Page 32 of The Facilitator, Part 3

Chapter Seventeen

“Can we chat?” I heard.

I looked up from the papers on my desk in my home office. Lauren stood in the doorway, and I frowned. She looked unsure, she wrung her hands and didn’t quite look directly at me. She’d been out of sorts, as she’d call it, for a couple of days.

“You don’t have to ask, come in,” I said, concern started to rise inside me.

She sat and as she did she sighed. She took in a deep breath and held it. My heart started to race, instinctively I thought I was about to be given bad news.

“You know we’re off to the clinic this afternoon?

” she said. I nodded, having not forgotten.

“If they offer us more IVF, I’m not sure that I want to take it.

” She let out a breath, as if she’d been holding it while she spoke.

She looked down at her hands. I rose from my chair and rounded the desk, and I sat beside her.

“Lauren, are you okay?” I asked.

“I’ve been thinking. Maybe that’s dangerous,” she said, chuckling.

“Will you look at me?”

She raised her head and swiveled in her chair to face me. “I’m sorry, Mackenzie.”

“What are you apologizing for?” I frowned, confused by what she was saying.

“I don’t want you to go through another procedure. I don’t want to go through more disappointment. I’m scared and I’m not sure how frequently I can feel so shit. The IVF makes me feel…mad, out of control, my head doesn’t feel good, and I can’t really describe it.”

“Then we won’t do it again,” I said, wondering why she’d never said this before. I knew the IVF had made her cranky, for sure, but I hadn’t realized just how bad she’d felt. “I wished you’d told me this,” I added.

“I didn’t want to disappoint you,” she replied.

“There isn’t anything you can do that would disappoint me.”

“I want us to look at adoption,” she said. I was relieved she hadn’t dismissed that idea as well. “Maybe we can go back to the IVF another time.”

“Okay.” I wasn’t sure what was going through her mind in that moment .

“I’m not really making sense, am I?” she said, chuckling.

“Not really. Listen, if you want to adopt, that’s fine by me. If you want to think about IVF at a later that, that’s also fine by me.”

She reached out to take my hand. “I feel unsettled, Mackenzie, and I don’t know why.”

“We’ve had a couple of eventful weekends, maybe we just need to chill for a couple of days. Perhaps get away for a long weekend,” I offered.

“But how I feel will still be here when we get back. I don’t know what it is,” she said. “Maybe I’m due on,” she laughed.

“You’re not normally unsettled before,” I said. Lauren was one of the lucky ones. She had an alert on her phone that predicted when her period was coming, it was always accurate and short. Since she was super horny when she was on her period, the shortness of it often frustrated me.

She placed her hand on my cheek. “I want a child. I think it will complete us, but I don’t want all the stress and upset.”

I grabbed her hand and slid it to my lips. I kissed her palm. “Whatever you want, Lauren, is what we’ll do.”

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Whatever you want,” I replied, and she rolled her eyes and sighed. “It’s the truth. I’m not pacifying you. I’ll be happy to adopt, I’ll be happy to father a child. I want a child, too, Lauren, and I really don’t care how that child comes to be. No matter, he, or she, will be our child.”

“How did I get so lucky, huh?” she said quietly, musing on her words.

“Well, I can tell you that. You sat in a bar and you looked so fucking sad that I was compelled to talk to you. And it was a trap, like a black widow, except you didn’t kill me when you ensnared me, you made me love you and want to give you the world instead.”

She rolled her eyes again, but laughed that time. “Come on, we’re going to be late.”

“And that’s your decision for now?” Lauren was asked. She nodded at the fertility consultant. “I don’t blame you. It’s a traumatic experience, especially with the difficulties you’ve been having.”

There was a little more back and forth chat, some documents to sign and then we left.

Our decision to put any further IVF treatment on hold was made.

Before we’d even made it back to the car, I was on the phone to the adoption agency that we’d already found details on.

I expressed our desire for a meeting as soon as possible.

We certainly didn’t need the offered pamphlets in advance and explained that we’d made up our minds to adopt and wanted to get cracking, as Lauren would say.

I had no idea on the route adopting in the UK would take.

I could call a private agency in the US, money would change hands, and a child handed over.

Of course, all the necessary checks would be made, but I didn’t think either Lauren or I had any idea of the difficult year we were about to be sucked in to.

A date was set and by the time we’d arrived home, we had gone through all the reasons we would be refused, without even knowing the criteria!

