My Last Love Story (25 page)

It had been an edifying experience, to be sure, to come to the realization that whether a woman was fully covered, half-covered, or stark naked, only a sick man would look at her in judgment and think of her as fair game. I would not say lust because I loved it when my husband lusted after me. I loved it when Zayaan’s heated gaze warmed me in places gone cold.

“That was daytime. This will be night-dipping,” Nirvaan quipped, swiftly recovering from Zayaan’s admission.

Thinking of Aigüa Blanques heated me up in cold places, too. Sex had still been on the table back in Ibiza.

I snorted. “You, my honeybun, will say anything to get your way.”

In most things, Nirvaan was like a bulldozer. He’d just steamroll your objections flat. Yet when it came to our sex life and my inhibitions, I didn’t recall a single moment when he’d forced me to do something against my will. He’d taken time to change my mind. He’d persuaded me to his way of thinking with such tender nudges that I hadn’t felt pressured. Most of the time, I hadn’t even known I’d given in until it was done, like the nudist beach.
Given in or opened up to possibility?
I wondered now.

“Stop trying to convince her,
chodu
. There’s a time for debate and a time for action.” Zayaan put the deck in its box and set it aside.

I stretched luxuriously. “Finally, someone’s on my side. But don’t let me stop you. In fact, I insist you check it off the list without me. I’ll be the designated videographer for the event.”

If I’d thought Zayaan was on my side, I was so wrong. Too late, I noticed the unholy gleam in his eyes. And before I could even think to shut my own, they both leaped to their feet and stripped naked. They’d only been wearing swimming trunks, so it wasn’t even some elongated striptease that I could’ve taken as a warning and looked away. One yank, and there they were, bare as the moment they were born.

“Oh my God,” I squeaked, burying my face in my hands. I desperately wanted to peek through my fingers, but I guessed I was a chicken tonight.

I shrieked again as Zayaan plucked me from my seat and threw me over his shoulder without even grunting while Nirvaan shouted encouragements.

I kept my eyes squeezed shut. “What is this? A reenactment of the barbarian and the captive? Put. Me. Down.”

He didn’t, of course. I felt like a sack of potatoes as he ran down the beach with me draped over his shoulder. Nirvaan whooped and hollered by our side. I opened one eye and caught a glimpse of his moonlit buttocks as he raced ahead of us and dived into the ocean.

Zayaan threw me in a second later.

The fun and games provided an asylum for the secrets we kept from each other.

We became the kind of people I’d always abhorred and hoped we’d never become. On the surface, we smiled and teased and laughed, but if we peeled the shine away, our demons would come out and play.

Trips to the fertility clinic or the hospice for Nirvaan’s tests and consultations became a daily afternoon ritual. The radiosurgery had gone well. The tumor had shrunk considerably, and it was a good bet it would keep shrinking. But Nirvaan’s headaches had become frequent, and the doctors wanted to make sure no new tumors had formed anywhere. They changed the dosages of his medications, and he became sluggish and irritable. It wasn’t an avatar of Nirvaan’s I hadn’t seen before, but my own hormone inductions made me far less sympathetic to his plight this time.

It seemed Zayaan did have a function in this house, besides being a thorn in my side.

My stimulation cycle was at its peak, and the hardest parts of the IVF process were about to start. I’d had an ultrasound the previous day to check if my eggs were ready to be harvested. Dr. Archer had supplied me with enough information, including live demos and instructional podcasts, that I felt ready to open up a fertility consultation business.

“You’re up for the HCG shot tomorrow, honey. Don’t worry. It’s not as bad as it looks. Just remember to relax and breathe.” Martha had tried to soothe me with some insider tips and motherly advice yesterday.

Human chorionic gonadotropin was an oil-based hormone meant to fool my reproductive system into thinking it was ready to ovulate. Essentially, it would artificially trigger the production of progesterone in the uterus and encourage the stimulated follicles to detach and attach to its lining.

I’d have laughed at the ironies of my current life—where not only me, but also my organs were in a pretend state. But even laughing had become uncomfortable these days. My ovaries were fairly blooming with eggs, and my lower abdomen felt like a hot-air balloon about to take flight.

“One of you needs to help me with this,” I said, carefully preparing the trigger shot as I’d been instructed.

Attach the sterile needle to the plunger. Swab the drug vial with alcohol. Unscrew the needle cap. For a few moments, gaze in horror at the one-and-a-half-inch needle about to be inserted into my hip/butt area.

The HCG trigger was an intramuscular shot, meaning the drug had to be released into my muscles and not my belly fat, as with the fertility drugs. I hadn’t needed help with those injections, and after the first stomach stab, I hadn’t even been nervy much.

When I looked up with the freshly prepared syringe in my hand, I found both Nirvaan and Zayaan staring at me in shock.

I took a deep breath and blew it out, trying to relax my body. “It’s simple. Just stick this in somewhere within the circle Martha’s marked on my muffin-top area and slowly press the plunger.” I stood up from the kitchen stool and held out the injection. “Oh, and as in the demo, pull back the plunger a bit first. If you see blood, then you’ve hit a capillary or something. Take the needle out, and stab it somewhere else.”

“Stop saying
stab
…
stick
…
blood
and—fuck, I can’t do it,” said Nirvaan, shaking his head. “I can’t do it. My hands are shaking.”

I raised my eyebrows at Zayaan, daring him to be brave. He looked at the syringe with acute distaste.

