"Cook, Robin - Vital Signs" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Robin)

"Sometimes I think this infertility treatment is just too much to bear, Don't get me wrong; I have no fonder wish than to have our baby. But I've been feeling the stress of it every waking moment of every day. And I know it hasn't been much easier for you."

With panties and a bra in hand, Marissa went into her closet.

While she dressed, she called out to Robert. Sometimes recently it seemed easier to talk to him without meeting his eyes.

"I've only told a few people about our problem, and only in very general terms. I've just said we're trying to get me pregnant.

Everyone I tell feels compelled to give me unsolicited advice.

"Relax," they say.

"Take a vacation." The next person who tells me that, I'm going to tell the truth. No amount of relaxing will help me because I've got fallopian tubes that are sealed shut like hopelessly clogged drains."

Robert didn't say anything in response, so Marissa went to the door of her closet and looked into the bedroom. He was sitting on the edge of the bed putting on his shoes.

"The other person who is bugging me is your mother," Marissa said.

Robert looked up.

"What does my mother have to do with this?"

"Simply that she feels obligated every time we get together to tell me it's time for us to have children. If she says that to me once more, I'm going to tell her the truth as well. In fact, why don't you tell her yourself so that she and I can avoid a confrontation.

Ever since she and Robert had begun dating she had been trying to please his mother, but with only marginal success.

"I don't want to tell my mother," Robert said.

"I've already told you that."

"Why not?" asked Marissa.

"Because I don't want to hear a lecture. And I don't want to hear her tell me it serves me right for marrying a Jewish girl."

"Oh, please!" Marissa exclaimed with a new burst of anger.

"I'm not responsible for my mother's prejudices," Robert said.

"And I can't control her. Nor should I"

Angry again, Marissa turned back to her dressing, roughly buttoning buttons and yanking her zipper.

But soon Marissa's fury at Robert's mother reverted back to selfloathing for her own infertility. For the first time in her life, Marissa felt truly cursed by fate. It seemed unreasonably ironic how much effort and money she'd spent on birth control in college and medical school so that she wouldn't have a child at the wrong time. Now, when it was the right time, she had to learn that she couldn't have a child at any time except through the help of modern medical science.

"It's not fair," Marissa said aloud. Fresh tears streamed down her face. She knew she was at the edge of her endurance with the monthly emotional roller coaster of hope to despair each time she failed to conceive, and now with Robert's increasing impatience with the process. She could hardly blame him.

"I think you've become obsessed with this fertility stuff," Robert said softly.

"Marissa, I'm really beginning to worry about you. I'm worried about us."