“How about we don’t talk about this anymore until the meeting?” Lauren said.

I was mumbling to myself, making a verbal list of what documentation I thought they’d want. Since I was an American citizen, I wasn’t sure if that would stand in our way.

“I’ll become British,” I said, turning while sipping on a scalding hot coffee. “Fuck,” I grumbled, running my tongue over my lower lip to cool it.

“You’ll do no such thing. I’m pretty sure you being American won’t be an issue. I’m British.”

However, her frown belied her confidence. I placed the coffee on the counter and sat at the kitchen table. I pulled the laptop closer to me and we googled. Not finding a definitive answer was frustrating.

Lauren placed her hand over mine. “I honestly don’t see this is a problem. And if it is, we’ll go to the States. You’re not giving up your citizenship, Mackenzie.”

I smiled and shook my head. It was a crazy idea, being American offered me many advantages in the UK. Any child of ours would have American citizenship, I believed, as well.

“So what do we do now?” I asked, closing the laptop lid.

“We wait for the meeting.”

Waiting wasn’t what I was good at, however.

“Are you ready?” I heard. Lauren had called upstairs.

“Nearly.” I had been tying my shoelaces and my stomach had been in knots all morning.

We were expecting Gloria Clarkson at eleven that morning and it was already five minutes to. I was a wreck, Lauren equally so. She was pacing the kitchen by the time I’d gotten downstairs.

“Come and sit,” I offered and turned on the kettle.

She sighed. “I don’t think I can sit still. What if she doesn’t like us?” Lauren was wringing her hands and she reminded me of Vivienne, who would do the same in times of stress.

“She will love us. And I’m not sure personalities count, do they? As long as we can prove we’re good parents, does it matter if she doesn’t like us personally?” I probably should have kept my mouth shut because the doubt that Lauren had transferred to me .

What if she just simply didn’t like us?

A buzz at the gates made us startle, even though we were expecting it. Lauren rushed to the front door and pressed for the gates to open. She then pulled the door wide and we stood, waiting like sentries.

“Relax,” I whispered from the side of my mouth while maintaining a smile.

“I’m trying,” she grounded back.

“Mr. and Mrs. Miller?”

“Yes, please, come on in,” Lauren said to the brunette who had climbed from her red car.

“Wow, what a gorgeous house you have,” she said, standing still and looking up. She smiled broadly. “Going to be a lucky child that gets to live here.”

Immediately, I relaxed, and from the sigh, so did Lauren. We both smiled at each other and then back at Gloria.

“Can I get you a tea?” I asked.

She squinted at me. “Can he make tea?” she asked Lauren, then turned to me. “No offense, my son-in-law is American and makes the most god-awful tea.” Her laughter echoed around the hall.

“I’ll make the tea,” Lauren said, and laughed with her.

I immediately liked her. I wasn’t sure whether she was going to be tough, scrutinize us to the point of exposing all our flaws and failings, but she seemed friendly. If she was going to flay us, it was going to be done with a smile, I guessed.

We sat and Gloria pulled a file from her bag. She placed her hands on it. “Have you researched the process?” she asked.

“A little,” I replied.

“We tried IVF but it just didn’t work. We know we’d love to be parents and thought adoption was the route for us. We’ve spent hours on the internet,” Lauren added, and there was an earnest tone to her voice.

“I’m sorry to hear that. A few of our families made the decision in the same circumstances,” she said, smiling again at us both.

She opened the file and for the next half hour, went through the adoption process. We had some forms to fill out, of course, but the purpose of the meeting was to decide if adoption was for us. We had no doubt, and after the half hour, neither did Gloria.

“Next is stage one,” she said. “Unless there is any reason we can’t accept your application.”

“Can you give us some examples of why that would happen?” I asked, my stomach had knotted and I knew by the way she gripped my hand, so had Lauren’s.

“If I’d have walked in here and there was drug paraphernalia, then that might influence the decision,” she chuckled.

“Honestly, I can’t see any reason, not even your nationality,” she said, confirming what she’d said earlier to me.

“Give me a week and then we’ll arrange for your social worker to call to make another appointment. ”

We walked her to the door and waited until she was out of sight before we dissected.

“What did you think?” Lauren asked, as she pulled a hair band from her ponytail.

“I think it went well. Didn’t you?”

“I think so. Who knows?”

We walked back to the kitchen and sat, flicking through the pamphlets we’d been left. I imagined those were the same ones we’d been offered after my initial phone call.