Page 17 of Nine Months to Bear

“Because unlike us, she has backers. Dr. Walsh has deep pockets fueling her expansion.” I lean forward, dropping my face into my hands and talking through my fingers. “Word is that she’ssleeping with some angel investor for a new, on-site embryology lab. It’s going to be state-of-the-art equipment we could never dream of affording.”

We stare at the peeling“Hope Grows Here!”mural I had painted on the lobby wall during our first week open. The pastel red flowers are now cracking like dried blood.

Those cracks in the foundation are visible. The invisible ones are just as bad, though. The rent check for this office is due in two weeks. Our equipment lease payment bounced last month. The pharmaceutical rep who used to bring us lunch and free samples doesn’t even return my calls anymore.

Things have never been grimmer.

“Remember when we had a waiting list?” I whisper, talking like we’re already at the wake. “When women would fly in from other states because we had the highest success rate on the East Coast?”

“We still have the highest success rate,” Camille retorts. “Walsh stole all of your research, remember? As far as I’m concerned, her successes are yours, too, Liv. The trouble is that she opened that monstrosity across town with canapés and custom sound baths, and her clients don’t know she’s a crook.”

I feel the familiar rage bubbling up—the betrayal still fresh despite two years having passed. Dr. Rebecca Walsh had been my mentor. I’d trusted her with everything because, for a fleeting second there, she was like the mother I never had. Kind, encouraging, impressed. I craved her approval and shared my innovative protocols, my client stories, my dreams of helping women who everyone else had written off as hopeless cases.

Then she took it all and called it hers.

I’m still reeling.

Camille is the one to break the silence. “What if… we play his game? Just once. What if?—”

“No.”

“Hear me out.”

“I don’t need to hear you out.” I’ve heard her argument in my head already. I’ve been chasing it in circles like a dog chasing a morally repugnant tail.

“This isn’t what we do, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find a surrogate ethically. We find someone who needs the money as much as we do. No coercion, just… mutually beneficial exploitation.”

“We don’t exploit people. Period. That’s Walsh’s brand, not ours,” I snap, standing up to pace. “We started this clinic because we believed in doing things differently. In treating women like people, not incubators.”

“Give it another few weeks and we won’t be treating anyone!” Camille slaps my desk, eyes wide and pleading. “We’re down to three clients, Liv.Three. And Ms. Chopard’s daughter starts college next month. You think she’ll keep paying for fertility treatments when her daughter’s tuition is due?”

Ms. Chopard has been on our roster for years. She wants a baby more than anyone I’ve ever seen and she has the money to keep trying, no matter how many times I tell her it might be fruitless. But everyone reaches their limit of disappointment.

Believe me; I fucking know.

My throat tightens. It’s been five long years of fighting tooth and nail for every patient, every success, every tiny victory against infertility. All of it is slipping away now because I can’t compete with Walsh’s chain of baby factories and their shadowy investor backing.

“Our vendors have put us on credit hold,” Camille continues, pulling up our accounting software. The numbers glow an angry red on the screen. “We can’t order more hormones for Ms. Chopard’s next cycle. We can’t even afford to run the genetic tests we promised the Kims.”

I know all of this. I combed through all of these numbers this weekendbeforethe gala. Before I ran into Stefan Safonov. None of this is new.

So why does it feel like more stress is being heaped on my shoulders?

“I’ll figure something out,” I mutter, knowing even as I say it how empty it sounds. I haven’t figured anything out so far.

“When? We have exactly eighteen days before our clinic license renewal fee is due. Eighteen days, Liv. And we are—” She jabs at the screen. “—twenty-three thousand dollars short.”

My gaze drifts to Ms. Chopard’s file on my desk—forty-two years old, single, desperate for a baby boy after two decades of miscarriages and false starts. Her adopted daughter, Lila, is twenty-two, pre-med, and eighty-five grand deep in student loans that she stubbornly refuses to let her mother pay.

Camille leans in, the devil on my shoulder. “Lila’s healthy. Smart. She offered to donate eggs last month, remember?”

“No,” I croak. “I turned her down. And besides, this is different.”

Lila is practically a kid. I told her donating eggs was a big commitment, but it’s nothing compared to renting out her entire uterus.

“Liv, this isn’t a lifelong prison sentence we’re pitching. Safonov’s kid would have nannies, security, and a trust fund bigger than God’s. Meanwhile, we could save this clinic and fund Lila’s education. It’s the least shitty option in a shitstorm.”

“You want me to approach our client’s daughter about carrying a child for the Russian mob.” I snort derisively.