TW: Infertility

The aftermath of cheating on her husband had taken a larger toll on Nandita than she thought it would. Her affair partner had probably escaped unscathed, as men often did in these situations. She, however, was the temptress, the seductress, the alleged instigator. 

She and her husband, Arjun, had first met in high school, as many divorce stories go. All the promises they had made. They had felt as though forever was a comprehensible concept–one that they could whisper in each other’s ears during sex and say and mean when they exchanged rings and walked around a fire seven times, tied by so many of those promises. When their peers had been talking about crushes, she and Arjun had known the names of their future kids. When it was prom season, Arjun was asking her for marriage instead. Namita for a girl and Shyam for a boy, and ideally two girls and a boy. And yes, I will marry you. They had been young, and with the unquestionable confidence of eighteen-year-olds, had known they wanted a future together. Their families got along perfectly, they wanted the same things in life, and most importantly, no amount of time together felt like enough. 

When Nandita could not conceive, the project had brought them closer together than ever. That was before its impossibility pushed them further apart. They had started trying at 24, after almost a decade together. She had finished her graduate degree and he had a career as a stock trader on wall street. It was time. They had money, and he had promised to cut back on hours. Or maybe the problems had been there all along and it was easier to divide her own life into before and after. Maybe it had worn on her when he worked late and she wondered if he was cheating. Maybe they had fought more than she remembered. But things had been good, had they not? They had to have been–all she could remember was him kissing her over coffee gelato and asking if she wanted to start trying. It was time. It felt right. And maybe he would be home more often after the kids arrived with parenting duties to attend. She would probably be less depressed, she figured. Together, they would conquer all odds, as they always had. Nobody else they knew had stayed together since high school. That meant something. 

It became apparent after four passionate months of making love and waiting with her legs up after sex that something was wrong. That was when the doctor’s appointment took place–when they ran tests and waited for results and Dr. Leslie suggested medications. When various medications did not work over the course of a year, she suggested they look into IVF...