THE HANDSOME MEDICAL DOCTOR: CHAPTER SEVEN

Ben sank into his forties like a favourite old armchair. He felt like this age was where he was supposed to be. Reminiscing his youth with his wife was fun, but he wasn't wishing to go back there. 

Those were crazy times, anxious times, building a career and financing a home. The hectic life of school had given way to the social whirl of peers but in general life had slowed to a more sedate pace.

Now he was Head of the Medical Department in the only Medical Hospital in Zades. He ran the soccer-club sometimes in summer when he was on Easter break, played golf and volunteered to helping his community, which was Zades. 

Everywhere he went he was greeted by ex classmates, friends, teachers and other people he had met in other works of life, many of whom were in his classes themselves years before. He didn't mind the white hair that lay snowy against his white skin, he wasn't bothered about taking his belt out a few notches. Life was good and the horizons clear.

He ran his hands through his hair and it stuck in clumps, the paths of his fingers still visible right down to the scalp. Perhaps it was time for a wash after all, there was only so much the cologne could mask anyway. He had just come back from the hospital and he was all tired, having seen a lot of patients that day. 

He broke the habit of a lifetime and kept looking in the mirror longer than was strictly necessary. He was a fixer-upper at best, but who wanted the job? There was hardly a queue forming.

He could say he hasn't enjoyed being a father, but he was quite content. He wouldn't want to put his hopes all high and believe that a miracle was going to happen. His wife didn't have a chance of ever giving birth.

She had lost her womb in a very bloody accident and he had even pouted on her himself when she was brought to the hospital. At that time, she was carrying her first child but unfortunately, they lost the baby.

Her womb was also removed since it was all damaged, leaving her without a womb and her chance of motherhood shattered.

In his dreams he always heard the sound of his children's feet, of their laughter and impromptu song lyrics. He would be so asleep and so awake in his soul, reliving those perfect moments of fatherhood. 

Moments that would never come.

As long as Susanne was with him, he was very happy. She was the love of his life and life will be a lot worthless without her by his side. 

And that is why he would never marry another woman, cheat on her, or ever replace her.

Maybe soon, they would visit the orphanage to see if they could find a baby to adopt.

A baby to call their own.

He sighed as he made his way towards the bathroom. He has had a long hectic day.

                           📖

The pressure is on for Susanne. Her womb is barren. Her womb is  infertile. She cannot produce a child. This is HER issue. Susanne feels this sense of guilt and shame that her body has failed her. Ben is not the one with fertility issues; She is the one with the problem. At times she feels frustrated, sad, angry, jealous, stuck and alone. 

What she, and others fail to realise is the depth and reach of her loss: that not only will she never have children, but she will never create our own family. She will never watch them grow up, never throw children's birthday parties, never take that 'first day at school' photo, never teach them to ride a bike. 

She will never see them graduate, never see them possibly get married and have their own children. She will never get a chance to heal the wounds of her own childhood by doing things differently with her children. She will never be a grandmother and never give the gift of grandchildren to her parents. 

She will never be the mother of her partner's children and hold that precious place in his heart. She wikl never stand shoulder-to-shoulder with her siblings who does not even like her one bit all because they feel she was cursed as a result of moving with Susanna. Now she feels the woman's pain. She knows what that woman goes through everyday with people discriminating her. 

At least she has a child, her own case is different from the barren woman she is. She will never watch her children play together. She will never be part of the community of mothers, never be considered a 'real' woman. 

And when she dies, there is no one to leave her stuffs, belongings and love to, and no one to take her lifetime's learnings into the next generation.

If you take the time to think about it all in one go, which is more than most of us are ever likely to do because of the breathtaking amount of pain involved, it is a testament to her strength that she is still standing at all.

The most hurtful thing about her condition is that she was not allowed to get away from it. Not when she was  in her thirties. Her friends were having children, friends of friends were having children, pregnancy and birth and first birthday parties were everywhere. She was asked about it all the time. Her mother, her friends, colleagues at work. When was it going to be her turn? At some point her childlessness became an acceptable topic of Sunday-lunch conversation, not just between Ben and she, but more generally. 

Yes, she was still young, there was still plenty of time, but failure cloaked her like a mantle, it overwhelmed her, dragged her under, and she has given up hope. At the time, she resented the fact that it was always seen as her fault, that she was the one letting the side down.  

Lara, her best friend since university, had two children in two years: a boy first and then a girl. She did not like them. She did not want to hear anything about them. She did not want to be near them. Lara stopped speaking to her after a while. 

There was a girl at the office in which she worked who told her—casually, as though she were talking about an appendectomy or a wisdom-tooth extraction—that she had recently had an abortion, a medical one, and it was so much less traumatic than the surgical one she’d had when she was at university. 

Susanne couldn’t speak to her after that, She could barely look at her. Women like her were looking for children to raise, children to call our own. But then you wish to get rid of the pregnancy and kill the innocent baby.

Things became awkward in the office; people noticed. Ben did not at all feel the way she did. It was not his failure, for starters, and in any case, he did not need a child like she did. He wanted to be a dad, he really did—she was pretty sure he daydreamed about kicking a football around in the garden with his son, or carrying his daughter on his shoulders in the park. But he thought their lives could be great without children, too. “We’re happy,” he used to say to me. “Why can’t we just go on being happy?” He became frustrated with her. He never understood that it’s possible to miss what you have never had, to mourn for it.

That is why she always loved to be around children, love to always play with them. She just wished she had her own child. She would have wanted hers to look a lot like Hannah. That angelic little being who was ever so radiant and cute in her own little ways.

Susanne sighed as her thoughts ran wild, warming the chicken soup Ben was going to have for lunch. Whether she was a mother or not, she had Ben with her.

And that made her life a little more meaningful.

                        📖

Susanna sniffed as she sat down close to the road. Her eyes were heavy as her sorrow seemed not to shrink. All she felt at that moment was pain. Feeling the wet hot tears fill up her eyes, her throat closed tight and each word pitched higher than the last in an effort to squeak out the words that were bottled up inside her. Finally, the tears split over and flowed down her face like a river escaping a dam. 

Looking down the road, she saw a building she fully recognized. Walking towards it, she took in on the appearance as she had done a million times before. She never forgot this place because this was where she realised she was in love with him. This building always brought forth memories, beautiful memories that hurt when she remembers.

The ledge of the bar was more like a rocky outcrop, rustic and rough. It was in keeping with the building, only thirteen years old, but made to look as if it were ancient. The rocks had been trucked in from some quarry up north and the builders had to consult with old-fashioned brick layers to get the rock facade right. It was all steel and concrete underneath of course, but from out here it looked like it just grew right out of the ground. 

On the ledge should have been pigeons, peering down in the way they do, looking for pedestrians dropping fragments of their breakfasts. But in the frosted dawn-light the ledge is layered with roses, red, white and pink. It could be a romantic gesture from some eccentric billionaire, but it isn't. 

She used her fingers to run through the walls that shielded her from what lingers inside. She closed her eyes as she began her journey down the memory lane, back to the first day she had met him......