My tubes were clear. My hormones were normal. My eggs were fine.
“Has your husband been tested?” Dr. Mendez asked, flipping through my file.
“I’ll ask him,” I said.
That night, at dinner, I brought it up. Ben was cutting his chicken. He stopped for half a second. Just half a second. I didn’t think anything of it then.
“I already did,” he said. “Last spring. I didn’t want to worry you. Everything came back fine.”
“You did? Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugged and smiled. “Because I knew it would be fine. And it was. It’s not me, babe. And it’s not you either. It’s just timing.”
I believed him. Why wouldn’t I? He was Ben. He was the man who left notes in my lunch bag. The man who once drove forty minutes in a snowstorm because I mentioned I was craving a specific kind of donut. He didn’t lie to me. Ben didn’t lie.
So if it wasn’t him, and the tests said it wasn’t me, then what was it?
Dr. Mendez had a name for it. “Unexplained infertility.”
I hated that name more than I hated the single pink line. Unexplained. Like my body had decided, all on its own, for no reason anyone could find, that it didn’t want to be a mother.
The fourth year, I took pills. Clomid, to make me ovulate harder. They gave me hot flashes and headaches and made me cry at dog food commercials. I gained twelve pounds. My jeans stopped fitting.
One night, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror in my underwear and just stared at myself.
“What is wrong with you?” I whispered to my reflection.
Ben came up behind me. He wrapped his arms around my waist and put his chin on my shoulder.
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing is wrong with you.”