“Fine, wussies,” I said, shaking my head at the pair of chickens. “They showed me how to do this on my own. It’s awkward, and I might hurt myself, but I can do it. Or I can inject it into my thigh, which they say is bloody painful.”

Zayaan still looked constipated but took the injection from my hand. I turned around and leaned against the kitchen counter, sticking my butt out. I pulled my yoga pants down a couple of inches to reveal a smiley face. Martha had a great sense of humor.

Nirvaan’s automatic, “Woohoo! Striptease,” sounded out of place and flat. He wanted all the fun and none of the pain. Typical.

“I think you should lie down,” said Zayaan. He’d snatched a couple of alcohol swabs from the injection kit, and he was already moving toward the sofa.

I followed him. Nirvaan followed me. I lay on my stomach on the sofa, my head turned toward the open patio doors. The ocean sang its daily song. I focused on the call of the waves, the seagulls, the dogs barking close by, the tinkling chimes on the deck, the susurrating trees.

As if they’d synchronized the move, the guys went to their knees by me—Nirvaan at my head, Zayaan at my hip. Nirvaan began to run his hands through my hair, massaging my scalp. It felt so good that I hummed in pleasure. He murmured stupid, silly things as Zayaan tugged my pants down over my right hip. I tensed up. Nirvaan bent his head to kiss my nose. His hair had started falling, the little of it that was left. He was going to shave it all off today.

I felt the cool lick of the swab, then a quick needle prick, and a burning sensation.

Now, for the worst of it…

“Breathe, baby. Breathe,” muttered Nirvaan over and over.

My breath hiccuped, and I tasted the ocean on my tongue.

It hurt like hellfire as Zayaan slowly began to press the plunger, injecting the hormone into me. It wasn’t quick, as the liquid was thick and couldn’t be just shot in. It had to be administered slow and steady. Even so, it was done in less than thirty seconds. I started when a warm hand curved around my hip, and a thumb pressed on the site. Zayaan massaged the spot, round and round, exactly like the nurse in the demo had shown. It felt so, so good to be touched.

Zayaan was my pillar. I could either bang my head against him or use him to lean on. He was always the one I’d counted on, more so than Nirvaan back in the day.

My hip was sore for the rest of the day. If possible, I felt even more bloated than I’d felt in the previous week.

The next day, I went into the clinic for blood work, and pleased with the results, Dr. Archer scheduled the egg retrieval procedure for the following morning.

I was put to sleep for the procedure—a small blessing, I supposed.

When I came to for the first time, Nirvaan was slumped in an armchair by my bedside, sound asleep, with a magazine on his lap. I didn’t have the energy to smile, much less call out to him to realign his posture so that he wouldn’t wake up with a crick in his neck. My insides felt as if they’d been used as punching bags. I closed my eyes and fell asleep again.

The next time I woke up, both the guys were in the room, talking to each other in hushed tones. I looked down my body, covered in a hospital blanket, but I didn’t see the IV connected to my hand. Dr. Archer had said I could go home as soon as my anesthesia wore off. It seemed I could go home.

My in-laws had come that morning and would stay for a couple of days, so I could recuperate without worry. I was fed hot soups and easy-to-swallow comfort foods. My mother-in-law insisted Nirvaan massage my back every time I winced, which was every time I sat or stood or walked. I’d stopped feeling awful within a day but found I wanted to be pampered. I still had to take the progesterone injections above my butt. My womb had to remain in a state of artificial gestation.

Every day, the clinic gave us a fertilization report. They’d retrieved more than twenty healthy eggs from me and fertilized nearly all of them with Nirvaan’s frozen sperm. The zygotes were thriving. Even then, they were closely monitored, and only the healthiest and chromosomally sound blastocysts would be used for implantation on the fifth day.

The most uncomfortable part of the embryo transfer was the amount of water I had to drink. My bladder had to be super full. Other than that, it was a five-minute procedure via a catheter to introduce the next generation of the Desai clan into my womb. We’d decided to transfer only one blastocyst—my youth really was a boon—and freeze the rest through a process called cryopreservation. If, at a later date, I wished for more children, I’d be good to go.

I snorted. I still wasn’t sure about having this one, let alone some future brood.

I stayed off my feet for a whole day and had been advised to take it easy until pregnancy was confirmed. No strenuous activity, no Jet Skiing, no gallivanting about town on high heels, and no hanky-panky. Not that sex was on the agenda anyway.

My in-laws left after my day of bed rest.

Nirvaan, Zayaan, and I went back to being a well-oiled machine. We began spending a lot of time vegetating in front of the TV or lounging in bed. I was so bloated by this time, and my breasts were so sensitive to the slightest touch that I couldn’t bear anything on my body, besides cotton tanks and elastic pajamas. I couldn’t sleep on my back or my right hip. The area of skin and muscle Zayaan continued to shoot progesterone in was black and blue.

Nirvaan didn’t leave my side. Zayaan entertained us with stories about his latest research and findings. He read passages of his writings and asked for our critiques, recited Rumi and Ferdowsi and paraphrased parts of
The God Delusion
by Richard Dawkins—a book I found reflected my own philosophy rather articulately. We had some interesting laughs and some abdomen-cramping disputes in bed.

The night before I was scheduled for my first pregnancy blood test, I came out of the bathroom after a relaxing hot bath to find both Nirvaan and Zayaan fast asleep in my bed. All the room lights were still on. Nirvaan was on his stomach, one arm buried to the bicep under his pillow. Zayaan was sprawled on his back on my side of the bed. He clutched a thicket of papers to his naked chest, his other arm flung out and hanging off the bed. He was snoring softly.