenty-three year old woman who had just been half naked in my living room not two minutes ago, who was caring for my son better than I was.

She would make a great mother… someday, not now, and definitely not with my kids, her kids… kids that we’d had together. I don’t even know if she wants kids, but that shouldn’t matter to me, she’s going to meet some guy her own age and have his babies, not mine.

Oh crap, I’m mumbling in my own inner-monologue.

Notes